Cattle reach the dry savanna and healing follows the herds

Bantu speakers from the southeast brought cattle to the dry savanna of what is now southern Angola and northern Namibia at about 680. The region had been wetter before, which meant tsetse fly, which meant no herds. Cimbebasia speakers who took up ranching spread across long distances between seasonal pastures, and from the thirteenth century, as the climate dried further, they separated. One group stayed farming in the Kunene river valley while others moved south and became cattle nomads. Governance and healing moved with the animals. A Herero dictionary of 1883 records o-huhura, cattle killed to undo the effects of witchcraft, with the patient rubbed in the dung; o-mbanga, cattle killed by the healer when someone falls sick, whose meat women and children eat; and o-ngunde, small cattle killed at feasts for the dead. Questions of who could cure and who could harm were rebuilt around the herd.