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Asakai !Huba i Khoena /Gui/gui’

Restoration of land and unity of people Ceremony

On 29 October 2008, dignitaries from Western Cape attended the 103rd Annual Heroes Festival of the |Khowese Traditional Authority in Gibeon, Namibia. The |Khowese Heroes Day Festival is a commemoration held on the day King Hendrik Witbooi (3rd King of the |Khowese) died in battle against the German authorities who occupied Namibia from the late 1800s. This year’s Festival took place against the backdrop of the Celebration of the 30 years of continued and dedicated Chieftainship of the 8th King of the |Khowese people, Paramount King Dr. Rev. Hendrik Witbooi. 

At the Memorial Service held on 2 November 2008 at the Cemetery, Paramount King Witbooi, instructed Senior Chief P.S.M. Kooper of the Great Red Nation from !Hoachanas to present the Western Cape dignitaries with stones from the |Khowese Ancestral Graves. This took place after semi-precious stones gathered from Okiep in Small Namaqualand, was handed over to the Paramount King, as symbol of the unification of the land and its people. These stones were ceremonially unified with the soil of the Ancestral Graves in Gibeon and the Western Cape Dignitaries were, in turn, instructed to lay the stones from the |Khowese Ancestral Graves on a Khoe khoe or San burial site in the Cape.

The stones given to the Western Cape Dignitaries, were taken from the symbolic grave of King Hendrik Witbooi and is the actual grave of King Isak Witbooi (5^th King of the |Khowese). The grave next to this one which is also honoured on this day is of the bones repatriated from a massacre of the /Khowese community by German soldiers at Hornkrantz in 1893.

One of the |Khowese officials from Gibeon, Tamen Ui Nuseb (traditional name, |Hamab !Gamaob) currently in Cape Town, will be representing the |Khowese Traditional Authority at the ‘Restoration of land and unity of people’ Ceremony held at midday (12:00 pm) on Saturday, 6 December 2008 at Oude Molen Village in Pinelands. This location on the bank of the Black River was chosen because of its historical setting; being the site of the kraal of the Goringhaikhoe Chief Gogosoa, who during the peak of his Chieftainship had great wealth and political power as Overchief of the “Peninsular” Khoe khoe. In his later days it was his sons, Osinghkhimma, Khuma and Otegno who exerted effective influence amongst the Goringhaikhoe. This site is also the place where Chief Gogosoa came to rest, and owing to the fact that his burial site has not been found yet, a symbolic burial grave have been identified where the ceremony will take place.