Oorlam people had emerged from populations of…
1828 CE to 1839 CE
Oorlams primarily speak a version of Dutch or proto-Afrikaans and are much influenced by Cape Dutch colonial ways of life, including adoption of horses and guns, European clothing, and Christianity.
Oorlams from Cape Colony had crossed the Orange River and moved north into the area that is today Namaqualand in southern Namibia from the late eighteenth century onward, settling places earlier occupied by the Nama.
Their encounters with the nomadic Nama tribes were largely peaceful.
They received the missionaries accompanying the Oorlam very well, granting them the right to use waterholes and grazing against an annual payment.
The Oorlam had come partly to escape Dutch colonial conscription, partly to raid and trade, and partly to obtain herding lands.
Some of these emigrant Oorlams (including the band led by the outlaw Jager Afrikaner and his son Jonker Afrikaner in the Transgariep) retain links to Oorlam communities in or close to the borders of the Cape Colony.
In the face of gradual Boer expansion, then large-scale Boer migrations away from British rule at the Cape, Jonker Afrikaner brings his people into Namaqualand by the mid-nineteenth century, becoming a formidable force for Oorlam domination over the Nama and against the Bantu-speaking Hereros for a period.
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Southern Africa
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