Kaokoland

The Kaokoland (also called Kaokoveld ) was a autonomous Bantoustan located in the North-West of the Namibia. It gathered African of the Ethnie Himba.

Kaokoland means country of Kaoko and Kaokoveld means forest of Kaoko .

History

The Bantustan of Kaokoland was created following the Commission Report Odendaal of 1964 but it never had government.

It reinstated Namibia in May 1989 in the area of Kunene.

Geography

Kaokoland was located in the North-West of Namibia, at the border with the Angola. Its territory, desert in the West and semi-desert in the East, was consisted of the North of the Désert of Namib and skirted the Squeleton Coast without never having access to the Atlantic Ocean. It was delimited in North by the Kunene river and the South by the Hoanib river.

The relief is made of a succession of small mountainous chains with an average altitude of 1 400 meters. The culminating point is the mountain Baynes (2 039 meters of altitude). On the Kunene river, one finds the Ruacana falls (most of Kaokoland) with 120 meters in height and 700 meters broad and the Epupa falls which as for them consist of a series of cascades spread out over 1,5 kilometers, with an uneven total of 60 meters and a width of 500 meters.

Very insulated, the territory was colonized only tardily by German and constitutes an almost intact sanctuary for the fauna and the wild Flore.

Population

Kaokoland had been created for the Himbas, of the driven out Hereros their grounds which settled in the area during the 16th century. Practitioner the seminomadism, they move on immense territories to make feed their herds. In 1964, the territory was populated of approximately 5 000 inhabitants.

The official language was the himba.

See too

External bond

Bantustans of Namibia on worldstatesmen.org
Presentation of Kaokoland