The Song of Chief Iipumbu” Christianity, Colonialism, and the Limits of Agency in North-Central Namibia

Religion & Theology 25 (2018) 258–297 Religion &Theology brill.com/rt Singing “The Song of Chief Iipumbu” Christianity, Colonialism, and the Limits of Agency in North-Central Namibia Emily D. Crews The University of Alabama [email protected] Abstract This essay addresses “The Song of Chief Iipumbu,” an oral poem performed by a woman named Nekwaya Loide Shikongo in North-Central Namibia in 1953. It argues that “The Song of Chief Iipumbu” acted as an astute analysis of local power relations, employ- ing scornful commentary on a deposed native chief as a cover for subtle but profound criticisms of European colonial institutions to which Shikongo, as a African Christian woman, was subject. Through a brief history of colonialism in Namibia and detailed attention to the linguistic and discursive webs woven by the poem’s author, this essay shows that Shikongo’s censure of oppressive authorities was not an attempt to under- mine the networks of power operating in colonial Namibia. Rather, it was an effort to affect acceptance of (or at least resignation to) her subordination in order to achieve the renewal of psychological and social equilibrium. Keywords colonialism – Owambo – Namibia – agency – performance – resistance – Christianity – missionaries On 23 December 1953, an Ovawambo woman named Nekwaya Loide Shikongo was invited to “narrate some of the customs of her tribe” for a visiting German anthropologist named Ernst Dammann.1 Instead of reciting the folk tales or histories often chosen for such events, Shikongo performed an outlawed genre 1 Heike Becker, “‘Let Me Come Tell You’: Loide Shikongo, the King, and Poetic License in Colo- nial Ovamboland,”HistoryandAnthropology 16, no. 2 (2005): 243, doi:10.1080/027572005001161 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/15743012-02503008Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 03:44:40PM via free access singing “the song of chief iipumbu” 259 of oral poetry called an oshitewo.2 Her poem was later named “The Song of Chief Iipumbu” (Appendix A). Threaded through its scornful commentary on a toppled Ovawambo king were subtle but profound criticisms of the primary authorities to which Shikongo was subject as a Christian African woman in a patriarchal colonial state.3 Through her poem Shikongo was a woman questioning men, a native questioning the colonial government, a Christian convert questioning the church in a forbidden ethnic art form, and an Ovawambo noble questioning a former king in European-inflected rhetoric. Shikongo and her remarkable oshitewo inspire a number of questions. In a time of widespread European violence against Ovawambo bodies and cultural traditions, what might have inspired Shikongo to risk her reputation, her liveli- hood, and even her physical wellbeing in order to level these critiques? What benefit might she have gained from her performance? How could she have escaped punishment for such inflammatory speech (as the historical record suggests she did)? And what can “The Song of Chief Iipumbu,” its dramatis per- sonae, and their histories teach scholars about how might research and write about the lives of people living under colonial rule? I attempt to answer the major questions of this essay in two parts. In part one, I provide an account of the historical and cultural context out of which Shikongo’s poem emerged and some specific details about the poem’s per- 62. Becker’s article on Shikongo has been invaluable to the development of this essay. It was the means by which I first discovered “The Song of Chief Iipumbu,” has served as my primary source for Shikongo’s biographical details, and has been a text to which I have repeatedly returned in an effort to think through my own ideas about Shikongo’s performance. I have attempted to expand on Becker’s work in this essay, attending more specifically to the why’s and how’s of “The Song of Chief Iipumbu” and their significance for scholarship on colonial resistance. 2 Shikongo’s performance was recorded, transcribed, and translated into German by Ernst Dammann, an Africanist anthropologist, linguist, and theologian. He named the poem “The Song of Chief Iipumbu” and included the transcription and translation in a 1975 compila- tion of Ovawambo poems, songs, and folktales that he published with a Swedish missionary to Owambo, Toivo E. Tirronen: Ernst Dammann and Toivo E. Tirronen, Ndonga-Anthologie, Afrika und Übersee 29, Folge der Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur Eingeborenen-Sprachen (Berlin: Verlag von Dietrich Reimer, 1975). 3 While it attends to some general history of Namibia (or [German] South-West Africa as it was called through the 1884–1915 period of German colonialism up till the end of South African administration of the country at independence on 21 March 1990), this essay is primarily concerned with the history of Owamboland (also Owambo, Ovamboland, or Ovambo), sit- uated in North-Central Namibia along the Angolan border. Owamboland is home to eight sub-groups of Ovawambo (or Aawambo) peoples, a broad ethnolinguistic group of Bantu origin. Most of the terms used herein are drawn from OshiNdonga, the dialect of the Ndonga group, although some are from other dialects (primarily OshiKwamnyama). Religion & Theology 25 (2018) 258–297 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 03:44:40PM via free access 260 crews former and its central characters. I use this framing in order to argue in part two that “The Song of Chief Iipumbu,” as many other pieces of African oral litera- ture before it, presented not simply a historical account of a deposed king but rather an astute account of the power relations of its place and time of origin. Through this account, delivered in an art form reserved for political commentary, Shikongo called into question the actions and policies of the prevailing authorities of her world. In doing so it is possible that she was attempting to construct an alternative narrative of local history that corresponded to her own experience and served as a means of release and restructuring as she negoti- ated the morass of life in colonial Owambo.4 Thus, her act of re-thinking and re-telling history could be understood as an effort to calm the psychic tensions that arose from her identification with often-conflicting ideologies and to affect a renewal of internal and social cohesion. Part Two will further argue that Shikongo’s audience accepts her violence to the status quo because it is unable to grasp the oshitewo’s truly insubordinate nature. Due to the skill with which she deploys critical semantic and literary strategies, Shikongo is able to offer a veiled but damning commentary on the very people with whom she spent her daily life and may have even shared the room during her performance. A close reading of portions of the poem will illu- minate the specific discursive webs Shikongo weaves to construct and disguise her critique. In its reading of the motivations and mechanics – and particularly the out- come – of Shikongo’s performance, this essay offers a broader prescription for scholarly work on gender, agency, performance, and colonial subjectivity. It asks that we be willing to consider the value of telling a tragic story so that we might better analyze the ways in which systems of power and oppression are produced and reproduced. PART ONE 1 The Long-Legged Ones Have Settled in the Fields “The Song of Chief Iipumbu” opens as follows: Wait; let me come to tell you Allow me to tell you 4 Leroy Vail and Landeg White, Power and the Praise Poem: Southern African Voices in History, Carter G. Woodson Institute Series in Black Studies (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1991). Religion & TheologyDownloaded 25 from (2018) Brill.com09/24/2021 258–297 03:44:40PM via free access singing “the song of chief iipumbu” 261 You, Iipumbu, wake up Wake up and see the initiation of men Wake up and see the initiation of men Look at the horrible things being done in the sky Wake up and see the airplane Nelomba, the plane, is moving up in the sky The long-legged ones have settled in the fields The long-legged ones are settling on the oshana5 It’s you they have been told about You, it’s you they have been told about You, Iipumbu, wake up Wake up and see the initiation of men Look at the horrible things being done at the brick building Wake up and see the initiation of men Wake up and see the initiation of men6 In these initial lines, Shikongo refers to some of the most historically significant institutions and events of North-Central Namibia in the nineteenth and twen- tieth centuries. The colonial state (“the long-legged ones”), the church (those who forbade the initiation of men), and Ovawambo leaders (King Iipumbu) are each implicated in Shikongo’s composition. Struggles for power between local and colonial authorities, South African military violence against Namibian vil- lagers, disappearing rituals, and the arrival of modern technology, amongst other occurrences, all appear in the opening stanzas of the poem. North-Central Namibia, also known as Owambo or Owamboland, is the primary location of the Ovawambo ethnic group, of which Shikongo and Chief Iipumbu yaShilongo were members.7 In the centuries preceding Shikongo’s 5 Oshana is the Oshiwambo word for the temporary lakes that fill Owamboland’s salt pans during the yearly rainy season and enrich the landscape after months of intense dryness. This word has become a colloquial word in local forms of English, German, and Afrikaans, often not translated from Oshiwambo when spoken in those languages. 6 Nekwaya Loide Shikongo, “The Song of Chief Iipumbu,” lines 1–23, Damman, 256. Andiy’utale, ndi mu lombwele/ andiya ndi mu lombwele/ ngoye Iipumbu, penduka/ penduk’, u tal’ etanda/ penduk’, u tal’ etanda/ tal’ iihuna tiyi longwa pombanda/ penduk’, u tale ondhila/ Nelomba tay’ ende pombanda/ gamugulu og’ itula omaana/ gamugulu otag’ itula oshaana/ ongoye ga lombwelwa/ ngoye, ongoye ga lombwelwa/ ngoye Iipumbu, penduka/ u penduk’, u tal’ etanda/ tal’ iihuna tiyi longwa pondjugo/ penduk’, u tal’ etanda/ penduk’, u tal’ etanda/ owe yi uvil’ ohenda/ owe yi uvil’ ohenda/ ngoye owe owe yi uvil’ ohenda / ngoye owe shi ininga mwene/ owe shi ininga mwene, owe shi ininga mwene.

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