ON the morning of 12 January 1904, shooting started in Okahandja, a small town in German South West Africa, present-day Namibia. When the Herero–German war finally ended four years later, Herero society, as it had existed prior to 1904, had been completely destroyed. In the genocidal war which developed, the Herero were either killed in battle, lynched, shot or beaten to death upon capture, or driven to death in the waterless wastes that make up much of Namibia. Within Namibia, the surviving Herero were deprived of their chiefs, prohibited from owing land and cattle, and prevented from practising their own religion. Herero survivors, the majority of whom were women and children, were incarcerated in prison camps and put to work as forced labourers for the German military and settlers.

Over the years there have been a fair number of works dealing with the causes and effects of the Herero–German war of 1904–8. It has been argued that the loss of land, water, cattle and liberty, coupled with the activities of unscrupulous traders and German colonial officials, steered the Herero into launching a carefully planned, countrywide insurrection against German colonial rule. In brief, ‘in 1904, the Herero, feeling the cumulative and bitter effects of colonial rule in South West Africa, took advantage of the withdrawal of German troops from central Hereroland…and revolted’.