Otavi is the first of the three ‘triangle’ towns you reach when driving north from Windhoek on the B1. It is also the smallest and offers little of interest to the tourist. The town is a base for local farming and has a cereal milling plant. In the past it was an important mining centre and the scene of many feuds between the Ovambos, Hereros and Bushmen.
It was the copper that brought the boom period to the town. Work on a narrow-gauge railway began in November 1903 and was completed in August 1906, after being interrupted by the Herero-German war. The railway was built to carry copper ore to Swakopmund. The German colonial company which ran the mine and built the railway was the Otavi Minen- und Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (OMEG); there are some excellent photographs of the railway on show in the museum in Swakopmund . Very few mining operations continue today; those that remain are based near Tsumeb, leaving Otavi with a run-down feel. Other minerals found in the Otavi Mountains are lead, vanadium, cadmium and zinc.
The only local site of any note in Otavi is the Khorib Memorial, 2 km north of the town on a dirt road; there’s a sign at the Otavi Municipal Office. Unlike some memorials in Namibia this one is particularly plain but nevertheless it represents a little piece of Namibian history. It was unveiled in 1920 to mark the end of German rule in South West Africa in July 1915, when local officials surrendered to the Commander of the Union Forces, General Louis Botha. The German officials were the Commander of the German forces in South West Africa, Colonel Victor Franke and the Governor of South West Africa, Dr Seitz. There is a small stone plaque explaining this close to the railway.
Get the best info about sights, places to eat and sleep in Otavi free to download!
download free pdf
