Hermanus van Wyk: The ‘Biblical Moses’ of the Rehoboth Baster Community - by Shampapi Shiremo
New Era article To many Namibians, the name Rehoboth sound too familiar because it is a well-known small town located about 90 Km south of Windhoek. However, a closer look at the history of Rehoboth and the Baster Community who have settled in that area since around 1870, one would find that Rehoboth is a biblical name meaning ‘the promised land.’ Since ‘the promised land’ is what the Israelis who were moving out of Egyptian captivity wandered in desert for many years in order to get there, it is therefore likely that the history of Namibia’s Rehoboth have a similar narrative with the biblical Israelis whom Moses led. However, unlike the biblical Moses who himself did not reach the ‘promised land’, Hermanus van Wyk did reach his after leading his people from the Cape Colony bondage. In the 1983 publication entitled the ‘History Makers’, by Lester Venter, the biography of Kaptein Hermanus van Wyk was presented. Related to the Griqua of the Historical Adam Kok of the...