Herero people
ethnic group
The Herero (Otjiherero: Ovaherero) are a Bantu ethnic group inhabiting parts of Southern Africa. 178,987 Namibians identified as Ovaherero in the 2023 census. They speak Otjiherero, a Bantu language. Though the Herero primarily reside in Namibia, there are also significant populations in Botswana and Angola, and a small number in South Africa. The Hereros in Botswana and South Africa are there because of displacement during the 1904–1908 genocide committed by the German Empire.
Overview
Unlike most Bantu, who are primarily subsistence farmers, the Herero are traditionally pastoralists. They make a living tending livestock. Cattle terminology in use among many Bantu pastoralist groups testifies that Bantu herders originally acquired cattle from Cushitic pastoralists inhabiting Eastern Africa. After the Bantu settled in Eastern Africa, some Bantu nations spread south. Linguistic evidence also suggests that the Bantu borrowed the custom of milking cattle from Cushitic peoples; either through direct contact with them or indirectly via Khoisan intermediaries who had acquired both domesticated animals and pastoral techniques from Cushitic migrants.
“Herero people” enters the record as ethnic group. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Herero, people and ethnic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Herero people” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Herero, people and ethnic provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q170088. The Library of Congress control number is sh85060373. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2023, 1904 and 1908.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Herero people” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.