Universität zu Köln

Olwage, Elsemi (2022). Under the Leadwood Tree: Disputing land, mobility and belonging in post-colonial southern Kaoko. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

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Abstract

This thesis is based on a grazing and land dispute which took place in the semi-arid Kaoko, north-western Namibia, between 2014 to 2016. I draw on a situational analysis approach and engage with the dispute both as a diagnostic and emergent event. The dispute involved the in-migration of several Himba households and their livestock from northern into southern Kaoko where many in turn enact their belonging to a larger pan-Herero society. These in-migrations were coupled with an increase in drought-related mobilities since 2012. In focusing on the dispute this thesis asks how culturally-informed and historically-constituted colonial and post-colonial institutions of land governance were being locally refashioned and struggled over. Secondly, this thesis explores how persons navigated this legally pluralistic context and how this was shaping and being shaped by social practices of pastoral mobility. And lastly, this thesis critically explores the politics of belonging generated by the dispute. In doing so, I show how the post-independent legal power vested in ‘customary’ authorities and law in the governing of ‘communal’ lands was based on an assumed ethnographic fact of exclusive territories. Given the existence of plural authorities and overlapping territories in Kaoko, this generated a renewed competition for territorial reach, further fueled by the embeddedness of these struggles in long-standing factional and national party politics. These struggles opened up new avenues for mobility as competing authorities tried to amass followers and strengthen their claims. However, many of these pastoral mobilities were politically and socially contested. This thesis then details how residents, land-use communities and particular networked political groups navigated between ‘customary’ and ‘state’ law and authority in co-producing and contesting ‘communal’ tenure from the ground-up, and in a context where overlapping colonial and post-colonial rule and tenure had generated an institutional vacuum. Moreover, I illustrate the often-strong disjuncture which exists between official discourses of belonging and the everyday micro-politics of belonging and critically examine how group boundaries were becoming more rigidly defined, including between ‘Herero’ residents and ‘Himba’ newcomers.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Olwage, Elsemi UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-617869
Date:	3 June 2022
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Fächergruppe 4: Außereuropäische Sprachen, Kulturen und Gesellschaften > Institut für Ethnologie
Subjects:	Social sciences Law The arts Geography and history
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language Namibia English post-colonial English southern Kaoko English disputes UNSPECIFIED land UNSPECIFIED mobility UNSPECIFIED belonging UNSPECIFIED legal pluralism UNSPECIFIED Traditional Authorities UNSPECIFIED southern Africa UNSPECIFIED pastoralism UNSPECIFIED
Date of oral exam:	10 June 2020
Referee:	Name Academic Title Bollig, Michael Prof Dr van Wolputte, Steven Prof Dr Widlok, Thomas Prof Dr
Funders:	The German Research Foundation (DFG)
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/61786