Okahao is a town in the
Omusati Region
Omusati ( ng, Mopane, after the dominant tree in the area) is one of the fourteen regions of Namibia, its capital is Outapi. The towns of Okahao, Oshikuku and Ruacana as well as the self-governed village Tsandi are situated in this region. , ...
of northern
Namibia
Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...
and the district capital of the
Okahao electoral constituency. It is situated in the Ongandjera tribal area west of
Oshakati
Oshakati is a town in northern Namibia. It is the regional capital of the Oshana Region and one of Namibia's largest places.
Oshakati was founded in July 1966 and proclaimed a town in 1992. The town was used as a base of operations by the S ...
on the main road MR123 (
Outapi
Outapi wa Nakafingo na Temba, also Outapi or Uutapi and Ombalantu, is a town in northern Namibia near the border with Angola situated northwest of Oshakati. It is the capital of Omusati region and the district capital of the Outapi electoral co ...
—
Tsandi
Tsandi (Oshiwambo: ''that which is at the center'') is a village in the Omusati Region of northern Namibia and the district capital of the Tsandi electoral constituency. It is a former mission station of the Finnish Missionary Society. It is si ...
— Okahao). It is a former
mission station
A Christian mission is an organized effort for the propagation of the Christian faith. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries, to carry on evangelism or other activities, such as ...
of the
Finnish Missionary Society
The Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission (''FELM'', formerly ''The Finnish Missionary Society''; fi, Suomen Lähetysseura ry; sv, Finska Missionssällskapet rf) is a Lutheran missionary society formed on January 19, 1859, in Helsinki, Finland. ...
.
The area around Okahao is flat, arable land which is mainly used for
subsistence farming
Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements, with little or no su ...
. Okahao is the largest town in
Ongandjera, the birthplace of Namibia's founding president
Sam Nujoma
Samuel Shafiishuna Daniel Nujoma, (; born 12 May 1929) is a Namibian revolutionary, anti-apartheid activist and politician who served three terms as the first President of Namibia, from 1990 to 2005. Nujoma was a founding member and the first ...
.
History
The first visit of Martti Rautanen to Ongandjera
When the first Finnish
missionaries had arrived to
Omandongo in
Ovamboland
Ovamboland, also referred to as Owamboland, was a Bantustan in South West Africa (present-day Namibia), intended by the apartheid government to be a self-governing homeland for the Ovambo people.
The term originally referred to the parts ...
on 9 July 1870, they immediately took measures aiming at establishing a missionary presence in two other tribal areas also, that is, in
Uukwambi
Uukwambi is a traditional kingdom of the Ovambo people in what is today northern Namibia. Its capital is Elim.
The last king of Uukwambi was Iipumbu yaTshirongo, who was toppled by the South African authorities in 1932. Nowadays the highest tra ...
and
Ongandjera. Already four days later,
Pietari Kurvinen,
Martti Rautanen,
Karl August Weikkolin and
Antti Piirainen, left for Uukwambi, to the court of King
Nayuma, where they arrived on July 16. And still within the same month, Rautanen rode on an ox to visit King
Tsheya of Ongandjera.
The founding of the first mission station
The Finns wanted to establish a mission station in Ongandjera, but
Carl Hugo Hahn
Carl Hugo Hahn (1818–1895) was a Baltic German missionary and linguist who worked in South Africa and South-West Africa for most of his life. Together with Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt, he set up the first Rhenish mission station to the Here ...
of the
Rhenish Mission wanted to have a permission for this undertaking from the board of directors of the Finnish Missionary Society. The matter was put off until the following year, when Rautanen was able to visit Ongandjera in the month of May, with the king receiving him in a friendly manner.
Rautanen gave the new mission station the name Rehoboth.
Heinrich Kleinschmidt, the father of Rautanen's fiancée
Frieda Kleinschmidtin had earlier given
the same name to a mission station he had founded in
Namaland
Namaland was a Bantustan in South West Africa (present-day Namibia), intended by the apartheid government to be a self-governing homeland for the Nama people. Namaland comprised an area of and was to accommodate the estimated 34,806 southern Na ...
. By the end of July, Rautanen had built a house for the mission station, and
Tobias Reijonen, a new arrival that year, joined him there at the time.
The daily life in Ongandjera was difficult for them, since they had few European provisions, and few goods with which to exchange grain from the local people.
The rainy season of 1871–72 was difficult for Rautanen and Reijonen, as they both fell ill with
typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several ...
. Their servant boy, who was superstitious, ran away, but finally they were able to convince another boy to take a letter to Uukwambi, and
Pietari Kurvinen, accompanied with his wife, came to help them. They took with them Reijonen, who was more seriously ill, and left Rautanen in Ongandjera. When he had recovered sufficiently, he left the mission station in the care of Reijonen and
Karl August Weikkolin and went to
Hereroland
Hereroland was the first bantustan in South West Africa (present day Namibia), intended by the apartheid government to be a self-governing homeland for the Herero people. It was set up in 1968.
Hereroland, like other homelands in South West ...
, where he married Frieda Kleinschmid, before going to
Walvis Bay
Walvis Bay ( en, lit. Whale Bay; af, Walvisbaai; ger, Walfischbucht or Walfischbai) is a city in Namibia and the name of the bay on which it lies. It is the second largest city in Namibia and the largest coastal city in the country. The ci ...
, where he convalesced from his illness.
While Rautanen was gone, Reijonen and Weikkolin had a conflict with the king. The latter had borrowed a ladder from the Finns, and when Reijonen demanded to have it back, the king ordered the Finns the leave his kingdom. Peltola says that the Owambo concept of king's powers and the European concept of private ownership were at odds here, but it is also likely that the Finns were lacking skills in
diplomacy
Diplomacy comprises spoken or written communication by representatives of states (such as leaders and diplomats) intended to influence events in the international system.Ronald Peter Barston, ''Modern diplomacy'', Pearson Education, 2006, p. ...
as well.
Rautanen heard about this incident already in Hereroland, and he therefore travelled directly to Ongandjera. A short note on the table at the mission station house told him what the situation was. Now Rautanen's chances of working in this tribe were limited to what he could do with his servants. Furthermore, Frieda Rautanen fell ill with
malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. S ...
, and Martti was afraid she would die of this disease. However, she recovered, and they subsequently left for
Ondonga.
King Tsheya would have wanted Rautanen back, and even together with another Finnish brother, but issued such conditions for the latter that he would in practice have been the king's servant. The missionaries discussed this situation amongst themselves in May 1873, but the result was that they decided to give up work in Ongandjera. In August, Rautanen went there to collect his belongings.
Preparing for a new start in the 1890s
In the 1890s, both the
Rhenish Mission and the
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
wanted to begin missionary work in Ongandjera, but the Finns were opposed to this, and nothing came of the Germans’ plans. However, the Rhenish Mission wanted to make sure that the Catholics would not come to Ongandjera, and they therefore asked the Finns to begin work there again. After some negotiations between the Finns and the Germans, it was decided to establish a joint Finnish-German station in Ongandjera, but the board of directors of the Finnish Missionary Society did not agree to this. Furthermore, the raids of the King Nebumbo of Uukwambi to the other tribes would have made it very difficult for Europeans to work in Ongandjera. Thus, nothing came of these plans at this time.
A new mission station is founded in 1903
In July 1903,
Emil Liljeblad was sent to Ongandjera, and in September the same year
Heikki Saari
Heikki Saari (alias "Mörkö", "kermis" or "kmn") (born on 8 September 1984 and originating from Veteli, Finland) is the current drummer for Whorion and Finntroll. He is also the live drummer for Tuoni and former drummer of Norther and Amberian ...
was sent to accompany him there. The new station was built four kilometres from the old one, in a place called Nakeke, which was about half a kilometre from the court of King Tshaanika.
However, Nakeke soon turned out to be a bad place, as during the dry season it was not possible to obtain water anywhere near it. Thus in 1908, Saari build a new station very close to the old site of Rehoboth, and this name was used for the new mission station.
The Finns get competitors
In 1924, the Roman Catholics were given a permission to start work in Ongandjera, but for a long time they did not even meet them. The South West African Administrator's Office had declared that in the future, the Finns would be allowed to work in
Ondonga only, while
Oukwanyama Oukwanyama (''Uukwanyama'' in the neighbouring Oshindonga dialect) is a traditional kingdom of the Ovambo people in what is today northern Namibia and southern Angola. Its capital is Ehole.
List of rulers
The Oukwanyama Kingdom and King Mandume M ...
would be given the
Anglicans
Anglicanism is a Western
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
*Western, New York, a town in the US
*Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia ...
, and Uukwambi and Ongandjera would be given to the Catholics. However, in practice the Finns went on to work among all these tribes.
Later developments
In 1947, the Finns founded the first women's seminary of Ovamboland in Ongandjera. Women had earlier been trained together with men at the
Oniipa
Oniipa is a town in the Oshikoto Region of northern Namibia and the district capital of the Oniipa electoral constituency. It lies just outside Ondangwa. It is the hometown of former Lutheran bishop and liberation leader Leonard Auala.
There i ...
seminary, but due disciplinary problems there, the Finns had decided to establish a women's institution in Ongandjera.
By the 1960s the mission station was called Okahao.
Infrastructure
Okahao has an east/west, unpaved, undeveloped airstrip of length (
ICAO code: FYOH,
IATA code
IATA codes are abbreviations that the International Air Transport Association (IATA) publishes to facilitate air travel. They are typically 1, 2, 3, or 4 character combinations (referred to as unigrams, digrams, trigrams, or tetragrams, respect ...
: none), a clinic, and two hospitals.
Okahao has two secondary schools namely
Shaanika Nashilongo SS and
Niilo Taapopi SS(Etalaleko SS), one combined school (
Nangombe Combined School), one primary school (Okahao Primary School), and one private school. There is also the ''Okahao community library'', a police station and a prison. Several ministries have representation in the town. The ''Ongozi Lodge'' caters for tourists.
As of November 2009, the mayor of Okahao was
David Uuzombala Isai.
Politics
Okahao is governed by a town council that has seven seats. Omusati Region, to which Okahao belongs, is a stronghold of Namibia's ruling
SWAPO party. In the run up to the
2009 general election, campaigners for the
Rally for Democracy and Progress were driven out of the town by school children. For the
2015 local authority election no opposition party nominated a candidate, and SWAPO won uncontested.
SWAPO also won the
2020 local authority election. It obtained 391 votes and gained five seats. The
Independent Patriots for Change
The Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) is a political party in Namibia. It was founded by Panduleni Itula in August 2020. As an independent presidential candidate in the November 2019 election, Itula won the best result of a losing candidat ...
(IPC), an opposition party formed in August 2020, obtained 141 votes and gained the remaining two seats.
External links
* http://www.okahaotc.com.na/
Literature
*
*
References
{{reflist
Towns in Namibia
Populated places in the Omusati Region
Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission mission stations in Ongandjera