Hendrik Witbooi

Hendrik Witbooi, who lived from around 1830 to 29 October 1905, was chief of the Khowesin people, a subgroup of the Nama people of present day Namibia, and led the Nama in their revolts against the German colonial empire. He became chief of the Khowesin in 1888 after a power struggle and united other Nama groups to lead the first uprising against German colonial authorities from 1893 to 1894, which ended in a conditional surrender after which he began supporting the Germans in conflicts with other tribes. When the Herero uprising broke out in 1904 Witbooi and the Nama initially fought alongside the Germans against the Herero, including at the decisive Battle of Waterberg that August, but that September he led another Nama revolt against German rule; it ended in defeat and the Nama genocide, in which an estimated ten thousand Nama, around half their prewar population, were killed, and Witbooi himself was killed in action on 29 October 1905. He is regarded as one of the national heroes of Namibia, and his face appears on the country's fifty, one hundred and two hundred Namibian dollar banknotes.