Namibia

From the San and Khoekhoe of the Namib and the rock art of Twyfelfontein, through the German colonial genocide of the Herero and Nama, decades of South African rule and apartheid, and the long liberation struggle, to independence under Sam Nujoma on 21 March 1990.

Namibia, a vast and arid land along the south-western coast of Africa, holds one of humanity's oldest cultural records: the rock engravings of Twyfelfontein, made over thousands of years by San hunter-gatherers, are a UNESCO World Heritage site. The San and the herding Khoekhoe, including the Nama and the Damara, long inhabited the centre and south, while Bantu-speaking Ovambo, Herero and Kavango peoples settled the better-watered north and centre over the past two thousand years. European ships skirted the forbidding Skeleton Coast from the late fifteenth century, but it was only in the nineteenth century that Orlam and Nama polities such as that of Jonker Afrikaner reshaped the interior. In 1884 Germany declared a protectorate over the territory as German South West Africa; its rule culminated in the 1904–1908 extermination of the Herero and Nama, widely regarded as the first genocide of the twentieth century. South Africa conquered the colony in 1915 during the First World War, governing it under a League of Nations mandate and, in defiance of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, extending apartheid to the territory. The South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO) led a long liberation war from 1966; after a UN-supervised transition, Namibia became independent on 21 March 1990 with Sam Nujoma as its first president, and reincorporated the enclave of Walvis Bay in 1994.