Group of closely related Bantu-speaking peoples of southern Africa (central Namibia, eastern Botswana, southern Angola).
The Herero formerly subsisted mainly on the milk and meat of their cattle, but after European contact in the mid 19th century many came to depend on horticulture as well. A series of uprisings against German colonial encroachment (1904–07) led to the extermination of some four-fifths of their population and the resettlement of survivors in the mostly inhospitable sand veld of the western Kalahari . Contemporary estimates number the Herero at more than 200,000.