From 1904 to 1907, the Herero and the Namaqua took up arms against the Germans and in calculated punitive action by the German occupiers, the 'first genocide of the Twentieth Century' was committed. In the Herero and Namaqua genocide, 10,000 Nama (half the population) and approximately 65,000 Hereros (about 80% of the population) were systematically murdered. The survivors, when finally released from detention, were subjected to a policy of dispossession, deportation, forced labour, racial segregation and discrimination in a system that in many ways anticipated apartheid.

Herero and what other group took action against German occupiers?