Background
Keetmanshoop is effectively the capital of the south and one of the oldest towns in Namibia. The settlement, dating back to the late 18th century, was originally known as Modderfontein due to the presence of a strong freshwater spring. Nama herders trekking north from the Cape settled here, calling the place Swartmodder, after the muddy river that ran through the settlement after good rains.
During the middle part of the 19th century, the Barmen Society gradually established a series of mission stations in the south of Namibia at places such as Bethanie, Warmbad and Berseba. In 1866, following a request by converted Namas living at Swartmodder, Johan Schröder was sent by Reverend Krönlein, the pastor at Berseba, to establish a mission station at Swartmodder. After struggling to build a church and home for himself and his family, Schröder appealed to the Barmen Society for funds to develop the station. Johan Keetman, a rich industrialist and chairman of the Barmen Society, personally donated 2000 marks to pay for the building of a church, and in appreciation Schröder renamed the settlement Keetmanshoop (Keetman’s Hope).
Like many other settlements in Namibia at the time, Keetmanshoop functioned both as a mission station and as a trading post. A successor to Schröder, Reverend Thomas Fenchel, came into conflict with the European traders who bartered liquor, usually brandy, with the Nama herders in exchange for livestock which was then sold in the Cape. Once the liquor was drunk the only source of food for the herders was the mission station.
In 1890, a freak flooding of the Swartmodder River washed away the original church, but Fenchel and his congregation had rebuilt it by 1895 from when it served a multiracial congregation until 1930. Abandoned for many years, the church was restored and declared a national monument in 1978 and today houses the Keetmanshoop Museum.
The year 1890 also saw a wave of German immigrants to the new colony and particularly to this area, and in 1894 a fort was established in the town. In the following years as soldiers were discharged from the army, many bought farms or settled in the town that grew to support the surrounding farms. The growth of the town convinced the authorities of the necessity of improving communications, and the railway to Lüderitz was completed in 1908. In the following year the military handed over the town to a civil authority and Keetmanshoop became the administrative centre for the south of the country.
Economically, the town’s prosperity was built upon the karakul sheep industry, which reached its peak in the early 1970s. Since the decline of the industry Keetmanshoop has earned its keep more mundanely as a transit point for goods and people travelling between Namibia and South Africa.
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