Namibia
POPULATION 1,820,916
LUTHERAN 44 percent
AFRICAN INDIGENOUS BELIEFS 20 percent
ROMAN CATHOLIC 18 percent
DUTCH REFORMED 4 percent
ANGLICAN 4 percent
MUSLIM 3 percent
OTHER (AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL, METHODIST, PRESBYTERIAN, BAPTIST, MORMON, JEWISH, HINDU, BAHAI) 7 percent
Country Overview
Introduction
Namibia is a large, sparsely populated country on the Atlantic Ocean in southwestern Africa. It is surrounded by Angola, Botswana, and South Africa. The Damara-Nama word "Namib" (enclosure) describes the country's encompassment by deserts, the Namib in the west and the Kalahari in the east. Namibian ethnic groups include the Nama, Damara, Oshivambo, Kavango, Caprivian, Otjiherero, Tswana, San, Afrikaner, British, German, and Coloured (mixed-race).
With one of the world's biggest gemstone diamond deposits, large quantities of copper, zinc, uranium, and salt, vast tracts of land ideal for cattle farming, and fishladen coastal waters, Namibia attracted European settlers from the 1840s onward. In 1884 the Germans made it a colony known as South West Africa and began a sustained drive to subdue the indigenous communities through "protection treaties." The settlers grew rich, but the indigenous people became impoverished. In 1920, after Germany's defeat in World War I, the country was given to the South African National Party to administer. When the minority white government's attempt to resettle black Namibians farther from white neighborhoods led to a massacre in Windhoek in 1959, Namibians formed the South West African Peoples Organization (SWAPO, a political party) and launched an armed struggle to force South Africa out of Namibia.
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