Kampala — Just before the outbreak of the Nama-Herero rebellion in modern day Namibia in April 1904, Chief Hendrick Witboi of the Nama tribe penned a letter to the then German military governor of that colony. "He (the colonialist)... introduces laws which are entirely impossible, untenable, unbelievable, unbearable, unmerciful and unfeeling," he wrote, "He punishes our people... and he has already beaten people to death for debt. He thinks we are stupid and unintelligent people but we have never punished people in the cruel and improper way he does."
Witboi was to lead one of the most ferocious and equally tragic wars of resistance that Africans fought against colonialism. Although he died after one year of rebellion, the Nama and the Heroro people continued the struggle for another three years. By the time the rebellion was crushed in 1908, 50% of the Nama and 90% of the Heroro people had been exterminated by the Germans in one of the genocides Europeans carried out in Africa.
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