Historic Sites Around Windhoek

National Heroes' Acre

The National Heroes' Acre opened in 2002, and was built to memorialize all of the men and women who lost their lives in the struggle for Namibian independence. It was built by a North Korean construction company.

There are 174 tombs, some of which are symbolic, because the locations of the remains are unknown. The tombs which do contain remains are of people who have been declared national heroes since independence. The statue of the unknown soldier stands at the top, and contains earth from various sites around Namibia where battles took place during the Namibian Civil War. 

Fire is traditionally used by the Herero tribe in Namibia to communicate with ancestors. At the base of the monument, there is an eternal flame.

Behind the statue of the unknown solider is a frieze depicting the story of Namibia's struggle for independence:

1959 Heroes' and Heroines' Cemetery

Our next stop was at the 1959 Heroes' and Heroines' Cemetery in the Old Location in Windhoek. In the days of Apartheid, black Africans were forced to live in settlements called "locations." Officially segregated communities are a thing of the past in Namibia, but people still refer to the past boundaries as "the location" or "the old location."

The 1959 Heroes' and Heroines' Cemetery opened after independence to commemorate the site of a massacre. The Apartheid government designated a neighborhood near Windhoek as a location, then called the Main Location. Many black people who worked in Windhoek lived there. One day, the government decided to reclaim the land for white settlement. When the black population refused to move to Katutura (which means, "The place where people do not want to live" in the Herero language) an area far, far away from the Location, the government murdered an untold number of the roughly 7,000+ residents. This event took place on December 10, 1959, a day which is now marked as Human Rights Day.  

The Cemetery is considered hallowed ground, and one of the highest honors that can be bestowed on a Namibian is to be buried there.