Damara (ǂNūkhoen)
Namibia's oldest unresolved question — a Bantu-featured people speaking a Khoekhoe click language, whose origins remain genuinely unexplained, who were enslaved by their neighbours and then confined to a homeland of stone by the apartheid administration.
Damara (ǂNūkhoen) people
Damara People Namibia.jpg · Wikimedia Commons
Identity
Population: Around 250,000, roughly a tenth of Namibia
Location: Damaraland (Erongo and Kunene), the Brandberg and Twyfelfontein country, and the towns of Windhoek, Okombahe and Khorixas
Language: Khoekhoegowab (Damara-Nama), a click language shared with the Nama
Language family: Khoe-Kwadi → Khoekhoe
Traditional governance: Traditional authorities including the Damara King's council; historically dispersed and without a centralised state; Namibian regional administration today.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups — clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes — each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Okombahe community
The historic centre, granted as a reserve in the nineteenth century.
Khorixas and the north-west
Communities of the arid Damaraland plateau.
Urban Damara
Substantial populations in Windhoek, Walvis Bay and the mining towns.
Gallery
1 images
Culture
Clothing: Victorian-derived long dresses and headscarves shared with Nama and Herero women; men's Western dress; ceremonial dress for traditional occasions.
Food: Goat and sheep, maize and millet porridge, wild fruit and !nara; historically hunting, gathering and small stock in an environment barely able to support cultivation.
Ceremonies: The damara punch dance and other traditional performances; Damara King's Festival; funerals and church services; healing ceremonies with the /gais tradition.
Marriage customs: Bridewealth in small stock; matrilineal features in some inheritance alongside patrilineal residence; church marriage now general.
Initiation rites: Historically initiation and instruction in hunting and metalworking; today largely replaced by schooling and church confirmation.
Stories & Oral Literature
The Question Nobody Has AnsweredHistorical debate
The Damara speak a Khoekhoe click language but are physically distinct from the Nama, and have no tradition of migration from elsewhere. Explanations have ranged from an early Bantu-speaking population that shifted language, to descendants of an ancient population predating both Khoekhoe and Bantu arrivals. Genetic and linguistic work has narrowed nothing decisively, and the Damara's own account is simply that they were always here.
Smiths and ServantsHistorical account
Damara were known as copper and iron smiths and were also, through the nineteenth century, raided and enslaved by Herero and Nama alike, working as herders and servants without stock of their own. German colonisation and then apartheid's homeland policy confined them to the driest and stoniest country in the territory. Okombahe, granted in 1870, was the one place they held by right.
Proverbs
“The stone country feeds those who know it.”
Survival in the Damaraland desert.
“The one who forges is needed and not thanked.”
The smith's ambiguous standing.
“We came from here.”
The Damara answer to the origins question.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Gamab (also known as //Gamab), a sky deity who sends death by arrow, in a cosmology shared in outline with the Khoekhoe; ancestors active; heitsi-eibib cairns marked at graves.
Beliefs: Older Khoekhoe cosmology with Gamab and the heitsi-eibib cairns; Christianity now dominant, largely Lutheran and Catholic; healing traditions with plant knowledge.
Ancestors: Heitsi-eibib cairns, to which travellers add a stone, mark the landscape; family graves anchor claims in a country from which the community was repeatedly moved.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Gamab
Sky deity who determines death
Heitsi-Eibib
Ancestor-hero whose cairn graves are marked with added stones by passers-by
Ancestors
Honoured at graves and in family observance
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages and towns of stone, brick and sheet in an environment with little timber; historically portable mat houses shared with Nama practice.
Building techniques: Mat-and-frame portable houses historically; stone and brick building today; smithing forges and copper working as the historic craft.
Village layout: Settlements at springs and boreholes; the mat house circular with a low entrance; cairns at graves along the tracks.
Artifacts
Copper and iron work
Craft
Smithing tradition for which the Damara were regionally known.
Heitsi-Eibib cairns
Ritual
Stone graves to which passers-by add a stone.
Twyfelfontein engravings
Heritage site
UNESCO-listed rock engravings in Damaraland, made by earlier hunter-gatherers.
Brandberg and the White Lady
Heritage site
Namibia's highest massif with major rock-art panels.
Historical Timeline
Ancient
Damara presence in Namibia predates both Nama and Herero arrival by most accounts, including their own.
1800s
Raiding and enslavement by Herero and Nama; Okombahe granted as a reserve in 1870.
1884–1915
German colonial rule; the genocide of Herero and Nama also displaces Damara communities.
1960s–1970s
Apartheid homeland policy creates Damaraland in the driest north-west.
1990
Namibian independence; land restitution and the origins question both remain unresolved.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- UNESCO: TwyfelfonteinUNESCO
- Britannica: Namibia — peopleEncyclopaedia Britannica
Premium & scholarly sources