Hosea Kutako

Hosea Kutako Monument in Windhoek

Hosea Katjikururume Kutako (* 1870 in Okahurimehi ; † July 18, 1970 in Okahandja , South West Africa ) was the traditional leader of the OvaHerero living in Namibia from 1925 until his death .

The after the Herero war fled abroad leader Samuel Maharero could not exercise his chief official on the few in southwest Africa surviving Herero due to the entry ban of South African mandate administration. He therefore authorized his son Frederik Maharero to appoint Hosea Kutako, who lived in Southwest Africa, as leader. Hosea Kutako saw his leadership position primarily as an obligation to uphold the memory of the once proud time of the Herero before and during the German colonial era and of the atrocities of the Battle of Waterberg . In 1920 he founded the traditional association of Green Flaggs and - after Maharero's death - the association of Red Flaggs in 1923 . Kutako initiated and organized the transfer of the body of Samuel Maharero and its burial in Okahandja next to the grave of Jonker Afrikaner . It is thanks to him that the troop player organization was founded; Although its founding concept was supposed to have a military significance, it met with opposition from both the South African mandate administration and Sam Nujoma , the co-founder of the resistance organization SWAPO . So the importance of the troop players was limited to the cultural accompaniment especially of the Herero day . Kutako was also symbolically buried as a national hero on the hero field .

Grave site of Hosea Kutako at the Okahandja Church of Peace

In 1959, Hosea Kutako founded the South West African National Union (SWANU) together with Sam Nujoma , an organization that became part of SWAPO a year later. Despite his old age, Hosea Kutako was particularly committed to the independence of what would later become Namibia and worked on it until his death. In recognition of the services he acquired, the international airport of the capital Windhoek was named after him after independence .

His former home , two kilometers south of Aminuis in the Omaheke region , has been a Namibian national monument since October 2018 .

literature

• Dag Henrichsen, Naomi Jacobson, Karen Marshall (Eds.): Israel Goldblatt Building Bridges - Namibian Nationalists Clemens Kapuuo, Hosea Kutako, Samuel Witbooi, Brendan Simbwaye. Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Basel 2010, ISBN 978-3-905758-16-0 .
• JB Gewald: Chief Hosea Kutako: A Herero royal and Namibian nationalist's life against confinement 1870-1970. Leiden University, January 2007.

Web links

• Biography Hosea Kutakos , Klaus Dierks (English)

predecessor	Office	successor
	Paramount Chief of the Herero	Clemens Kapuuo