Moreover it was envisaged that by separating each ethnic group and confining people by law to their restricted areas, discrimination by race would automatically disappear.

All harbours, most of the railway network and the tarred road infrastructure, all larger airports, the profitable diamond areas and the national parks were situated in the Police Zone.

[citation needed] The main religion of Ovamboland is Lutheranism, which is why Finnish missionaries, such as Martti Rautanen (who also developed the local literary language), and later Heikki Saari, among others, have worked in the area since the 1870s.

Ovamboland was the setting of a protracted insurgency waged by the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) during the South African Border War.

[11] Following the Turnhalle Constitutional Conference the system of Bantustans was replaced in 1980 by Representative Authorities which functioned on the basis of ethnicity only and were no longer based on geographically defined areas.

As second-tier authorities, forming an intermediate tier between central and local government, the representative authorities had responsibility for land tenure, agriculture, education up to primary level, teachers' training, health services, and social welfare and pensions and their Legislative Assemblies had the ability to pass legislation known as Ordinances.