African Reservations

Gobabis is a town in eastern Namibia and is the regional capital of the Omaheke Region. Gobabis is situated 200 km down the B6 motorway from Windhoek to Botswana. The town is 110 km from the Buitepos border post with Botswana, and serves as an important link to South Africa on the tarred Trans-Kalahari Highway. Gobabis is in the heart of the cattle farming area. In fact Gobabis is so proud of its cattle farming that a statue of a large Brahman bull with the inscription "Cattle Country" greets visitors to the town. Gobabis borders the Kalahari Desert, and is traditionally in the land of the Herero people.

The area around Gobabis and along the Nossob River had a strong population of elephants. The settlement itself was a base camp for ivory hunters and a trading post for elephant tusks. In 1856 a mission station was established by one Friederich Eggert of the Rhenish Missionary Society. Gobabis is in an area where the Herero and the Nama people fought wars against one another, as well as with settlers from the Cape colony that occupied the land.

Gobabis continues to grow as a town due to goods crossing from the mines of landlocked Botswana to the Namibian port of Walvis Bay, and furthermore from consumer goods being imported into Namibia from Johannesburg in South Africa. Gobabis is connected to the Namibian railway system. The passenger train that used to run to the capital Windhoek four times a week no longer takes passengers. The town hosts two hospitals, a clinic, banking and shopping facilities.