Namibia 2013

Our route round Namibia - you can click on any of our destinations in order to get to our photos of that place

Namibia is a vast under populated country. In my terms it is 60 times as large in land area as Northern Ireland, but with much the same population. Given the presence of the arid Namib Desert, it is one of the least densely populated countries in the world.

Namibia has borders with Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March 1990, following the Namibian War of Independence. Its capital and largest city is Windhoek. The population is 2.2 million people and there is a stable multi-party parliamentary democracy. Agriculture, herding, tourism and the mining industry – including mining for gem diamonds, uranium, gold, silver, and base metals – form the backbone of Namibia's economy.

The name of the country is derived from the Namib Desert. The name Namib is of Nama origin and means "vast place". The Namib stretches for more than 2,000 kilometres along the Atlantic coasts of Angola, Namibia, and South Africa. It is is largely unpopulated and inaccessible. Lüderitz, Walvis Bay and Swakopmund on the coast, are the main settlements in the area The only non coastal settlement is at Sesriem, close to the Sossusvlei area, and there are very few other inland settlements in the desert..

The Namib's aridity is caused by the descent of dry air of the Hadley Cell, cooled by the cold Benguela current along the coast. It has less than 10 mm (0.4 inches) of rain annually and is almost completely barren. Winds, coming from the Atlantic Ocean, are pressed down by hot air from the east; their humidity forms clouds and fog. Morning fogs coming from the ocean and pushing inwards into the desert are a regular phenomenon along the coast, and much of the life cycle of animals and plants in the Namib relies on these fogs as the main source of water. Any rivers flow underground and are dry for most of the year, and even when they are not, they usually drain into endorheic basins, without reaching the sea. The Swakop and the Omaruru are the only rivers that occasionally drain into the ocean.

All along the coast,there are therefore immense fogs and strong currents and strong winds. There result has been numbers of shipwrecks (and they are still occurring) along the Coast. Some of these wrecked ships can be found up to 50 metres inland, as the desert slowly moves westwards into the sea, reclaiming land over a period of many years. Benguela's El Nino (similar to the Pacific event in its environmental change in the seas) spreads from the Kunene estuary southward to, on occasion, south of Lüderitz.

The dry lands of Namibia were inhabited since early times by Bushmen, Damara, and Namaqua, and since about the 14th century AD by immigrating Bantu who came with the Bantu expansion. It became a German Imperial protectorate in 1884 and remained a German colony until the end of World War I. In 1920, the League of Nations mandated the country to South Africa, which imposed its laws and, from 1948, its apartheid policy. Namibia eventually obtained full independence from South Africa in 1990, with the exception of Walvis Bay and the Penguin Islands, which remained under South African control until 1994.

The first Europeans to disembark and explore the region were the Portuguese navigators Diogo Cão in 1485 and Bartolomeu Dias in 1486. Namibia was not extensively explored by Europeans until the 19th century, when traders and settlers arrived, principally from Germany and Sweden. In the late 19th century Dorsland trekkers crossed the area on their way from the Transvaal to Angola. Some of them settled in Namibia instead of continuing their journey, and others returned to South-West African territory after the Portuguese tried to convert them to Catholicism.

The Nama-Herero War broke out in 1880, with hostilities ebbing only when Imperial Germany deployed troops to the contested places and cemented the status quo between Nama, Orlams, and Herero. Namibia became a German colony in 1884 under Otto von Bismarck to forestall British encroachment and was known as German South-West Africa (Deutsch-Südwestafrika). The British meanwhile had determined that only the natural deep-water harbour of Walvis Bay was worth occupying – and this was annexed to the Cape province of British South Africa. The father of Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring was a one-time German colonial governor of Namibia and has a street named after him in Swakopmund. From 1904 to 1907, the Herero and the Namaqua took up arms against the Germans and in the subsequent Herero and Namaqua genocide, 10,000 Nama (half the population) and approximately 65,000 Hereros (about 80% of the population) were killed.

South Africa occupied the colony in 1915 after defeating the German force during World War I and administered it as a League of Nations mandate territory from 1919. Although the South African government desired to incorporate 'South-West Africa' into its territory, it never officially did so, although it was administered as the de facto "fifth province". In 1946, South Africa refused to surrender its earlier mandate which the UN wanted to replace with a United Nations Trusteeship agreement, requiring closer international monitoring of the territory's administration (along with a definite independence schedule). South-West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO), a guerrilla group began their armed struggle for independence around 1966, but it was not until 1988 that South Africa agreed to end its occupation of Namibia, in accordance with a UN peace plan for the entire region.

Under the tripartite diplomatic agreement between South Africa, Angola and Cuba, with the USSR and the USA as observers, a series of events occurred. South Africa agreed to withdraw and demobilise its forces in Namibia. Cuba agreed to pull back its troops in southern Angola sent to support the MPLA in its war for control of Angola with UNITA. A combined UN civilian and peace-keeping force under Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari supervised the military withdrawals, the return of SWAPO exiles and the holding of Namibia's election. This was won by SWAPO although it did not gain the two-thirds majority it had hoped for. The country officially became independent on 21 March 1990.

Sam Nujoma was sworn in as the first President of Namibia. Walvis Bay was ceded to Namibia in 1994 upon the end of Apartheid in South Africa. Swapo has won every election since independence. The transition from the 15-year rule of President Sam Nujoma to his successor, Hifikepunye Pohamba in 2005 went smoothly. Namibian government has promoted a policy of national reconciliation and issued an amnesty for those who had fought on either side during the liberation war. The civil war in Angola had a limited impact on Namibians living in the north of the country.

In August 1999, a secessionist attempt in the northeastern Caprivi region was successfully quashed. Today it is a safe land for tourists: we drove thousands of kilometres without problems and saw an extraordinary variety of landscapes and animals

But these are just a few of the highlights. Our trip in a rented 4*4 is shown on the map above, and each leg is linked below to more details and photos.

David Grant Holidays