Hermanus van Wyk

alt=A black-and-white photography from 1872. Four middle-aged men sit behind a small folding table in front of a cottage. A book is prominently placed in the middle of the table. The first council of the Basters, 1872, presenting the community's Vaderlike Wette (constitution, the book on the table). Hermanus van Wyk is the third from left. Hermanus van Wyk (1835–1905) was the first Kaptein of the Baster community at Rehoboth in German South West Africa. Under his leadership, the mixed-race Basters moved from the Western Cape to escape racial discrimination from the white population, and migrated into the interior of what is now central Namibia; the first 30 families settled about 1870. They acquired land from local natives and were joined by additional Baster families over the following years. The Baster people developed their own constitution, called the Paternal Laws . They relied on the herding of sheep, goats and cattle as the basis of their economy.

Outnumbered by the native Damara, Nama and Herero peoples, the Basters engaged in periodic conflict with them in the late 1870s and 1880s, when the latter two groups were also in conflict with each other. The Basters suffered losses of valuable livestock. After the German Empire annexed South West Africa as a colony, van Wyk negotiated a kind of autonomy for Rehoboth and the land around it through a protection treaty with the Germans in 1885. In the early 1900s, the Basters sided with the Germans in a colonial war against the Nama and Herero. He died in Rehoboth in 1905 and his son Cornelius van Wyk was later elected the second Kaptein of the Baster community.

Trek to South-West Africa Van Wyk was born in 1835 to a mixed-race Baster family in the Fraserburg district in the Cape Colony, today South Africa. His mixed-race clan was living at De Tuin in the Northern Cape until 1868 when they decided to leave the Cape Colony because of the discrimination and harassment they faced from white people. Van Wyk was already the clan's leader at that time. They trekked via Pella, then crossed the Orange River, and arrived at Berseba in 1870. Scouts of the Baster clan discovered the fertile area around Rehoboth, which at that time had largely been abandoned by the Nama after they had been attacked by the Oorlam Afrikaners in 1864.

Development of Rehoboth In 1870, Abraham Swartbooi of the Nama allowed the Basters to settle at Rehoboth for an initial payment of eight horses and an annual rent of one horse. They arrived at Rehoboth in October that year. They worked to repair and develop the existing infrastructure. Under van Wyk's leadership of the Kaptein's council, the Basters drafted the Paternal Laws , a constitution. By 1876, their community consisted of 800 people; they owned 20,000 sheep and between 2,000 and 3,000 cattle. In the Herero and Nama War of 1904–1908, the Basters sided with the Germans against the native peoples, however, few Basters fought in the conflict.

Hermanus van Wyk died in Rehoboth in 1905. The German colonial authorities did not approve a successor and instead established the Basterrat . After the outbreak of World War I, the United Kingdom took over the area as a British Protectorate in 1914, administered by South Africa beginning in 1915. Cornelius van Wyk was elected in 1914 to succeed Hermanus van Wyk.