Travel Guide Rehoboth

The city is the capital of the Basters (literally "mongrels"), a people proud of their mixed Afrikaner and Hottentot heritage. Fleeing the discriminatory laws of the Cape Colony, the Basters, led by their leader Hermanus van Wijk and the German missionary Heidmanse, regrouped in 1868 south of Windhoek in a place called Amis (later Rehoboth). They settled there in 1871 and formed a closed and conservative society with a Western and patriotic culture, a strong attachment to the Afrikaans language, monogamy and Lutheran Christianity. Under German colonization, the Basters of Rehoboth had managed to negotiate with the government a certain political autonomy: their own legislation, assembly, and commando system! Since independence, the status of Rehoboth has returned to the classical one, but pressure groups are again demanding more autonomy within the new Namibia. The local economy is based on cattle breeding, the transport industry, construction and shoemaking. Paradoxically, we find some of the marks of apartheid in the new Rehoboth; the richer neighbourhoods in the west are inhabited by light-skinned mestizos, while the poorer neighbourhoods in the east are inhabited by darker-skinned mestizos.