Windhoek began beside hot springs at 1,700 metres
Namibia’s capital crowns the Khomas Highland plateau, where pastoral peoples knew thermal springs long before Jonker Afrikaner built a stone church in 1840. German officers later planted a fort in 1890; after independence in 1990 the same highland city still runs the nation’s offices.
Windhoek is Namibia’s capital and largest city, set on the Khomas Highland about 1,700 metres above sea level. It concentrates most national enterprises, ministries, and cultural institutions. Theories of the name usually blend Afrikaans wind and hoek (“corner”), though some say Jonker Afrikaner borrowed a South African place-name. The Orlam captain settled near a major hot spring—today’s Klein Windhoek—in 1840 and raised a stone church that seated 500.
Merchants from Lüderitzbucht helped spur an 1884 German protectorate over German South West Africa. Colonial Windhoek’s second founding is dated 18 October 1890, when Curt von François laid the foundation stone of the Alte Feste fort. After 1907 growth quickened as Indigenous labour was drawn into the colonial economy. South African forces took the territory in 1915; military then civilian rule followed World War I, with major public works after 1955 including schools, hospitals, and road paving.
Town privileges arrived on 18 October 1965, the fort’s seventy-fifth anniversary. In 1971 the contract workers’ strike against apartheid labour rules began in Windhoek. Independence in 1990 kept the city as national and Khomas regional capital and unleashed faster growth. A 1992/93 study estimated Windhoek supplied over half of Namibia’s non-agricultural jobs—an outsized economic engine for a highland spring town turned capital. Highlands, hot springs, and a German fort thus became the permanent administrative heart of independent Namibia.
Source: Windhoek
