I am particularly taken by this striking series of “ . . .  painted portraits of some of the prominent captains and leaders of the Griquas, Orlams groups such as the Afrikaners, and other so-called bastard and Nama groups of the 18th and 19th century,” by of the artist Cobus van Bosch.

It was brought to my attention by my friend, the media scholar Herman Wasserman. (We were briefly colleagues with Van Bosch as journalists in the early 1990s.)

The series includes paintings of Adam Kok III, the leader of the Griquas, Hendrik Witbooi (below), born in South Africa and celebrated as one of Namibia’s greatest freedom fighters for his resistance to German colonialism in the late 19th century, and Hermanus van Wyk (the last image here), the first captain of the Rehoboth Bastards.

South Africa occupied Namibia from the end of the First World War until 1990, when Namibia became independent, and implemented its apartheid policy there too. As a result, many descendants of these self-declared Afrikaners were classified as coloured by the white state.

On his website, Van Bosch provides a detailed account situating the paintings within this history, including a discussion of the term “Baster” (Bastards) and the origins of the word “Afrikaner.” He notes that the label originally referred to people of mixed racial descent. The first community to identify as Afrikaners was the descendants and followers of Oude Ram Afrikaner, born in the 1690s in the Tulbagh district. Up until the death of Jan Jonker Afrikaner in 1889, this Afrikaner group remained an influential Orlams presence in the Northern Cape and, especially in Namibia, where they established what would become the capital, Windhoek.

If you’re still wondering what Orlams means, it refers to people of mixed heritage in southern Africa, largely descended from interactions among indigenous Khoekhoe groups, enslaved people, and European settlers at the Cape during the colonial period, who eventually ended up in Namibia.

Only roughly two centuries after Oude Ram Afrikaner’s birth did certain white settler descendants begin adopting the name “Afrikaner,” along with claiming exclusive rights over Afrikaans—a language earlier associated with the so-called “Bastards” and other mixed people.

Regarding the source material for the paintings, Van Bosch explains that he drew on often rare, monochrome photographic records found in libraries and archival collections. He reworked these images into large-scale, full-color close-up portraits of the captains. For Van Bosch, their steady, confrontational gazes underscore their reputations as respected—and at times feared—leaders, while their weathered faces mirror the harsh, semi-desert landscapes they governed for many years.