A typical scene in the Richtersveld

Namaqualand, the year 2007
Picture if you will, a 2000 year-old tribe of migrating KhoiKhoi descendants living in rush-mat covered wood frame domes (haru oms), portable, to facilitate their nomadic lifestyle. Their women still dress in Victorian-style garments, the sole influence they retain from 1800’s missionaries, since most have now converted to Islam.

Otherwise untouched by time, these Nama-people continue to migrate around their vast expanses of land ensuring the purest preservation of their culture by verbally passing along their rich cultural traditions.

It’s no wonder the World Heritage Committee pronounced their ancestral lands a site of International acclaim. Known as the Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape the 162,000ha area comprises Richtersveld National Park to the north, communal grazing areas to the south and west, and Nababiep Provincial Nature Reserve to the east.

‘The last true wilderness…’
The acquisition of World Heritage status can be attributed to the Land Restitution Program which returned the Richtersveld area to its rightful inhabitants around 2002. In this short time they swiftly resumed management thereof, applying as foundation their keen knowledge of respect for the ways of nature. In the past, their land was lost and regained with more than one fight. During the scramble for Africa around 1904, when the German settlers invaded the territory, they met with a rebellion led by one of the Herero leaders (a tribe that had much land ownership rivalry with the Nama people before this time). The result was what has been recognized by the UN as an act of genocide, with a total of 65,000 Herero peoples and half (10,000) of the entire Nama population defeated or left to starve in the vast expanse of the Namib Desert.

The Nama culture
The tribe’s main settlements can be found in the southern parts of Namibia just above Keetmanshoop where they were forced as the Cape settlers began to claim farmland northwards, including three villages originally established as mission settlements, namely Lekkersing, Eksteenfontein and Kuboes.

Much like the tradition of their Bushmen relations, the Nama employ the simple and practical policy of communal hunting grounds, with an economy driven by livestock and farming and the natural artistic wares such as jewelry, musical instruments, leather products and mats.

Perhaps most notable to the preservation of such an ancient culture is their method of passing along their ancestral wisdom through storytelling, poetry and music. Their language is unique and holds none of the similarities known among the other African languages. The Khoisan or Bushmen tongue still retains its trademark ‘clicking’ expressions.

Sights for sore eyes
The wealth of wild flowers in the Namaqualand desert vastly commands the area above the rest of its natural resources, among which are alluvial diamond and copper deposits, and rich fishing grounds. The Orange River, known for its favourable white water rafting conditions, sustains the tribes who have since transformed its banks enjoying yields from cotton, grapes and dates and lucerne.

The Richtersveld National Park forms part of the West coast’s transfronteir park developed by the governments of South Africa, Namibia, and Angola and boasts four major wildlife sanctuaries and a number of smaller reserves. This arid, mountainous desert joins the 66 existing African World Heritage sites making eight in total for Southern Africa including the Vredefort Dome, Robben Island, the Cradle of Humankind, the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park, the uKhahlamba Drakensburg Park, the Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape and the Cape Floral Region.

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Image courtesy South African Tourism