Ruben Kapimbi

 The year 1964 marked 60 years after the wiping-out order of all the Hereros. A pocket of breathing skeletons cheated death by supping poisoned water. 

Some were conned to death by hanging. Others dared death by ducking sprayed bullets from the German firing squads. By 1906, the idea to exterminate the Hereros has deemed a blow because a sizable number of nomadic Hereros patronised swampy cattle posts at Ngami Lake. Their handclapping songs account for skirmishes between these Eastern Hereros and the cattle-raiding Kololo warriors. 

Without military cooperation from the British, the Extermination Order, 2 October 1905, became inept. However, one clause from the Extermination Order came to the fore; extinguish the social structures of the Hereros. This resulted in the tall and muscular Hereros merchandising their refugee statuses for cheap labour at the gold mines around Johannesburg, South Africa. In contrast, those who showed up at Maun (Botswana) with herds of cows had to forego their holy cows. 

A handclapping song relays a teary-eyed herder concealing his black and brown cows at Nyai Nyai, before presenting himself to the British. Unfortunately, the British dreaded the pests-carrying cows from South West Africa. In retort, the police buried the breathing cows that had lived to tell the tale of the thirsty Kalahari. This foolish act cuts the spiritual cord and sociological strings that tied the Hereros to their cows. 

Around the campfire stories, the cows threaded unworldly meanings beyond what the customary-illiterate British could grasp. Entombing cows that had escaped deadly bullets fired by the German troopers triggered mystical misfortunes for the Herero refugees. Even though the British recompensed the refugees, they naively slit the divine umbilical cord between the refugees and their ancestors. These holy cows had pet names and glorified praises to which the language was treasured.

The numbness of witnessing the funerals of holy cows condemned the Herero language into aural annals of elimination. A group of these refugees adopted the Tswana language and culture. Those who were pig-headed hopelessly yen for a return to their forebearers in Namibia. The survivors coined the returning to South West Africa, while those who gave up their ghost in Botswana and South Africa cast a spell on their descendants to one-day dig up their barebones and web their departed spirits to those of their ancestors. Henceforth, the reburial of Samuel Maharero fulfilled this magical harm prophesies on 23 August 1923 at Okahandja. 

Years later, other human skeletons were repatriated upon request of restless spirits, which tormented the returning descendants. The introduction of the Odendaal Plan in 1964 had pins and needles of philological erasures. The fleeing Hereros around Swartmodder River blamed the demise of their war-enduring cows on the nutrient-deprived grass. From this, one can deduce that the Hereros had embarked on an ill-advised turtle-paced skirmish around grass-choked riverbeds to graze their cows. 

In 1964, hordes of cattle herders feared being repatriated to the outskirts of their ancestral land by the Odendaal Plan. Instantly, the Herero language morphed into a dialect of gossip. There was a spine-chilling phobia of speaking the fragile parlance without risking banishments to Hereroland East. Only the aged cunningly whispered it in the cover of darkness. 

Latterly, The Odendaal Plan flirtingly putative the term: Nama-Speaking Hereros, if they have chosen to remain in this geographic area. The change in the phonation of the names to clothing the new identity led to families breaking the steel strings with their clan names. 

Thereafter, the Tjijenda curtailed to Hinda. Hikuama truncated to Higoam, and Mbaisako dropped for Baisako. 

The name Mbaeva was shortened to Biwa. The Mujetenga clan abridged theirs to Motinga. The Kahuikee became the Kahuika. The Tjito adopted Katjito (this is about being the descendants of Tjito, a wounded Herero warrior near Lüderitz. The Tjikwirire who were lured into the genocide as Himba warriors to human shield the sub-tribe changed to Stephanus. 

This is averred vocally in their undisputed claim of drilling the freshwater borehole at Vaalgras known as Ondjombo yo tjiKaoko. A fearless dual-tribal warrior christened himself as Marengo instead of Marenga. It is not known how some clans ingeniously preserved their ancestral names. During the winter of 2005 at Klein Vaalgrass, the author of this piece chatted with a grey-haired woman in tongue-tied Otjiherero; meaning a few of these Swartmodder dwellers had fossilised the original vernacular against the odds of misery and human suffering of the 1904 Genocide. They called the area around Keetmanshoop, Otjezoroue, signifying the black clay-like rocky riverbeds. This terse wallowing encounter with a Nama-Speaking Herero prompted me to write this letter of memoir.