As Namibia commemorates Heroes’ Day on 26 August, we honour the triumph, bravery and enduring legacy of our heroes. This article highlights key moments from Namibia’s War of Resistance and War of Independence against German imperialism and South African apartheid rule.

It also reflects on the historic reburial of Paramount Chief Samuel Maharero in Okahandja on 26 August 1923, an event that established a lasting tradition of remembrance, now observed annually as the Ovaherero Red Flag Day (Otjiserandu) commemoration in Okahandja.

The war began on January 12, 1904, when the Ovaherero people, led by Paramount Chief Samuel Maharero, rose up against German imperialism. The Nama uprising also spread south in 1904, when Nama clans under the leadership of Hendrik Witbooi joined the resistance against German fascist forces. The Battle of Namutoni was a historic engagement fought on January 28, 1904, when about 500 Aandonga warriors led by King Nehale lya Mpingana attacked the imperial German Schutztruppe garrison at Fort Namutoni.

The retreat 

Following the Ovaherero retreat at the Battle of Waterberg (Kaondeka) in August 1904, and the German commander Lothar von Trotha’s extermination order (Vernichtungsbefehl), the surviving Ovaherero people faced systematic slaughter. To escape total annihilation, thousands of men, women, and children retreated east into the arid, waterless terrain of Omaheke and the Kalahari Desert, seeking refuge in the British Protectorate of Bechuanaland (now Botswana). Vast numbers perished along the route from extreme dehydration, starvation, exhaustion, and poisoned waterholes guarded or tainted by German fascist troops. Paramount Chief Samuel Maharero successfully led a group of survivors across the border into the British Protectorate of Bechuanaland.

He later died in Serowe on March 14, 1923, after living in exile following the 1904-1908 Ovaherero-German War and genocide.

Repatriation of mortal remains 

After his death, Ovaherero leaders, under the astute leadership of Chief Hosea Kutako, engaged in intense negotiations with the South African administration, which had assumed control of South West Africa as a League of Nations mandate after World War I. Permission was eventually granted to repatriate his remains to South West Africa.

His body was transported by train to Okahandja, arriving on 26 August 1923. Hundreds of men stood in front of the station. Suddenly, a whistle sounded in the distance, followed by a soft, rhythmic stomping of feet. The locomotive approached and finally came to a hissing halt at the station. At a loud command, all the uniformed men stood to attention.

There was no doubt this was an honourable reception for a highly respected figure. A brass band began to play a funeral march as a heavy coffin was carefully carried out of the railway carriage.

State-like funeral procession

It was a massive, solemn, and defiant state funeral that blended traditional Ovaherero customs with military-style organisation. The funeral procession included roughly 1 500 foot soldiers and 150 horsemen who escorted the coffin from the railway station.

Mourners and the ozOtrupa (troop player units) wore distinctive military-style uniforms, hierarchies, and styles originally modelled in defiance and adaptation after the German Schutztruppe.

Women walked in rows wearing iconic, voluminous, multi-layered Victorian-style traditional dresses paired with distinctive double-pointed, cow-horn-shaped headscarves. A British national flag draped Paramount Chief Samuel Maharero’s coffin, symbolising a deliberate distancing from the German fascist colonial regime he fought against.

Chief Hosea Kutako led the monumental homecoming procession alongside Samuel Maharero’s sons, Traugott and Friedrich, as thousands of dispersed Ovaherero people gathered to receive the coffin. Chief Hosea Kutako’s statement that day was action-oriented.

He used the solemn burial to re-centre, unite, and politically reform the fragmented Ovaherero community in the wake of the 1904-1908 genocide.

Rituals and burial rites 

As the procession neared the royal graves of the chiefs at the eastern edge of Okahandja, where Paramount Chief Samuel Maharero rested alongside his father, Maharero, and grandfather, Tjamuaha, the marchers halted within shouting distance.

Mourners knelt on one knee, and horsemen bent low, while an elder invoked the ancestors in a loud voice, formally seeking permission to approach and welcome their returning leader home. The assembly moved in a single-file U-shape around the gravesite, with each mourner placing a hand on the boundary wall in silent, emotional remembrance.

Paramount Chief Samuel Maharero was ceremonially reburied at the traditional Okahandja burial site of Ondombora, alongside his ancestors.

The historic homecoming and reburial marked a major moment of cultural unity and revival for the Ovaherero people under brutal colonial rule. Following the burial, Chief Hosea Kutako instituted the annual Ovaherero commemorative gathering in Okahandja and lit the historic warrior fire, cementing a permanent tradition of remembrance and unity.

This established the traditions and protocols that continue today through the annual Ovaherero Red Flag Day (Otjiserandu) commemorations in Okahandja.

The annual Ovaherero Red Flag Day Commemoration (Otjiserandu) is linked to the history of Heroes’ Day, commemorated on 26 August, when an armed wing of Swapo clashed with racist colonial South African forces on 26 August 1966 at Omugulugwombashe in Northern Namibia.

Glory to their bravery!

May the spirit of our ancestors rekindle our great cultural unity and revive the foresight of the fragmented Ovaherero community. May it inspire us to choose the more difficult yet noble path of listening to one another, and remind us that our survival as a people depends on our ability to stand together. Otherwise, if we remain divided, we will assuredly perish.

*Maj. Gen. (Rtd) J. B Tjivikua, a criminal intelligence analyst and a descendant of victims of the 1904-1908 genocide.