This African tribe still wears Victorian clothing. Why?

The Herero tribe of Namibia are still living with the fashions that were first shown to them by German colonists. Now, there’s no way to put it nicely. The Herero tribe was horribly abused by German colonists in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Germans began arriving in what is now Namibia and declared it “German South-West Africa.” The native people were looked upon as less than human.

Soon, their land and property were being stolen. In 1907, the warring ended when General Lothar van Trotha drove them into the desert, where the vast majority of them died. He further elaborated that they should be annihilated as a nation, or at least expelled.

Some survivors were put in concentration camps, some made sex slaves, and some subjected to racial experiments, for which thousands of skulls were sent back to Germany for further study. Others served as laborers who weren’t allowed to own property and who were forced to wear ID bracelets. From 1904 to 1907, their population had gone from 80,000 to 15,000.

Today, the clothes serve as a reminder of history. They represent the fact that the Herero people are now in control of themselves.

(Source)