Landscapes of Power

This article examines traditions of origin among riparian communities living in a semi-arid environment as a means of exploring how the environment and socio-political identities are mutually constituted. Within Namibian Kavango communities over the past half century, such traditions have fallen into two general categories: those of the royal clans (accepted by most residents) which state that they were the first to settle this section of the river, and those of other groups who claim that their own clans were the real first-comers but were later subordinated by the immigrant kings. Each group of traditions claims prior origins from similar riparian environments as a means of demonstrating how their group was able to tame the wilderness. Indeed, both the royalist and the indigenous traditions rest on shared assumptions about how ownership is established: through first-comer status and through creating ‘country’, or a place fit for human communities, out of ‘bush’ or wilderness. Autochthon–immigrant relationships were probably long fraught with tension here, as they were in other parts of southern Africa. Embedded within some of the indigenous traditions are hints of ‘charters’ establishing relations between the two groups. However, the colonial and postcolonial experiences have resulted in the erasure of autochthonous communities from royalist historical narratives. Chiefs needed to prove ownership of their communities to colonial officials seeking to impose a form of indirect rule, and colonial and postcolonial interventions into riparian communities affected all residents and broadened the definition of indigeneity to include all Kavango people. Indigenous traditions survive to some extent within the community, but they are increasingly irrelevant in a political landscape in which everyone has become an indigene at the mercy of strangers from afar and in which ownership is no longer properly exercised by anyone

Archaeology · Clan · Colonialism · Ethnology · Geography · Indigenous · Indirect rule · Pastoralism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · Tribe · Anthropology · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Law · South African History and Culture · Ecology

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