Baster
Baster ( afrikaans for bastard ) are families that arose from relationships between Nama women and Boers in South West Africa . In 1994 the Basters made up 39,000 people, around 2.5 percent of the Namibian population. Their language is mostly Afrikaans .
Their traditional tribal area is around the town of Rehoboth (south of Windhoek ), which is where their most commonly used name Rehoboth Baster (s) comes from. Since Namibia's independence, the Basters are the only traditional group that no longer has a special legal status. As before 1990, your internal administration is still in the hands of a “Baster Council”, which is in charge of the chapters . They speak Afrikaans as their mother tongue and are mostly of Evangelical Lutheran faith.
The Rehoboth Basters are a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization and continue to view their historic tribal land as an independent Rehoboth area .
history
After Dutch seafarers took possession of the Cape region under their captain Jan van Riebeeck in 1652, the European colonialists encountered Nama tribes already resident there. The arrival of other settlers, not only from the Netherlands, but increasingly also from Germany and France , created a noticeable labor shortage on the newly established farms. Since the relationship between the Boer farmers and the Nama was initially of a peaceful nature, more and more Nama settled in the vicinity of the farms and hired them as farm workers. They got to know their language and customs and - since Boer women were “in short supply” in the early days of colonization - they built up ever increasing personal relationships with their employers.
The resulting children, who were not really accepted by either of their two original communities, mostly enjoyed a European upbringing, schooling and their way of life was shaped much more by their closeness to Europeans than by their Nama kinship. Like many mixed people, they too were most likely to feel drawn to their own kind when choosing a partner and usually married each other.
The growing baster families founded clans and, with increasing prosperity, looked around for their own farmland and pastureland. As early as the 18th century they called themselves Baster in order to give themselves their own group identity.
Their communities developed orderly structures of self-government in the first half of the 19th century. They gave themselves constitutional rules that also expressed their basic Christian attitude.
In the middle of the 19th century (1868) the Basters broke away from their dependence on the Cape government and moved north on a two-year trek. From then on they saw themselves as a separate ethnic group. Under the leadership of their captain Hermanus van Wyk, they immigrated to south-west Africa . Hermanus van Wyk negotiated with the constantly feuding Herero and Nama, so that part of the Basters south of Windhoek found a new settlement area in Rehoboth - hence the name Rehobother Baster. The German racial theorist Eugen Fischer undertook a research trip there in 1908 in order to show that Mendel's laws were also valid for human mixed race between Dutch and Africans.
On the way to Rehoboth, the Basters had already passed additional laws. In the years that followed, they largely retained their self-government.
The two "place masters" in Okahandja and Hoachanas apparently gave them a buffer role. The remaining Basters found new settlements in the south of the country and established independent communities there under their leaders Vilander (Kalahari-Baster) , Vries (Kalkfontein-Baster) and Swart (South-Baster) .
The Rehoboth Basters were challenged in their buffer role: Rehoboth was repeatedly the scene of bloody conflicts, looting and destruction, especially after the Nama tribe of the Swartboois had settled here.
After Germany took possession of South West Africa and the establishment of the German South West Africa colony , the Rehoboth Baster were one of the first tribes to conclude protection and assistance agreements with the German protecting power (1885) and actively supported them in the desired pacification of the troubled country from Baster associations. At the beginning of the First World War in South West Africa , a Baster volunteer company was set up in Rehoboth under German leadership, but with the express restriction that it could not be used against whites. Even among the Germans, the Basters managed to largely maintain their self-government.
After the Baster rioted against German tutelage shortly before the end of the war in 1915, the South African mandate administration continued to grant them these autonomy rights, but they were revoked again in 1925. The Basters rose up against this measure, but were forced to give way when South Africa threatened to be bombed.
During the apartheid period in Namibia, the Rehobother Baster contributed to the development of the political parties and continued to be responsible for their affairs in Basterland . However, this status ended in 1990 with Namibia's independence. One day before Namibia's independence, the Basters declared their independence on March 20, 1990 within the borders of 1872 as the " Rehoboth area ".
In relation to the history of the Rehobother Baster, the will to survive of this group is also remarkable.
The Rehobother Baster form a well-trained and often independent craft community around Windhoek .
literature
- Jeroen Zandberg: Rehoboth Griqua Atlas. Lulu.com, 2nd Edition, 2013, ISBN 978-1445272429 . ( available online in parts )
- Kristin Kjæret, Kristian Stokke: Rehoboth Baster, Namibian or Namibian Baster? An analysis of national discourses in Rehoboth, Namibia. September 26, 2003.
- Rudolf G. Britz, Hartmut Lang, Cornelia Limpricht: Brief history of the Rehobother Baster until 1990. Klaus Hess Verlag, Windhoek / Göttingen 1999.
- Maximilian Bayer: The Rehobother Baster Nation of Namibia. Basler Afrika-Bibliographien, Basel 1984, ISBN 3-905141-38-8 .
- Eugen Fischer : The Rehoboth Bastards. Academic printing and publishing company, Graz 1961 / Jena 1913.
See also
Web links
- Official site of the Rehoboth Baster (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ History . Rehoboth Basters. Retrieved August 5, 2011
- ↑ Eugen Fischer: The Rehobother Bastards and the problem of hybridization in humans. Jena 1913 (Reprint: Adeva, Graz 1961).
- ^ The Rehoboth Basters' declaration of independence of March 20, 1990. Rehoboth Basters. Retrieved August 30, 2017.