Gibeon (place, Namibia)

Village Gibeon Khaxa-tsûs ( naq )
Details Details
Former Gibeon train station (2014)
motto
Basic data
Population Area Population Density	3000 (2011)
State Region Constituency	Namibia Hardap Gibeon
Establishment date
License plate phone code
Website	www.gibeon-council.com

Gibeon is a village in the same constituency Gibeon in the region Hardap in Namibia . The place is about 160 kilometers north of Keetmanshoop on the north-south axis of the country, 1170  m above sea level, and has about 3000 inhabitants.

history

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Gibeon meteorites for the exhibition in Windhoek : a national monument in Namibia

Gibeon train station (around 1920)

Graves of Schutztruppe soldiers

The Gibeon Meteorite hit this place ago. Before it hit the surface of the earth, it burst into many smaller and larger fragments, which fell in a wide stray field near Gibeon and formed the largest known meteorite stray field on earth. The first fragments were found in 1838 and estimated to be 4.6 billion years old. A total of 26 tons of meteorite material was found. Some pieces are on public display in the pedestrian zone of the state capital Windhoek (Post Mall).

In 1863 the Orlam group of the Witbooi ( ǀKhowesin ), who immigrated from the Cape, settled under their captain Kido Witbooi ( ǂA-ǁêib ). The group made Gibeon the starting point for a large number of historically significant events in South West Africa .

In Hoachanas based Oberkaptein of Nama , Oasib ( !Na-khomab ) was that its territorial sovereignty under standing field of Gibeon the Witbooi allocated and in return the recognition of his Kapteinschaft and strengthening hopes its combat effectiveness. The latter seemed particularly important to him because 30 years earlier Herero herdsmen had already gained a foothold here with their large herds of cattle, after their home pastures, much further north, were no longer usable due to the great drought of 1829/30. The Nama, however, were too weak to defend themselves against these intruders. So they had to Orlam- Kaptein Jonker Afrikaner ( |Hôa-|aramab ) and its regular call for help, to get rid of the Herero people. A further reinforcement by the Witbooi could only be due to Oasib, because with their help he wanted to get closer to his goal of becoming the dominant power in all of Southwest Africa.

When the Witbooi settled here in 1863, the place was still called Kowesin. The missionary Jacob Knauer ( Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft ), who followed the Witbooi, gave the new tribal seat of the Witbooi the name Gibeon, after a place near Jerusalem that had an Old Testament significance.

However, the place had a difficult start: in the founding year, a young girl who had immigrated from South Africa caught smallpox . The disease quickly spread across the country, killing 122 Witbooi in Gibeon alone. Because the Witbooi persistently refused to recognize the supremacy of Oasib, he attacked a year later with his allies - the Groot Doden ( ǁÔ-gain ) under Hans Jager ( ǂAimab ) and the Veldschoendrager ( ǁHawoben ) under Karl Hendrik Ses ( ǃNanib ǂkarib ǂArisemab ) - the place, looted it and largely destroyed it. Kido Witbooi, however, wanted to be better armed against such disciplinary measures in the future and joined forces with the neighboring Orlam tribes of the Berseba-Nama ( ǀHai-ǀkhauan ) under Paul Goliath ( ǂHobexab ) and Bethanien-Nama ( ǃAman ) under David Christian Frederiks ( ǁNaixab ). This in turn angered Oasib even more, so that in July 1865 he led a second punitive expedition against Gibeon with his allies. After initial success, however, the tide turned in favor of the Witbooi and Bersebaner; they drove Oasib to flight and were able to take the stolen cattle herds from him. Oasib recovered from this defeat and intended to avenge the shame inflicted on him by an all-important third attack on Gobabis on September 25, 1866. The Witbooi and their allies, however, were well prepared and had evacuated Gibeon so as not to turn the newly rebuilt place into a theater of war again. Oasib was so angry that he had the place completely destroyed and the women and children who remained there brought into captivity. This in turn triggered an irrepressible anger among the Witbooi and a devastating attack on Oasib. He fled to Rehoboth , where he was finally beaten by the energetic Witbooi and Berseba. Oasib was able to save himself to Hoachanas, where he died shortly afterwards. In the Peace of Gibeon in December 1867, the Nama recognized the Witbooi as the new masters of the south.

On December 31, 1875, Kido Witbooi died in Gibeon at the age of 91. His son Moses Witbooi ( ǀGâbeb ǃA-ǁîmab ), also already 68 years old, became his successor and tried to expand the power of his tribe. In doing so, however, he had a far less fortunate hand than his father and underestimated in particular the competition of other captain aspirants - namely Paul Visser , who sought to increase his prosperity through unauthorized raids and weaken the authority of the captain, and Moses' son Hendrik Witbooi ( ǃNanseb ǀGabemab ), who, after experiencing God in 1880, increasingly fell into religious madness, but nevertheless also strived for the dignity of the captain in the long term. Moses Witbooi tried to consolidate his position by two attacks on the Herero in 1880 and 1881 - but both raids failed and thus strengthened the positions of his competitors. After Paul Visser's successful raid against the Ostherero, the latter felt so strong that he dared to take open action against his captain, to accuse him of treason and to have him executed on February 22, 1888. Now only Hendrik Witbooi stood in his way. The attack on him on July 12, 1888 in Gibeon failed, however: Paul Visser was killed and Hendrik Witbooi was there with his wishes.

He, too, strove to expand his position of power and, through successful raids on the Africans ( ǃGû-ǃgôun ) (1889) and Herero (1890), got himself a good starting position - albeit to the growing displeasure of the missionaries who gave up the Gibeon station in 1889 and the German colonial power established in South West Africa . Hendrik Witbooi tried to counter this by allying himself with his recently defeated enemy - the Herero - (1892) and evacuating Gibeon, which had become too unsafe, to entrench himself near Hornkranz and then in the Naukluft Mountains. However, after reinforcements arrived, the German protection force was able to storm the Witbooi settlement in the battle of Hornkranz and force Hendrik Witbooi to conclude a protection and assistance pact on September 19, 1894. In addition, the Witbooi had to resettle in Gibeon for better control; For this purpose, Gibeon received a fortified Schutztruppe station in 1893. The German presence in the village was also evident through the German boarding school founded in 1900. Hendrik Witbooi adhered to the assistance pact with the Germans and supported them in all subsequent military operations by providing volunteers, including at the Battle of Waterberg in 1904. Because of the atrocities committed here by the Germans, the Witbooi left the troops and were captured himself and shipped as work slaves to the German colony of Togo . This prompted Hendrik Witbooi in Gibeon to officially declare war on the Germans on October 3, 1904, and to raid numerous farms in the vicinity of Gibeon. Thus Gibeon became the starting point of the to 1908 permanent Namakrieges that actually Orlamkrieg hot would. Hendrik Witbooi fell in this war in October 1905, whereupon his successor Isaak Witbooi ( ǃNanseb ǂKharib ǃNansemab ) surrendered in December of the same year. The Nama War, however, was continued by Simon Kooper ( ǃGomxab ) and Jakobus Morenga .

Gibeon did not come back into the historical limelight until April 1915, when the German Schutztruppe was trapped here by superior forces of the South African army during World War I and was only able to break out of the pocket with heavy losses and flee north.

Local politics

The following official final result was determined in the 2015 local elections .

Political party	be right	Share of votes	Seats
SWAPO	680	79.7%	4th
DTA	082	09.6%	1
RDP	051	05.9%	0
APP	040	04.7%	0
All in all	853	100%	5

Educational institutions

Elementary schools

• African Methodist Episcopal Community Primary School
• Christian Spellmeyer Primary School
• Kriess Primary School
• Mukurob Primary School
• Uibes Primary School
• Willem Moses Jod Primary School

High schools

• African Methodist Episcopal Community Secondary School
• Cornelius ǁOaseb Senior Secondary School

Sons and daughters of the village

• Hendrik Witbooi (1934–2009), Namibian politician
• Isaak Witbooi (1865–1928), captain of the Nama

Remarks

1. ↑ Note: This article contains characters from the alphabet of the Khoisan languages spoken in southern Africa . The display contains characters of the click letters ǀ , ǁ , ǂ and ǃ . For more information on the pronunciation of long or nasal vowels or certain clicks , see e.g. B. under Khoekhoegowab .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gibeon on a map from the time of German South West Africa
2. ↑ Official election result of the regional and local elections 2015, ECN, December 4, 2015 ( Memento of the original of December 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 150 kB) 

Coordinates: 25 ° 7 ′  S , 17 ° 46 ′  E