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Cattle Works: Livestock Policy, Apartheid andDevelopment in Northwest Namibia, c 1920-1980

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07 Cattle Works: Livestock Policy,

Apartheid and Development inNorthwest Namibia, c 1920–1980

Steven van Wolputte

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Segregated development. On 3 September 1969 M.C. Botha (the then South

African Minister of Bantu-Administration and Development) delivered a speech

on the political development of Bantu ‘homelands’.1 According to Botha, segre-

gated development (afsonderlike ontwikkeling) guaranteed each culture in South

Africa independence and self-governance: it warranted that each could develop

its own collision-free orbit in the constellation of peoples in southern Africa.2

Botha linked development to administration, and identified state with culture.

Nevertheless, the centre around which each culture was supposed to orbit

remained conspicuously absent in his speech: while the latter emphasised civility

(burgerskap) it also, implicitly, denied the rights associated with citizenship to the

majority of the South (West) African population (see Mamdani 1996).

Botha made his speech in Port Elizabeth, but his vision included Namibia.

Between 1918 and 1990 this vast country was administered as a C-Mandate by

South Africa. In practice, this meant that Pretoria regarded Namibia (or South

West Africa (SWA), as it was known then) as its fifth province. In this context

of indirect rule and, later, apartheid, development was understood as a simul-

taneous administrative (bestuurlike) and ‘material’ ( fysieke ontwikkeling) form

of progress, with the authorities considering the former as a necessary condition

for the latter. This is what James Ferguson (1994) referred to as the ‘anti-politics

machine’: an apparatus to reinforce and expand bureaucratic state power while

depoliticising both poverty and the state. In this article, this is the sense in

which I use the notion of ‘development’.

I came across a transcript of this speech when going through the documents left by

the Bantu Affairs Commissioner (Bantoesakekommissaris) Office in Opuwo, a small

provincial town and the administrative seat of Namibia’s northern Kunene region.

This arid and mountainous border area, better known as (the) Kaokoveld or

Kaokoland, is where I did anthropological fieldwork, mostly among the inhabitants

of the rural hinterland, but also in the semi-urban setting of Opuwo. This I combined

with archival research in the National Archives of Namibia (NAN). The analysis

presented here is largely based upon my reading of these archival records.

ISSN 0002-0184 print=ISSN 1469-2872 online/07=010103-26# 2007 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd on behalf of the University of WitwatersrandDOI: 10.1080=00020180701275972

African Studies, 66, 1, April 2007

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07 Most inhabitants of the northern Kunene region were and are one way or the other

involved with livestock, whether as herders, traders, petty entrepreneurs or,

usually, a combination of these. Animals (and cattle in particular) also took up

a pivotal position in the social and political history of this border region. For

South African policy-makers, cattle served as a target and an alibi to sedentarise

the (semi-)nomadic population, isolate the region from the rest of the world, and to

force the region’s inhabitants into a subsistence economy and thus into contract

labour. Cattle were a means to create good (read: obedient) subjects. They were

the main reason for the geographical gerrymandering of the region into different

‘native reserves’ and so-called ‘homelands’, and a material base for distinguishing

between pastoralists and hunter-gatherers and the different ‘tribes’ or ‘races’ inha-

biting northwest Namibia (Malan 1973; Van Warmelo 1962; see Van Wolputte

2004c). It may then come as no surprise that the inhabitants of the northern

Kunene region perceived apartheid livestock policy as a politics of identity.

Efforts to establish and maintain a white (but artificial and violent) monopoly on

the trade in animals and beef existed prior to apartheid rule (Silvester 1998). Under

apartheid, these efforts were strengthened and subsumed under the heading of

‘development’, and integrated with an administrative, bureaucratic apparatus of

discipline and control. This memory of the colonial past still lingers on in percep-

tions of the contemporary postcolonial government, and this despite the obvious

contrast in ideology, methods and ambitions. This is not to say that the inhabitants

of Otuzemba, the main former township of Opuwo equate the colonial with the

postcolonial. They are glad to compare the accomplishments of the Namibian

authorities with the violence and terror experienced under apartheid and military

rule. Nevertheless, many interviewees stressed continuity rather than rupture

between the colonial and the postcolonial regimes, especially with regard to live-

stock policy. They were rather hesitant or even defiant towards government or

non-governmental organisation (NGO)-organised development efforts or even

towards drought relief and they blamed the government (ogovernementa) for

the non- or underdevelopment of the region. At the same time, many regarded

the government as a resource (of benefits, cash, power) to trick, manipulate,

exhaust. This, of course, is not that exceptional in Africa or, indeed, the rest of

the world. One could even argue that it is characteristic to the notion of state

and that the latter in part derives its legitimacy from this capacity as a resource.

The three terms, development, livestock and the state, roughly set out the per-

imeter of our analysis. In the northern Kunene region, segregated development

was the shape the state took. To an important though not exclusive extent (see

for instance the history of the Opuwo hospital, below) this development concen-

trated on livestock and livestock policy. However, the analysis shies away from an

exclusive focus on the state – a bias that also in postcolonial analyses of power

perpetuates the myth of an omnipresent and omnipotent (a capillary) government

that permeates the entire social fabric (also see Cole 2001; Comaroff 2002). Rather

than this structural or organic approach of the state, I place emphasis on the

104 African Studies 66: 1, April 2007

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07 phenomenon (the effect) of state, on the particular, localised experience of people

in the northern Kunene region under apartheid (Mitchell 1999; Bahre, this

volume). This approach is in line with Thomas’ (1994:ix–x) assertion that

colonial discourse and practice can only be approached through its particular

expressions, by locating it in a multi-faceted encounter between coloniser and

colonised. Somewhat arbitrarily, the analysis is limited to the period between

1920 and 1980, between the onset of South African indirect rule and its devastat-

ing climax in a major drought that desiccated the region between 1978 and 1981.

The starting question is ‘why was development slow in this part of the world

during the period considered?’ The historical and anthropological account

below illustrates that the most common causes cited by development and

(former) government informants – such as the remoteness of the region, the con-

servative nature of its inhabitants, or the presence of conflict – are not satisfactory.

Instead it suggests that (next to the racist and exploitative character of indirect

rule) the main cause of the ‘failure’ of development was the inability of modernist

governmentality to recognise and acknowledge ambivalence and ambiguity in the

colonial and developmental encounter.

Here I will not bother to analyse the sometimes troublesome relationship between

history and anthropology. Suffice to say that I focus on the uncertainties and ambi-

guities, on the subjunctive or, as Murray Last (in personal communication) has

suggested, optative, mood that can be read between the lines of these dusty colo-

nial documents, rather than on a chronological or indexical (or, indeed, imper-

ative) account of facts and events (Turner 1988:101; Whyte 2002; Comaroff

and Comaroff 1992). By offering this history of mentality I want to shed light

on the history of the present, on the historical background to the ways in which

the inhabitants of the northern Kunene region currently understand the state or

development initiatives (Sharma and Gupta 2006:xi; see Gewertz and Errington

1991; Le Goff 1985, 1991; Gurevich 1988).

For reasons of clarity, however, I have included a brief chronological overview in

the following section in which I distinguish between three cross-fading phases of

colonialism in the northern Kunene region. The sections thereafter illustrate the

particularity of the state and of governmentality in Kaokoland.

From isolation to development and conservation

After South African forces defeated the German Schutztruppe (protectorate

forces) in 1915, the northern Kunene region came under indirect rule. After two

military expeditions in 1916 and 1917, the Kaokoveld was proclaimed as a

Game Reserve in 1920. From then until the end of the Second World War the

main goal of colonial rule was to isolate the region and make it into a buffer

zone between Central Namibia and the African interior. This first phase of encap-

sulation went hand in hand with a process of livestock dispossession, a process that

was facilitated by succeeding droughts between 1920 and 1940. At the same time,

Livestock Policy, Apartheid and Development in Northwest Namibia, c 1920–1980 105

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the population was arbitrarily divided over so-called ethnicities and relocated to

their corresponding ‘native reserves’. Cattle free zones were declared around

the region, and animal trade was outlawed. Pass laws, permits, and other

regulations strictly regulated people’s movements (Bollig 1997; 1998a, b; Van

Wolputte 2004b).

A second phase of colonial rule can be roughly situated between the end of the

Second World War and the onset of the armed liberation struggle in 1966, and

was more explicitly aimed at the exploitation of Kaokoland’s resources. During

this period the central concern was the concept of segregated development. The

SWA administration introduced taxes (such as annual taxation, excess cattle

fees, or hut taxes) part of which was destined to finance the Kaokoland Tribal

Fund, which was formally established in 1953. The aim of this fund was to

‘bear portion, or the whole cost, of any agricultural development’, to construct

roads, build dams, water holes and so on.3

One of these resources was labour. For instance, in May 1954 the South West

African Labour Association (SWANLA) opened a store in Opuwo ‘with the objec-

tive of interesting the natives in better clothing, luxuries and jewellery formerly

practically unknown to them and enticing them to work in order to earn money

with which to buy.’4 At the same time, the isolation of the region (laid down in

measures to halt trade and epitomised by cattle free zones, border posts and

fences) remained in force. In the early 1960s it was even sharpened in response

to popular resistance against these policy measures.3

Figure 1. The northern Kunene region, Namibia: an overview of place names


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07 In 1967 the first armed People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) forces were

spotted in the region.4 This also meant the beginning of a third phase of colonial

rule, the increasing militarisation of the region (also see Gordon 1992). Especially

after Angolan independence in 1975 thousands of military and police forces were

stationed in and around Opuwo. The administrative apparatus also grew; and

South African propaganda discovered the rugged and eroded landscape of

Kaokoland. Its female inhabitants in leather dress were especially staged as

icons of pax apartheid and the benefits of segregated development (Miescher

and Rizzo 2000). Around this period, too, policy emphasis shifted from uplifting

people to conserving nature. The latter was not a new idea (the area had been a

Game Reserve ever since the 1920s), but in the course of the early 1970s, when

the military conflict was devastating the landscape of the northern Kunene

region, the idea of an unspoilt nature moved to the centre stage of political

discourse (see Griffiths and Robin 1997).

By the end of the 1970s the northern Kunene region was hit by a devastating

drought that lasted until 1981. This, and the toll exerted by the conflict, resulted

in tremendous livestock losses. Some inhabitants lost all their animals, and

many migrated to town to find employment (for instance, with the military),

shelter or drought relief. The second half of the 1980s then witnessed a hesitant

transition to peace, culminating in Namibia’s independence on 21 March 1990

(for a more recent history of development in the northern Kunene region, see

Bollig and Berzborn 2004; Miescher 2001).

Contradiction and ambiguity in colonial discourse

As in other parts of Africa, colonial rule in the northern Kunene region entailed an

overt contradiction between the promise of progress, on the one hand, and the prac-

tice of repression and exploitation on the other (see for instance Hodgson 2001).

Colonial discourse was inconsistent in that the SWA administration tried to seal

off the region and prevent trade and other long existing contacts with the outside,

thereby isolating the inhabitants of the region (see Bollig 1998a). It referred to

the cattle free zones as uninhabited areas after it had cleared them of people, settle-

ments and livestock, and relocated people to their ‘native reserves’ and intended

‘homelands’ to later designate these areas as people’s natural habitat (Van

Warmelo 1962; Malan 1973). While the regime overtly aimed at improving

animal health and market conditions, it simultaneously continued its efforts to

bring down livestock numbers (through, for instance excess cattle fees, see

below), and to discourage livestock trade through patrols, fines and punishments.

These inconsistencies of colonial discourse sometimes took a very concrete shape

with regard to the ways indirect rule and grand apartheid were implemented. This

implementation was not as smooth as the SWA administration wanted (and por-

trayed) it to be. As already mentioned, the SWA administration imposed a strict

embargo on livestock trade. Official policy was strongly directed towards countering


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07 (or at least discouraging) illegal livestock trade and on keeping African animals

from the white-controlled livestock market, thus encouraging the local population

to accept contract labour. Cattle trespassing the cattle-free zones were shot and

permits were hard to get and very expensive. On quite a large scale, though,

animals (both cattle and small stock) were smuggled in and out of the northern

Kunene region, and lively – albeit illegal – livestock traffic continued to exist

with southern Angola, the north-central regions (the former Ovamboland), and

even with white farmers in the well-guarded Police Zone (see Figure 1).

However, on different occasions the then local Bantu Affairs Commissioner Ben

van Zyl turned a blind eye, arguing that there simply was no other market.5 Later

he would ask his superior the rhetorical question whether one could blame an official

for trying to let the inhabitants of a ‘homeland’ share in the economic success of the

country.6 At the same time, this large-scale smuggling of livestock was and

remained an argument to ‘keep the lid closed’,7 to keep the gates shut.

The administration’s position was also ambivalent with regard to weapons,. By

1960, fifty-nine guns were registered. However, officials estimated their total

number at 1,000, and suspected a substantial arms traffic with Angola.8 While

attempts were made to register and confiscate these weapons, the SWA adminis-

tration distributed rifles and ammunition to members of the Tribal Council (Van

Wolputte 2004b).

Throughout the colonial period, labour recruitment in Kaokoland remained very

low. Labour contracts to work in the Police Zone were not very popular

because of their long duration, among other reasons. Therefore, many preferred

to go and work without permits or contracts in the north-central regions. This

had its implications on tax revenue: only those in government duty would pay

their taxes. Another case in point were cattle excess fees. These consisted of a

tax on every head of cattle above a certain minimum to discourage large

African livestock holdings. Soon the SWA administration realised that it could

not execute this regulation since livestock owners simply ‘transferred’ their

animals to a child or relative when pressurised to pay.9

Colonial representations tried to master this uncertainty through mapping and

naming (what Wilmsen, 1989:xii, calls ethnogracization). But this development

of colonial geography and ethnography was itself ambiguous. For instance, the

boundaries of Kaokoland were fenced in the course of the 1930s and 1950s. Yet

these boundaries changed regularly. This uncertainty was a source of worry not

only for the local administration, but also, obviously, for those living near

Kaokoland’s borders. One of the accusations levelled at the SWA administration

was that it deliberately opened up water holes in the cattle free zones to shoot the

animals drinking there.10 The Odendaal Plan did not solve these border questions.

In fact, it was part of the problem (see below).

In addition, ethnographic boundaries were continuously redrawn and remained

uncertain until an elaborate (orthodox) ethnic nomenclature was laid down in


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07 the course of the early 1970s (see Malan 1973, 1974). This, too, posed a problem

since the administrative development of the region depended on separating, and

keeping separate, its inhabitants. Sergeant Eedes, one of the police officers in

the region, noted in 1952:

There is continual friction between the different groups of the same Race in the

Kaokoveld. If more water supplies were opened up, it would be possible to separate

the different groups, for instance, place all the Ovahimbas in the North, all the Hereros

in the South and all the Ovatjimbas in the North West. As no water supplies have been

opened up by means of boring, it will not be possible to separate the different groups

at present (emphasis mine).11

Whereas roads, for instance, were forcibly constructed to facilitate control over

homesteads, people and animals (and hence to limit rather than to enhance mobi-

lity), water holes were used as a strategy to separate the different groups inhabiting

the northern Kunene region. Writing in a notably positive mood, the Bantu Affairs

Commissioner in Opuwo remarked in his annual report for 1964: ‘as long as they

keep separated, there is hope’.12

The main ethnonyms in northwest Namibia (Himba, Tjimba, and Herero) actually

referred to social and economic differences (Bollig 1997, 1998; Van Wolputte

2003).13 These differences were, for instance, reflected in diet (rich herders drink

more milk) or dressing style. Up to today, the boundaries between these ethnonyms

are rather permeable (see Van Warmelo 1962:10, 31). A poor man (‘Tjimba’)

simply has to acquire livestock to become a Himba (a rich cattle herder).

Alternatively, one of the criteria to be labelled ‘Herero’ is to wear cloth instead

of leather, or to build a square house instead of a round one. The name ‘Tjimba’

is also used to refer to the membership of one of the Himba matriarchs (eanda

ekwenambura); ‘Himba’ and ‘Herero’ may also refer to one’s belonging to either

the ‘upstream’ (eastern, -Himba) or downstream patriarchs (western, -Herero).

These names, in other words, are not univocal.

The permeability of these ‘ethnic’ boundaries (see Bollig 1997:21-29) did not

keep the SWA administration from forcibly relocating people from the cattle

free zones or from the north-central regions to their ‘native reserves’, or to objec-

tify so-called tribal boundaries in maps, ethnographic studies, census figures or

passes. Nevertheless, it was only gradually that an orthodox ethnographic map

of the region emerged. Until the early 1970s the colonial record betrays the uncer-

tainty of colonial officers as to with whom they were dealing. This is reflected, for

instance, in varying population estimates and census figures, especially during the

early years of colonial rule, but also during the 1950s and 1960s (see Bollig

1997:25), and in awkward phrases in colonial records such as ‘Tjimba headmen

with mainly Herero followers’ or ‘Himba headman with mixed Tjimba-Herero

following’.14 It was only in the early 1970s that Johannes Malan, a civil servant

in Okangwati, drew a definite ethnographic map. He distinguished eight different

groups, and had to resort to composite ethnonyms such as Tjimba-Herero or


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Tjimba-Tjimba. In line with the spirit of the Odendaal Plan, each of these was

attributed separate tribal status and a well-defined territorial boundary (Hitzeroth

1976a, b; Malan 1973, 1974).

The argument is not that the SWA administration invented and imposed rigid

ethnic boundaries. The different groups in the northern Kunene region also used

ethnic identification as a political strategy vis-a-vis the SWA administration and

vis-a-vis one another. At times they presented themselves as ‘we, the people of

Kaoko’; on other occasions they would invoke difference and demand differential

treatment, for instance when it came to the allocation and drilling of water holes.

Complying with the expectations of colonial officers also held practical advan-

tages: presenting oneself as someone without livestock entitled one to drought

relief, or could avert annoying questions about vaccinations or due excess fees.15

As John Friedman (2005) convincingly shows, this play of ethnicity dominated

local politics during the colonial period and continues to do so nowadays (also

see Ranger 1993). The argument, then, is that even for colonial officials ethnic

affiliation was uncertain and needed to be continuously negotiated, even if

clear-cut ethnic boundaries were part of the colonial lexicon. In turn, this rigidity

could – and often was – exploited by the different factions in Kaokoland.

Administrating at the fringes

Throughout most of the period under discussion, the resources of the SWA admin-

istration in this border region were rather limited, especially so during the early

decades of colonial rule. Until the 1940s, for example, its presence amounted to

Photograph 1. View on the first Oruaano church (in front) built immediately next to the BantuAffairs Commissioner’s house (under the palm trees). Colonial discourse was like the tarredT-junction road in the background that until fairly recently (2003) was the only mile of tarredroad in Kunene North: very visible and central but clearly bounded and limited at the same time,an important force that, nevertheless, was unable to penetrate every fibre in the social fabric.

(Photo: Steven van Wolputte, August 2002)


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07 one Native Affairs Commissioner in Ondangwa, (in the north-central region), two

border posts (Otjitundua in the south and Tjimhakua in the north) and two police

officers. One of them, Constable Cogill (Sergeant Eedes’ predecessor), traversed

the southern part of the region by mule. Sometimes he was transferred to the

north to be recalled somewhat later. Covering a region of about 50,000 square

kilometres, Cogill was responsible for checking and stopping livestock move-

ments, sinking wells with dynamite, inoculating or shooting cattle, and distribut-

ing drought relief while informing the ‘natives’ of their ‘responsibilities’.16 In the

early 1930s, these two police border posts were closed due to a lack of funds. Only

because of his alarming reports of an outbreak of lung disease in 1931, Carl Hahn

(the Ondangwa Native Affairs Commissioner between 1915 and 1946, better

known as Tjongola or Shongola, ‘the Whip’) managed to secure more financial

means and to have at least the southern post reopened.

The importance of these limited resources led to strong competition between the

different groups of what I refer to as the ‘colonisers’ (military authorities, civil

authorities, different departments such as nature conservation or water affairs,

farmers, and so on). For instance, the Bantu Affairs Commissioner’s reluctance

to charge smugglers brought him into conflict with his Windhoek superior and

with the veterinarians working in the region (see above). On other occasions

this same official had argued in favour of allowing the local population to pay

their taxes in maize, tobacco or livestock, but the higher echelons of the adminis-

tration turned this option down.17 After 1957 – when Kaokoland came under the

direct supervision of Windhoek – internal strife (between, for example, the

Opuwo Bantu Affairs Commissioner and the different government departments,

or him and his Windhoek superiors, or the military) seriously eroded the power,

authority and ‘efficacy’ of apartheid rule in northwest Namibia. This became

especially clear in the early 1970s as militarisation and the administrative devel-

opment in the region gained impetus.18

These cracks in the colonial facade opened up a margin of negotiation between

colonised and colonisers, between various factions within the SWA adminis-

tration, and between different groups within the northern Kunene region. These

groups were able to exploit these tensions to their own advantage, for instance

by putting up the veterinarians against the Bantu Affairs Commissioner. This

uncertainty, however, also subjected them to some degree of arbitrariness. As

one elder remarked: ‘each commissioner brings his own laws’.19

Distrust, defiance, development

These ambiguities and contradictions in apartheid power discourse, the internal

divisions and competition between members of the administration, and its struc-

tural lack of resources and manpower undoubtedly contributed to the initial

failure of colonial rule to realise its principal aim, namely to de-stock the northern

Kunene region or at least to exert tight control on livestock numbers and


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movements. Yet the failure to develop Kaokoland cannot be attributed solely to

the administration’s shortcomings. The Opuwo Bantu Affairs Commissioner

also had to deal with local resistance. In northwestern Namibia, this resistance

hardly ever took the form of armed or even overt rebellion. Rather, it constituted

a form of defiance (of ‘subject’ disobedience, see Van Wolputte 2004a) that was

not rooted in anti-colonial ideology, but in local experience and subjectivity

(Abbink et al. 2003; Comaroff 2002; Deutsch et al. 2002; Fardon 1995;

Mamdani 1996). This, particularly the government efforts aimed at developing

the region, provoked the most resentment and opposition: development (and live-

stock policy in particular), as it were, backfired on the apartheid government of the

region. On many occasions it became an argument to resist rather than to

cooperate.

In 1954 and 1955, for example, the SWA administration planned a large-scale vac-

cination campaign against lung disease. It also intended to combine vaccination

with a big branding campaign to counter the many cases of smuggling into the

Police Zone (so-called illegal traffic that also involved the white farmers in and

around Outjo, see Figure 1) and to enhance colonial control over (vaccinated

and non-vaccinated) animals. People though refused, allegedly because the

brand (a large ‘XH’) reminded them of the government sign (‘X’) on vehicles

and equipment. After months of negotiation the administration finally changed

the brand, but by then the vaccination campaign had come to a standstill,

mainly because of the resistance by people in the north. This opposition was

not just about a symbol. The northern Kunene region was part of a trade

network that extended from the Congo basin to the eastern shores of South

Africa, and people just wanted to continue trading, and also because the prices

Photograph 2. The remnants of the fence that once separated the white from the non-white parts oftown in Opuwo. Here, near the hospital, were the homes of the police officers and Koevoet

(Crowbar) forces. (Photo: Steven van Wolputte, July 2002)


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07 in Opuwo were (much) higher than in the north-central regions. The measures

imposed by the colonial regime had made it (much) more difficult and dangerous,

but not impossible to trade.

The successive commissioners and other officials in Kaokoland regularly com-

plained about the lack of commitment and cooperation of the local population.

They attributed this to stubborn traditionalism and foreign agitation. Conversely,

the local population distrusted the Bantu Affairs Commissioner and his adminis-

tration. Not surprisingly, their distrust primarily targeted the cattle inspectors.20

They were not only perceived as superfluous and ineffective, but also as profiting

from the disease and of (deliberately) spreading it. As one of the counsellors noted,

‘we see that the disease is where the doctor is.’21 State veterinarians were

considered dangerous; they were accused of arbitrarily killing and not curing

the animals. In fact, state veterinarians represented the most tangible embodiment

of apartheid (‘livestock’) policy. In 1963, for instance, the Bantu Affairs Commis-

sioner called in the help of the Director of Agriculture, Dr J.S. Watt, to persuade

the local population of the necessity of vaccinating their animals against lung

disease. Watt was a veterinarian and was familiar with the region since he had

headed the first lung disease vaccination campaign in 1938. His presence,

however, had the opposite effect on the members of the Tribal Council as he

was held personally responsible for having spread the disease:

In the days of old, lung sickness was not here. Perhaps Dr. Watt remembers I told him

that he brought the disease to Ongongo when animals there became sick after maybe a

bottle with the vaccine broke and the cows touched it.22

It is important to note in this regard that most people were not opposed to vacci-

nation as such: repeatedly the elders of the Tribal Council offered to pay for vac-

cines and syringes themselves. It also depended on which disease the vaccine was

intended. Lung disease campaigns especially aroused strong anti-veterinarian feel-

ings. The first major outbreak, during the 1931–1932 drought, was contained by

draconian measures by Carl Hahn who simply had all supposedly infected cattle

shot. Both healthy and the very few infected animals succumbed (Hahn exagger-

ated the size of the outbreak for political reasons). During the next outbreak, in

1938, people refused to bring their herds for vaccination. This again led to the

indiscriminate killing of thousands of healthy and infected animals. The cows

that were vaccinated also died because of the poor quality of the vaccine. As

many local people said back then, ‘Tjongola [Hahn’s nickname] was angry

when we refused to inoculate, so he introduced the disease to kill our animals.’23

This distrust of cattle inspectors also spread to other domains. In 1961, for

instance, the rumour spread that the government wanted to murder people by vac-

cinating them against polio. It also surfaced for instance in the unwillingness or

refusal by many headmen and councillors to attend tribal meetings (despite gov-

ernment efforts to bribe them), to charge offenders, to collect taxes and so on.24

One reason for this was certainly that these headmen and councillors, appointed


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07 by the administration, enjoyed a rather shallow local power base. Another reason

was that the different factions within the Tribal Council, for various reasons,

opposed the idea of segregated development. This opposition was at its strongest

during the 1960s and early 1970s.25

Perhaps the most telling case was when the administration offered the inhabitants a

substantial amount of money. Since the Kaokoland Tribal Fund was in a permanent

state of bankruptcy, this ‘money of the Republic’ was intended to construct

hospitals, and to drill and equip waterholes throughout the region.26 But it was

refused by the council elders: instead they offered to pay for water holes

themselves, in oxen, but several times this was turned down by the SWA

administration. On other occasions, the colonial records illustrate how ‘modern’

the Council elders’ argument was: the claim by the Bantu Affairs Commissioner

that they were unable to collect the taxes required by the Kaokoland Tribal Fund

was countered by the remark that there was not sufficient cash in Kaokoland

because there was no possibility to market their livestock;27 when the government

finally agreed to organise auctions, people refused to show up with their animals as

they judged the prices offered by the Bantu Investment Corporation Ltd. (Bantu

Beleggings Korporasie beperk, BBK, the successor of SWANLA) too low.

Instead, they demanded a fixed price and, again, a permanent market for their

animals.28 But this was unacceptable to the colonial authorities. As a result

Ben van Zyl concluded in his annual report of 1964 that the ‘Herero have turned

to a general boycott of everything, even if the development is to their advantage.’29

During the 1960s, the development of the region primarily referred to establishing

an elaborate administrative apparatus. The building of new department offices in

Opuwo (the compartmentalisation of government in water affairs, nature conser-

vation, veterinary services, and so on) and the increasing police and military pre-

sence in the region further de-politicised the notion of development, but also

undermined the position and authority of the Bantu Affairs Commissioner,

which, in turn, fanned internal rivalry and strife (Van Wolputte 2004a).30

The administrative development of the region came to a virtual standstill in the

course of the early 1960s. On top of this, the northern Kunene region did not

harbour the expected mineral riches. The B&O Mineral Exploration Company

(Proprietary) Limited, a consortium of three mining companies that prospected

the area between 1970 and 1971, only found a minor phosphate deposit near

Epembe. In a letter to the director of Nature Conservation and Tourism, the

manager of the project, Dr J.S. de Villiers communicated his findings as follows:

To date some R90,000 has been spent on the project and I, as manager of the project,

feel justified in claiming that the consortium has both covered the territory and found

nothing . . . of any economic potential whatsoever.

This being the case, I appeal to you, as Director of Nature Conservation in South West

Africa, to endeavour to convert one of the most remote fascinating and beautiful parts

in all South West into a wilderness area of unparalleled scenic grandeur and scope.

I had occasion to get to know this country and his handful of primitive Ovahimba


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07 people, under the Chieftainship of Munimahora, well. The area obviously has extre-

mely limited agricultural potential and the Ovahimbas do little harm to the land they

have with for aeons . . .

Surely, in this day and age of pollution and extermination, such an area not yet lost to

the ravages of man, can be saved for posterity.31

As from the early 1970s the SWA administration placed growing emphasis on

nature conservation. Even more than before, wildlife was regarded as a resource.

Poaching became a problem, also because the outbreak of the Angolan conflict in

1975 created a new and lucrative international market for hunting produce. Before

1975 mainly whites engaged in small-scale unlicensed (‘commercial’) hunting.

After that date many in the northern Kunene region welcomed this opportunity

to (re)diversify their economy and, in the period between 1978 and 1981, over-

come or temper the consequences of the drought and conflict that decimated the

region’s livestock herds. Due to the conflict, they were aided by the greater avail-

ability of (modern) arms and ammunition, and by the SWA administration’s gen-

erous distribution of weaponry to the members of the Tribal Council to ‘protect’

themselves. They only needed to promise not to use their weapons to hunt.

A case study: the opuwo hospital

To summarise the argument so far: colonial rule in the northern Kunene region

was characterised by a huge discrepancy between colonial discourse (as a set of

representations, including that system that governs these representations) and

reality, between the rhetoric of mastery and control, on the one hand, and the

experience of colonialism on the other. This tension between discourse and prac-

tice was obvious to both coloniser and colonised. Though it held obvious

Photograph 3. View of the city centre (the so-called ozombapa or ‘white houses’) from the gravelroad from Otuzemba, the main of the previous so-called black townships in Opuwo. (Photo: Steven

Van Wolputte, August 2002)


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07 disadvantages for all those involved, at the same time it allowed for agency and

negotiation. However, the outcome of this negotiation process always was

uncertain. Let me illustrate this by turning to a brief history of the Opuwo hospital.

I chose this example since hospitals in general are emblematic of modernist (tech-

nocratic) development and state intervention.

In 1959, the Orumana Dutch Reformed Mission ran the only nursing station in the

whole of the northern Kunene region. For serious afflictions and surgical pro-

cedures patients were transferred to either Outjo or Otjiwarongo. By June 1963,

the decision had been taken to construct a hospital in the northern Kunene

region, together with additional nursing posts. A hospital would bring with it

money for water services, an extended airstrip, and so on. It was seen as a stimulus

for the further expansion of government offices in Kaokoland and for improving

government services and facilities. But not in Opuwo: this town was judged

unfit, because of its dust and its insufficient water reserves. In addition, its location

at the foot of a mountain slope was said to impede urban development. In fact, the

location of Opuwo was cited as the main reason for the lack of development in the

region. Therefore, the office of the Chief Bantu Affairs Commissioner suggested

building the hospital in Kaoko-Otavi (Oruhito), and to also move the adminis-

tration’s seat there.

During 1963 and 1964, the Odendaal Commission brooded over a related idea,

namely to divide the northern Kunene region into a northern (for the Himba)

and a southern ‘homeland’ (for the Herero and Tjimba), with the Hoarusib

River as its ‘natural’ border. This division would facilitate the administration

and development of Kaokoland, as each ‘homeland’ would have its own offices

and commissioner. Anticipating the Commission’s Blueprint (published in

1964) the SWA administration therefore advised the building of two major hospi-

tals, one per future ‘homeland’: Kaoko-Otavi in the south, and Otjiyanjasemo in

the north. However, despite pressure by the agriculture and health departments,

a quick decision was impeded by the insecurity over Opuwo’s future. Would it

become a senior Native Affairs Office, with two junior Native Affairs Officers

in the north and south, or would it be abandoned altogether? Uncertainty also

existed with regard to the eastern and southern boundaries of the northern

Kunene region, or with regard to its status as a Game Reserve. This uncertainty

was fanned, not solved, by the Odendaal Plan.34

Despite contradicting feasibility studies it was decided to draw the Kaoko-Otavi

card, and to start the execution of the Odendaal Plan there. The surveyors who

were sent to Kaoko-Otavi, however, met with local resistance: they were pre-

vented from doing their work and even chased away. In different meetings held

in June 1965, members of the Tribal Council strongly opposed to building a hos-

pital on the intended location, and argued in favour of building one in Opuwo, as

they had requested and despite the dust.32 The Chief Bantu Affairs Commissioner,

R.L. Eaton, replied that they could get a hospital in Kaoko-Otavi, or none at all.


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07 When he was confronted with similar objections six months later, he stated, ‘if the

government wants to do something, it will do it and nobody will stop it.’33

The Odendaal Plan (to divide Kaokoland into different ‘homelands’, each with

their own administration and facilities) continued to dominate the SWA adminis-

tration’s policy throughout the 1960s. But they were never put into force due to the

combination of uncertainty and local opposition from various groups in Kaoko-

land. For the regime administrative and material development ( fisiese ontwikkel-

ing) were closely intertwined. In fact, the former was seen as a necessary condition

for the latter.34 But the delays in building the hospital in Kaoko-Otavi affected the

administrative development in the rest of the region. The existing plans for offices,

buildings and services in Opuwo were cancelled. Such was the case for the

intended powerhouse: since the offices and buildings that needed power were

about to move anyway, Pretoria argued that it had become superfluous. The

SWA administration also had to deal with growing protest and opposition:

voices in the Tribal Council kept on repeating their demand for a single hospital

in Opuwo, arguing that they did not want more ‘white’ buildings in Kaoko than the

ones that were already there.

By the end of the 1960s the political situation in Namibia and Kaokoland had

changed dramatically. Only then, dissident voices in the SWA administration

argued in favour of keeping Opuwo as the region’s administrative seat. The

subtext of development also changed. In the years to follow it became a tool for

gaining and maintaining the population’s trust, for instance through drilling and

equipping water holes.35 The 140-bed Opuwo hospital was put out to tender in

the early 1970s, but its construction was repeatedly postponed due to a lack of

funds. Eventually it became operational on 2 February 1979.

This brief history of the Opuwo hospital suggests that development and colonial-

ism were uncertain even for colonial officials. However, this uncertainty was

veiled under the rhetoric and imperative terms of a master narrative. Governmen-

tality clearly was at odds with the practice of government that was divided, impro-

vised and inconsistent. This discrepancy was no accident: it was at the heart of the

colonial (and developmental) encounter in the northern Kunene region.

Cattle, state, development

Livestock in general, and cattle in particular, constituted the main (but not only)

area of contact between the South African state and the inhabitants of the northern

Kunene region, between state discourse and the localised experience of state. Pre-

sently, animals can be regarded as the very ‘material infrastructure’ of the pro-

duction of selves and identities (Turner 1994:28; Van Wolputte 2004a). Their

importance in this regard did not diminish under the influence of apartheid or

indirect rule, on the contrary. Moreover, the fact that many inhabitants of the

region fail to see major changes with regard to livestock policy ever since


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07 independence, partly accounts for the continuity they experience between colonial

rule and postcolonial livestock policy.

Informants in Otuzemba (one of the former townships of Opuwo) pointed out that

the veterinary Cordon Fence (the so-called Red Line) is still standing, that the

region is still fenced and that this is a deliberate policy by the Namibian govern-

ment. For many interviewees, this continuity was personified by Opuwo’s mayor,

who (in 2002) also happened to be the local representative of the national meat

processing company, Meat Cooperation (MeatCo). They cited, for instance, the

long quarantine period required for livestock exports, or the costs for transport

and the vaccinations that were only affordable by the rich. These problems were

acknowledged by the mayor. They were particularly bothered by the fact that

the local government was opposing the further development of the informal

market, where most herders traded their animals (even if prices were much

lower than the official day prices paid by MeatCo). In recent years this informal

market (referred to as Epupa, ‘the place that overflows’, because of the many

liquor stands there) shifted from Otuzemba to the city centre along Mbumbijazo

Muharukua Avenue, where most tourists and officials have to pass. Whether

this was a coincidence or not, in the course of 2004 MeatCo complained that it

received too few cattle from the Northern Communal Areas and its chief executive

officer announced the dismissal of thirty-two employees at the Oshakati abattoir

(The Namibian 5 February 2004). Communal farmers, in turn, complained that

the company did not want to slaughter their animals, and only exported animals

from the Northern Communal Areas to other African countries, not to the

European Union. The latter, lucrative, market, they claimed, was a privilege of

the private owned farms south of the Red Line (The Namibian 31 May 2005).

The point here is not that continuity is experienced on the ideological or discursive

level: it is situated on the level of the effect of state, given concrete shape in the

many long and costly procedures (quarantining, vaccinations, brands, accompany-

ing the animals to the Oshakati abattoir, etc.) people have to go through and

permits they need before they can cash in on their animals.

What emerges from the historical and contemporary examples is that the local per-

spectives and understandings of development were at odds with the ones cherished

by colonial officials, state veterinarians and so on. In the words of Langman

Tjihahurua:

What I do not understand is that what we ask, we do not get, and that what we do not

ask, we are sent. The government sends us money. We ask for land. The government

has no cattle but sticks to the land and does not hand it to its subjects who ask the land

for their cattle.36

Orthodox (‘modernist’) modernity envisioned development as a road upward,

ahead: breeding with European pedigree animals, for instance, would automati-

cally ‘uplift’ the standards of the native cattle breed and hence of its inhabitants


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07 (also see Rawlinson 1994:14). Only later on, after many failed breeding

programmes, the policy of protecting the purity of the local breed was accepted.

Indirect rule, apartheid, and segregated development were exponents of such an

orthodox modernity. In this, development was explicitly presented as a non-

political, technical intervention (see Ferguson 1994; Escobar 1995). Moreover,

during the colonial period, Africans were not allowed (or supposed) to discuss

politics during public meetings. As the Chief Bantu Affairs Commissioner

noted: ‘we cannot discuss these matters since you do not know about them.’37

Of course, this did not prevent ‘hot’ topics such as segregation and apartheid

from sneaking into the meetings organised by the SWA administration.

Headman Kefas Mazuma: The whites got assistance [i.e. emergency pasture] in the

direction of Okavango. They lost less than we did. And the whites got water holes.

Our animals just died. What do we talk about then? The difference is that one

person lives, and the other one does not. Our income derives only from livestock.

But if we take our animals across the cordon they will be shot. It is dry. What do

we do now? We are hungry and our animals are dying. Near Otjikua there is lung sick-

ness. I asked why they are not vaccinated . . . But there is no vaccine there. They keep

the disease going: the cattle inspectors get rich. They make the disease last and get

paid every month. We just want to trade with Ovamboland [the north-central

regions] as we did before. We will not bring animals from Ovamboland, just

money and food . . .

Joel Tjihahurua: . . .The cattle inspectors make their own laws. They catch our animals

and put them in camps, and the commissioner does not know about this . . .

Gideon Muteze: [There is a] difference between white and non-white. Apartheid is not

a good thing.

Mnr van der Watt: Do you know what apartheid is?

Gideon Muteze: Yes, I know that it means that one group gets everything and the other

nothing.38

During the same meeting in January 1963 it was noted that ‘even if the gate opens

now, all the animals will have died of starvation’.39 In a letter to the Bantu Affairs

Commissioner read during the same meeting, another member of the Tribal

Council, Willem Hartley, formulated the repeated frustration of the population.

People were so tired of the administration’s promises that

they were at the point of asking to take the office and all other things back, so that they

can return and wear skins again. People are giving up hope ever to be able to sell their

animals. They only get promises and stones, but the borders remain closed. Thousands

of animals have died, and they might as well die from the disease because people

cannot sell them.40

I suggest that utterances such as these reflect an emic (local) modernity and an

alternative subjectivity that were altogether different from the ‘road ahead’ and

from the colonial subjectivity as devised by the SWA administration (Deutsch

et al. 2002). Against the modernist stereotype of ‘traditionalist subsistence

herder’ they suggested a different subjectivity, one that was not phrased in

terms of tribe or race, and a different heterodox or vernacular modernity (see

Piot 1999) that questioned the close association they perceived between the


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07

state and (segregated) development. This subjectivity cannot be phrased solely in

terms of resistance or conservatism (see Abbink et al. 2003): people were not

opposed to salaried labour, they were against the standard eighteen-month

labour contract required to work in the Police Zone; they were not against hospi-

tals, but against the establishment of a more elaborate and segregated administra-

tive apparatus that went with it. They were not opposed to livestock trade, but

wanted trade terms that would benefit them.

This emic modernity defied colonial discourse, but it also challenges postcolonial

analyses of power and the state. Colonial power was neither omnipresent nor

omnipotent. Contrary to the myth it had created itself, colonising discourse was

characterised by division, paradox and ambiguity, by a profound uncertainty.

This myth obscures the fact that the particular shape colonialism (or, development,

for that matter) takes is the outcome of a necessary process of negotiation.

However, the outcome of this process was uncertain to all the factions involved.

ConclusionThis, therefore, has to be clear: that in the multinational [veelvolkige] situation we are

in, each people has its own, specific, government with its own, separate adminis-

tration. Hence the segregated development which, by the way, has progressed on

the same basis for each people in the entire world.41

Already in 1955, Max Gluckman (1955:357–66) argued that that legal concepts

are necessarily elastic, multiple and permeable. Extending his analysis of the

Barotse (Lozi) judicial system to law and social life in general, Gluckman

Photograph 4. Petty traders and entrepreneurs have, as it were, overtaken the road as an importantsymbol of progress and the state. In recent years this main (but informal) market has shifted from

Otuzemba to the city centre. (Photo: Steven van Wolputte, July 2002)


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07 taught us that ambivalence and uncertainty in law are crucial to achieve justice in

particular circumstances and contexts. Social theorists, he argued, should give

ambiguity a place in their analysis, even if only to avoid a barren debate.

Building on this idea, the analysis focused on the tribology (the study of friction,

of surfaces in motion) of modernity, development and the state in the northern

Kunene region. Reading between the lines of the colonial archive, the analysis

places central emphasis on the uncertainty that permeated both colonial discourse

and practice. On the one hand, colonial discourse suffered under the same incon-

sistencies as it did in other parts of Africa. On the other hand, the implementation

of indirect rule and apartheid were hampered by the lack of means and internal

frictions. What undoubtedly also played a role was the alleged ‘remote’ character

of Kaokoland, an arid and unpromising border land located at the fringes of the

South African colonial state (see Das and Poole 2004).

Colonising discourse perceived an intrinsic link between administrative and

material development. This is also how the members of the Tribal Council per-

ceived it. In the northern Kunene region, segregation and apartheid were veiled

by a technical discourse on roads and water holes, schools, hospitals and labour

recruitment schemes, but especially cattle free zones, vaccination and branding

campaigns, quarantine camps, breeding programmes, bush auctions and so on.

However, this anti-politics machine (Ferguson 1994) did not bring the desired

effect. If the SWA administration perceived administrative development as the

necessary condition for material development, members of the Tribal Council per-

ceived opposition against material development as a way to resist segregation and

apartheid and the development of a more elaborate state apparatus of discipline

and control. So rather than contesting homeland policy and the Odendaal Plan,

the different factions in the Tribal Council fought persistently against the

(‘Bantu’) hospitals planned in Kaoko-Otavi and Otjiyanjasemo. They insisted

on building one in Opuwo to serve all Africans, regardless of race or ethnic back-

ground. This strategy – adopting the terms of a depoliticised discourse to make or

fight political decisions – proved to be relatively successful, too, in dealing with

colonial livestock policy, especially in view of the enormous machine they were

up against (see Van Wolputte 2004b). In that sense, the depoliticised discourse on

material development gave colonial subjects an instrument to resist the colonial

presence in the region: resistance against (some) development plans appears

almost as a non-political, almost technical means to resist or defy apartheid

policy. To a certain extent, the anti-politics machine worked both ways: it also

functioned as an anti-anti-politics machine (see Ferguson 1994). It could not

prevent that apartheid livestock policy was experienced as a politics of identity.

The history of governmentality in northwest Namibia illustrates that in this par-

ticular context and despite the inequality inherent to indirect rule, even apartheid

and segregation were negotiated. However, the outcome of this negotiation

process was uncertain to all parties involved. It also suggests that perhaps the


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07 main reason for the ‘failure’ of development during the period considered was the

unwillingness or incapacity by the colonial administration to acknowledge the

negotiated character of the colonial encounter and to admit to its uncertainty.

Instead, the administration blamed the natural conservativeness of the locals

(see Malan 1995:85).

This is nothing new. Herders and nomads in particular are reputed to be especially

reluctant to change. Yet development projects targeting them have proven to be

especially detrimental (see Baxter 1990; Fratkin 1997; Van Wolputte and

Verswijver 2004). Often these groups find themselves quite literally at the fringes

of contemporary governance (Azarya 1996; Galaty and Bonte 1991; Van Wolputte

and Verswijver 2004a; Bahre and Lecocq, this volume). However, the difficulties

experienced in trying to settle the pastoral question can perhaps be attributed to

the inability of states, donors and NGOs to allow uncertainty and their reluctance

to see the developmental encounter as anything but determined and fixed.

In the particular context of the northern Kunene region under indirect and apart-

heid rule, government and development can be considered as a drama, as a per-

formance with different actors against the background of a ‘remote’ borderland.

However, the emphasis on this uncertainty and on local agency must not make

us forget that the colonial encounter was a violent one, characterised by inequality,

marginalisation and dispossession (Hodgson 2001). Witness to this are the

accounts of animals ‘putrefying from the inside out’ (Peires 1989:70), the vivid

memories of herds being caught in a cross-fire, the horrifying stories of houses

being levelled by Casspirs or of the atrocities committed by Koevoet units.

Notes

1. This article is based on anthropological research conducted in the western part of the northern

Kunene region between 1995 and 2002, and (mainly) on archival research in the National

Archives of Namibia in 1996, 1998 and 2002. This research was made possible by a postdoc-

toral fellowship and research grants by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). I would like

to thank Erik Bahre and Baz Lecocq for their comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to

thank Richard Werbner, John Friedman, Mattia Fumanti, Murray Last and Filip De Boeck for

their suggestions and comments. However, all mistakes and shortcomings are entirely mine.

2. NAN BOP 66 N11/2/2, Hoofbantusakekommissaris van SWA to Bantusakekommissaris

Ohopoho, Beleid in Bantoetuisland, 10/12/1969, my translation.

3. NAN SWAA 2515 A 552 13/1, Native commissioner Ondangwa, Ovamboland to Chief Native

Commissioner, Ovamboland, Improvement of native-owned stock, (undated).

4. NAN BOP 19 N2/13/2/18, Chief Native Affairs Windhoek, to Officer in Charge, Ohopoho,

Kaokoveld, citing a letter from the manager of new SWANLA to M.J. Allen, Chief Native

Affairs Windhoek, 30 March 1955.

5. NAN BOP 53 N8/5/4/23, Kantoor van die Hoofdbantusakekommissaris Windhoek, Invoer

van hoefdiere: Kaokoveld, 21 September 1962.

6. NAN BOP 5 1/15/4/3, Bantoesakekommissaris Ohopoho (B.J. van Zyl), Notule van vergader-

ing gehou te Zessfontein op 8 Oktober 1967, undated.

7. NAN BOP 53 N8/5/3, Toesighoudende Beampte Ohopoho, Veebewegings Kaokoveld na

Angola, 15 May 1964.


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07 8. NAN BOP 7 N1/15/6, Bantoesakekommissaris Ohopoho (B.J. van Zyl), Memorandum: feite

posisie van die Kaokoland, undated, p 12.

9. M. Kaneto, in NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Skakelbeampte (W.F.J.J. van Zyl), Notule van verga-

dering gehou te Ohopoho op 27 Januarie 1966 (28 January 1966), p 4, my translation.

10. NAN BOP 5 N1/15/6/1, Bantusakekommissaris Ohopoho (B. van Zyl), Jaarverslag 1957,

undated.

11. NAN BOP 53 N8/5/1, Naturellesake omsendbrief Nr. 15 van 1957 gedateer 31 Desember

1957: weiregte in naturellereservate: beperking op vee, p 3.

12. NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/1, Toesighoudende Beampte Ohopoho (B.J. Van Zyl), Vergadering met

Herero hoofmanne en inwoners te Otjitjekua op 25 Julie 1961, undated.

13. NAN NAO 51 3/8, Sgd. Eedes, Office of the Native Commissioner Ondangua, Ovamboland to

the Chief Native Commissioner Windhoek, untitled, 30 April 1952.

14. NAN BOP 7 N1/15/6, Toesighoudende Beampte Ohopoho (B. van Zyl), Jaarverslag vir 1964.

Bantoe administrasie en ontwikkeling. Kaokoveld Bantoe reservaat en zessfontein inboorling

reservaat, undated.

15. NAN BOP 4 15/1/4, Bantu Affairs Commissioner Ohopoho (F.J. Strauss), Annual Report 1958

(Appendix F), undated.

16. NAN BOP 4 N1/15/4, Bantusakekommissaris Ohopoho (B.J. van Niekerk), Samensprekings

met hoofmanne: versuim om stamvergadering by te woon en vermante aangeleenthede, 7

November to 23 December 1969 (undated), my translation.

17. NAN 5 NI/15/4/3, ‘We, the people of Kaoko’ (Ovete omuhoko vakaoko), letter to Chief Bantu

Affairs Commissioner, Windhoek, 20 March 1962.

18. NAN NAO 28 24/1/1, Native Commissioner Ondangua (C.H. Hahn), Lungsickness: Ehomba

and Kauapehuri (letter to the Secretary for South West Africa), 26 February 1932.

19. NAN SWAA A 552/25, Toesighoudende beampte Ohopoho, Kaokoveld Trust fund, 18 May

1953; NAN BOP 28 N4/3/2, Toesighoudende beampte Ohopoho, Kamanjab to Naturellekom-

missaris Ongongua, Ovamboland. Kaokoveld Stamfonds, 2 May 1956.

20. NAN BOP 7 11/15/6, Bantoesakekommissaris Ohopoho (B.J. van Zyl), Memorandum: feite

posisie van die Kaokoland, undated, pp 10-11.

21. Alfeus Tjihende in NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Toesighoudende Beampte Ohopoho (B.J. van

Zyl), Vergadering te Ohopoho op 10 en 11 Januarie 1963, undated, p 5.

22. Joel Tjihahurua, in NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Toesighoudende Beampte Ohopoho (B. van Zyl),

Vergadering te Ohopoho op 10 en 11 Januarie 1963 (1963).

23. NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Toesighoudende Beampte (B. van Zyl), Notule van vergadering

gehou 15 tot 18 Mei 1963 (1963).

24. Willem Hartley, in NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Toesighoudende Beampte Ohopoho, Kaokoveld

(B.J. van Zyl), Notule van vergadering gehou te Ohopoho op 21 Mei 1963, 28 June 1963, p 2.

25. NAN BOP 1/15/4, Bantoesakekommissaris Ohopoho (B. van Zyl), Notule van vergadering

gehou te Ohopoho op 5/3/1975, undated, p 6.

26. NAN BOP 66 N11/2/3, Administratiewe beampte Ohopoho (B.J. Marais), Plan vir Bantu-

owerhede: Kaokoveld; U HN 11/2/3 van 6 Maart 1962, 23 May 1962, p 1; NAN BOP 3 1/8/3, Bantusakekommissaris Ohopoho (F.J. Strauss), to Hoofbantusakekommissaris Windhoek

(2 February 1968); NAN BOP 19 N2/13/2/18, Hoofnaturellesakekommissaris (C.J. Allen),

Handel in die Kaokoveld, (30 March 1955); NAN BOP 5 1/15/4/3, Bantusakekommissaris

Ohopoho (B.J. van Zyl), Vergadering gehou te Zessfontein op 2 Februarie 1968 (1968);

Vergadering gehou te Oseondekka op 14 Februari 1968 (1968); Vergadering gehou te Otjijan-

jasemo op 12 (tot 23) Februarie 1968 (1968); Vergadering gehou te Okorasave op 27 Februarie

1968 (1968).

27. NAN BOP7 N1/15/6, Bantoesakekommissaris Ohopoho (B.J. van Zyl), Memorandum: feite

posisie van die Kaokoland, undated, p 10: ‘Anything that only remotely refers to Odendaal

Plan, Homeland, segregated development and so on, is immediately rejected and condamned’.


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07 28. A. Karipose, in NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Administratief beampte, Notule van vergadering met

hoofmanne: Kaokoveld. 20 tot 23 Maart 1962, 24 March 1962, p 9.

29. NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4, Toesighoudende Beampte Ohopoho, Notule stamvergadering gehou te

Ohopoho op 15 November 1960 (29 April 1961).

30. NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Bantoesakekommissaris (T.J.B. van Niekerk), Spesiale stamverga-

dering van die Kaokoveld ter verwelkoming van sy edele die nuwe Kommissaris-generaal

mnr. J. De Wet te Ohopoho op 25 Mei 1970; NAN BOP 53 N8/5/4, Agricultural overseer

(G. Owen-Smith), Report on the buying of small stock for export from the Kaokoveld

during February and March 1969, 20 March 1969.

31. NAN BOP 7 N1/15/6, Toesighoudende Beampte Ohopoho, Kaokoveld (B. van Zyl),

Jaarverslag vir 1964, Bantoe administrasie en ontwikkeling. Kaokoveld Bantoe reservaat en

Zessfontein inboorling reservaat, undated, p 2, my translation and emphasis.

32. NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Bantoesakekommissaris Opuwo (B. van Zyl), Notule van vergader-

ing gehou te Opuwo op 13 November 1978, undated, p 9.

33. NAN BOP 18 N2/6/2, Dr J.S. de Villiers, B&O Mineral Exploration Company (proprietary)

Limited, Johannesburg to the Director Nature Conservation and Tourism, Windhoek, Northern

Kaokoveld Wilderness Area, 16 July 1971, pp 1-2.

34. NAN BOP 7 N1/15/6, Bantusakekommissaris Opuwa (B.J. van Zyl). Memorandum. Feite

Posisie van die Kaokoveld, undated.

35. Joel Tjihahurua, in NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/1, Suidwes-Afrika hoofdbantusakekommissaris se

toer deur Kaokoveld en Ovamboland: 1 tot 19 Junie 1965, Bijlaag A, p 9; NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/1, Toesighoudende beampte Ohopoho, Notule van vergadering gehou deur hoofdbantoe-

sakekomissaris te Kaoko-Otavi op 4 Junie 1965, undated, p 3.

36. NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Skakelbeampte W.F.J.J. van Zyl, Notule van vergadering gehou te

Ohopoho op 27 Januarie 1966, 28 January 1966.

37. NAN BOP 66 11/2/2, Komitee insake bestuursontwikkeling. Naturellevolke: Suidwesafrika:

verslag en aanbevelings: Damaraland, Kaokoveld Hereroland, 1968, p 9.

38. NAN BOP 7 N1/15/6, Bantusakekommissaris Opuwa (B.J. van Zyl), Memorandum. Feite

Posisie van die Kaokoveld, undated; NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/1, Notule van vergaderinge

gehou te Opuwo 13 November 1978, undated, my translation.

39. Langman Tjihahurua, in NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Bantusakekommissaris Ohopoho (B.J. van

Zyl), Vergadering gehou te Oseondekka op 14 Januarie 1968 (1968), pp 2-3, my translation.

40. NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, R.L. Eaton, Chief Bantu Affairs Commissioner Windhoek, cited in

W.F.J.J. van Zyl, Notule van vergadering gehou te Ohopoho op 27 Januarie 1966, 28

January 1966, p 3, my translation.

41. NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Toesighoudende beampte B. van Zyl, Vergadering te Ohopoho op 10

en 11 Januarie 1963, undated, p 3, my translation and emphasis.

42. Willem Hartley, in B.J. van Zyl, toesighoudende beampte, Vergadering gehou te Ohopoho op

10 en 11 Januarie 1963 (undated), p 2, my translation.

43. NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Toesighoudende Beampte Ohopoho (B.J. van Zyl), Notule van ver-

gadering gehou te Ohopoho op 21 Mei 1963 (28 June 1963), p 3.

44. NAN BOP 66 N11/2/2, Hoofbantusakekommissaris van SWA to Bantusakekommissaris

Ohopoho, Beleid in Bantoetuisland, 10/12/1969, my translation.

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