Qualla: Old Location https://qualla.com/old-location en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:25 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/k/7/u/p/old-location-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Old Location https://qualla.com/old-location Old Location: Introduction https://qualla.com/old-location/ Photo credit Pgallert, CC BY-SA 3.0. They named the place they were being sent to *Katutura* — a word in Otjiherero that means, roughly, "the place where we do not want to live." The name was a verdict. For decades, the Black residents of Windhoek had made their lives in a neighborhood the authorities called the Main Location, and which history would remember as the Old Location: a place of crowded streets and a beloved church school, of people who owned their own plots and walked to work in the city. In the 1950s the apartheid administration decided to erase it and move everyone eight kilometers north. Most people did not want to go. On 10 December 1959, their refusal met gunfire.

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/7/u/p/old-location-wp/k7up-old-location-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Old Location: A Neighborhood Made by Decree https://qualla.com/old-location/ Photo credit Pgallert, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Old Location was never a place its residents had chosen freely. The Windhoek City Council created it in 1912 and ordered all the city's Black residents into it; a year later, officials laid out streets and split the population by ethnicity, forcing each group into a separate ...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/7/u/p/old-location-wp/k7up-old-location-a-neighborhood-made-by-decree.mp3 0:06 2 full Old Location: The Insult of the Move https://qualla.com/old-location/ Photo credit Pgallert, CC BY-SA 3.0. When South Africa's National Party brought apartheid to South West Africa, then governed as its de facto fifth province, the plan for the Old Location followed the logic of segregation to its conclusion. But the residents had concrete reasons to resist beyond principle. In the Ol...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/7/u/p/old-location-wp/k7up-old-location-the-insult-of-the-move.mp3 0:06 3 full Old Location: The Tenth of December https://qualla.com/old-location/ Photo credit Pgallert, CC BY-SA 3.0. The newly formed SWANU party helped organize the resistance, and the residents launched a boycott of municipal services. On 10 December 1959 the protest came to a head, and the South West Africa Police opened fire on the crowd. Eleven people were killed and forty-four wounded. Am...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/7/u/p/old-location-wp/k7up-old-location-the-tenth-of-december.mp3 0:06 4 full Old Location: The Spark That Did Not Die https://qualla.com/old-location/ Photo credit Pgallert, CC BY-SA 3.0. Between three and four thousand people fled the Old Location and refused to return, afraid of further reprisals. The killings hardened resolve rather than breaking it. They drove community leaders — Sam Nujoma among them — into exile, and out of that exile grew SWAPO, the movemen...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/7/u/p/old-location-wp/k7up-old-location-the-spark-that-did-not-die.mp3 0:06 5 full