Search Results: local groups

ATLAS OF HUMANITY

Namibia, Baster People

The Basters (also known as Baasters, Rehobothers or Rehoboth Basters) are a Namibian ethnic group descended from European settlers and indigenous African women from the Dutch Cape Colony. Since the second half of the 19th century, they have lived in central Namibia, in and around the town of Rehoboth. In ancestral history, they are similar to the groups classified as Coloured or Griqua people in South Africa.

The name Baster is derived from bastaard, the Dutch word for "bastard" (or "crossbreed"). While some people consider this term demeaning, the Basters use it as a "proud name", claiming their ancestry and history, treating it as a cultural category in spite of the negative connotation.

The first Baster communities emerged between the Cape Colony's northwestern frontier and the lower course of the Orange River at the end of the eighteenth century. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, missionary organizations, such as the "London Missionary Society" and the "Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft" established congregations in the territory of the Basters and supported the local communities (gemeentes) in developing written forms of regulations that were already in custom for a long period.

The Basters were mainly persons of mixed-race descent who at one time would have been absorbed in the white community. This term came to refer to an economic and cultural group, and it included the most economically advanced non-white population at the Cape, who had higher status than the natives. Some of the Basters acted as supervisors of other servants and were the confidential employees of their white masters. Sometimes, these were treated almost as members of the white family. Many were descended from white men, if not directly from men in the families they worked for.


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