Otavi is a town with 10,000 inhabitants in the

Otjozondjupa Region Otjozondjupa is one of the fourteen regions of Namibia. Its capital is Otjiwarongo. The region further contains the municipalities of Okahandja and Grootfontein and the towns Okakarara and Otavi. , Otjozondjupa had 97,945 registered voters. Geogr ...

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

. Situated 360 km north of

Windhoek Windhoek (; ; ) is the capital and largest city of Namibia. It is located in central Namibia in the Khomas Highland plateau area, at around above sea level, almost exactly at the country's geographical centre. The population of Windhoek, which ...

, it is the district capital of the Otavi electoral constituency.

Geography

The towns of Otavi,

Tsumeb Tsumeb (; ) is a city of around 35,000 inhabitants and the largest town in the Oshikoto Region, Oshikoto region in northern Namibia. Tsumeb, since its founding in 1905, has been primarily a mining town. The town is the site of a deep mine (the ...

(to the north) and Grootfontein (to the northeast) define an area known as the "Otavi Triangle", also known as the Otavi Mountainland. This geographical region is sometimes referred to as the "Golden Triangle", or as the "maize Triangle", owing to the cultivation of maize in the area. The three towns that define the triangle are roughly 60 km from each other. Most of the area is dolomitic (

Precambrian The Precambrian ( ; or pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pC, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of t ...

) and the district was renowned for its mineral wealth in the past. Most of the deposits have now been exhausted. ''Elefantenberg'' (elephant mountain), a mountain 1,624 meters above sea level, is located about 7 km south of Otavi.

Economy and infrastructure

Much of the town's economy relies on the two grocery stores, a mill, two banks, two gas stations, and many surrounding game/cattle farms, as well as a handful of other small business. The owners of most of these businesses are

Afrikaners Afrikaners () are a Southern African ethnic group descended from predominantly Dutch people, Dutch Settler colonialism, settlers who first arrived at the Cape of Good Hope in Free Burghers in the Dutch Cape Colony, 1652.Entry: Cape Colony. '' ...

(white Africans or

Boer Boers ( ; ; ) are the descendants of the proto Afrikaans-speaking Free Burghers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. From 1652 to 1795, the Dutch East India Company controlled the Dutch ...

, ultimately Dutch in heritage) or Germans. Due to financial mismanagement, Otavi lost its town status in 2004 and was downgraded to "village". After revenue picked up again, town status was reinstated in November 2010. With the foundation of the Ohorongo Cement factory and the Otjikoto mine, operated by B2Gold, business and employment rate has been recovering. A

steel Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon that demonstrates improved mechanical properties compared to the pure form of iron. Due to steel's high Young's modulus, elastic modulus, Yield (engineering), yield strength, Fracture, fracture strength a ...

manufacturing plant is also being developed. The project will cost $201 million and it's expected to produce 100,000 tons of steel.

Transport

Otavi is a railway junction where the line from

Oshikango Oshikango is a former village in northern Namibia and since 2004 part of the town of Helao Nafidi, although it still maintained its own village council for a number of years. ''Oshikango'' is still the name of the border post with Angola and the ...

branches off the line to Grootfontein. The town is served by the Otavi railway station. Otavi is situated next to the B1 - the longest National Road, running the length of Namibia - about 370 km from the capital, Windhoek.

History

On July 1, 1915, the German Army was defeated at Otavi by South African troops; on July 9 they surrendered nearby and signed the Khorab Peace Treaty. A public monument to this event was erected in 1973 outside of Otavi. During the

South African Border War The South African Border War, also known as the Namibian War of Independence, and sometimes denoted in South Africa as the Angolan Bush War, was a largely asymmetric conflict that occurred in Namibia (then South West Africa), Zambia, and Angol ...

SWASpes, the 1 SWA Specialist Unit was based here, moving from Oshivelo in 1979. The unit consisted of horse mounted troops, dog trackers, human trackers and motorcycle units to hunt insurgents.

Politics

Otavi is governed by a town council that has seven seats. The 2015 local authority election was won by SWAPO which gained six seats and 957 votes. The remaining seat went to the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA) which gained 79 votes. SWAPO also won the 2020 local authority election. It obtained 1,092 votes and gained five seats. One seat each went to the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC, an opposition party formed in August 2020) and to the Landless People's Movement (LPM, an opposition party formed in 2016) with 260 and 167 votes, respectively.

Education

Otavi has three schools, namely: Otavi Primary School, Khorab Senior Secondary School and the Deutsche Privatschule Otavi-Namibia. Previously the German ''Regierungsschule Otavi'' (Government School Otavi) was situated in Otavi.Deutscher Bundestag 4. Wahlperiode Drucksache IV/3672

Archive
.

Bundestag The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet (assembly), Diet") is the lower house of the Germany, German Federalism in Germany, federal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. The Bundestag wa ...

(West Germany). 23 June 1965. Retrieved on 12 March 2016. p. 32/51.

References

{{Authority control Towns in Namibia Populated places in the Otjozondjupa Region