Oorlam People - History

History

When Oorlam communities migrated northward to Namaqualand from the Cape Colony beginning in the late eighteenth century, they occupied places earlier occupied by the Nama. They came partly to escape Dutch colonial conscription, partly to raid and trade, and partly to obtain herding lands. Some of these emigrant Oorlams (including the band led by the outlaw Jager Afrikaner and his son Jonker Afrikaner in the Transgariep) retained links to Oorlam communities in or closer to the borders of the Cape Colony. In the face of gradual Boer expansion and then large scale Boer migrations away from British rule at the Cape, Jonker Afrikaner brought his people into Namaqualand by the mid-nineteenth century, becoming a formidable force for Oorlam domination over the Nama and against the Bantu-speaking Hereros for a period.

Emerging from populations of Khoikhoi servants raised on Boer farms, many of them having been orphaned and captured in Dutch commando raids, Oorlams primarily spoke a version of Dutch or proto-Afrikaans and were much influenced by Cape Dutch colonial ways of life, including technological adoption of horses and guns, use of European-style clothing, and Christian worship.

After two centuries of assimilation into the Nama culture, many Oorlams today regard Khoikhoigowab (Damara/Nama) as their mother tongue. The distinction between Namas and Oorlams has gradually disappeared, so that today they are regarded as a single ethnic group, despite their different origins.