Neither this nor that. Reflections on cattle, colonisation, and contradiction

Steven Van Wolputte, K.U.Leuven

Paper presented at the ASC seminar, March 8, Leiden. Draft, please do not quote

Table of contents

1 INTRODUCTION...... 2

2 SITUATING ...... 2

3 ARGUMENT...... 3

4 CATTLE AND COLONISATION...... 4

5 CASE: EPUNGA/ LUNGSICKNESS IN NORTH-WEST , 1920-PRESENT....6

6 DISCUSSION: THE PLACE OF AMBIGUITY IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS.. 15

7 CONCLUSIONS ...... 16

1 INTRODUCTION This presentation concentrates, first of all, on providing a social and political history of Namibia’s northern between the onset of South African colonial rule and now. The entry I take is livestock in general, and the successive epidemics of lungsickness (Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia, CBPP) in this border region in particular. Using this history I, secondly, want to investigate a more theoretical problem, namely the status of ambiguity in anthropological (and historical) analysis. The ethnographic and historical material presented here is part of a larger project that focuses on the social and political meaning and role of animals in north-western Namibia (see van Wolputte, 2004a, 2004b; van Wolputte & Verswijver 2004). Ultimately, this project wants to shed light on the way the inhabitants of the region make and unmake identity and belonging, for instance vis-à-vis the colonial past or vis-à-vis the Namibian state.

However, my goal in using historical material (such as oral accounts or archival stuff) is not to recount a linear, orthodox sequence of events. Rather, I concentrate on the uncertainties and ambiguities, on the hopes, suppositions, ambitions and expectations but also on the fears, disappointments and frustrations documented in the colonial archive and by popular lore. This is what Victor Turner (1988: 101-102) referred to as the subjunctive mood (as opposed to the indicative or, in a colonial context, imperative mood) that acts as a reference frame, a metapattern through which ‘the facts of experience can be viewed, reflected upon, and evaluated’ (Turner, 1988: 103; Whyte, 2002: 171-175). In that sense, this account is in line with the history of mentality advocated by for instance Jacques Le Goff (1972) and Aaron Gurevich (1988). In short: by providing a tribology (‘the study of surfaces in relative motion’, see van Wolputte, 2005) I want to sketch the friction between different groups of local actors (civil servants, officers, veterinarians, herders, labourers, headmen, and so on) in the northern Kunene Region. With regard to my use of archival material, this implies that I do not consider these documents, maps or letters as evidence of a chain of events, but rather as social and cultural texts situated within a particular, localised, configurations of political relationships.

2 SITUATING This contribution is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in the northern Kunene Region since 1995, and on archival research in the National Archives of Namibia. This northern Kunene Region, also known as Kaoko or , is a mountainous, arid borderland characterized by (the memory of) indirect rule and apartheid (1915-1990), civil war (1966-1988) and international conflict (1975-2002). Most people in the region belong to the wider group of OtjiHerero-speaking groups (Himba, Herero, Zemba, Ngambwe, Hakahona, …). A majority of them are pastoralists, meaning they raise, breed, and market livestock, in particular cattle. At the fringes: the Kunene borderland • Brief history of the region • Until 1940s: region administered by native affairs commissioner, Ondangwa, Ovamboland (Carl Hahn), two police posts on the border with Angola (Tshimhaka, Swartbooisdrift), the other in the South • In 1941: native affairs office and police post in (Ohopoho); starting as an administrative outpost, Opuwo became a garrison town in the 1970s; today: capital of the Kunene region. • Kaokoland in the margins of the state In general, Kaoko was regarded as a remote region, far away from the centre; it was a frontier (see Kopytoff 1977), deliberately maintained by, in this case, both the South African and the Portuguese regime. This implied that • Kaokoland – literally – was made into a bufferzone between ‘Africa’ (Angola) and the white-owned commercial farms in the Police Zone. o to keep the police zone free from cattle diseases, o to protect the white monopoly on the legal trade in cattle and beef. o a labour reserve (as happened in the north-central regions) • Fencing • Veterinary cordon fence: distinguish between northern communal areas and police zone. In colonial discourse: built to contain livestock disease; but also to contain people (labour) o In Kaoko: cattle free zones (north, East, South; desert and ocean in the west. • Borderland: until the end of the 1960s, the colonial presence was hampered by a lack of means and manpower

3 ARGUMENT Main idea: o ambiguity was a central element in the experience of colonialism: o the margins of the colonial state; o continuity (the state effect) experienced after independence o one reason being the uncertainty surrounding livestock and cattle. o Therefore, this uncertainty (subjunctivity) is/was not accidental. o like with every form of governance, there was a big discrepancy between, for instance, colonial discourse and practice. o Moreover, ‘the’ coloniser was itself divided into different factions, interest groups, and so on. To this one can add the divergent responses to colonial rule by different agents among the ‘colonized’, and the divergent reactions their actions provoked among colonial agents. o The point, however, is not to observe that contradictions and ambivalences existed; Observing these paradoxes is relatively easy. o building on the history and memory of lungsickness in the northern Kunene region, I argue that these contradictions (in the margin) were crucial for indirect rule and, later, apartheid, to ‘work.’ Also colonialism, also apartheid, needed to adapt to the logic of the situation. o Nonetheless, one may not forget that this process of adaptation was backed up by a formidable, and violent, government apparatus. In order to go beyond colonising dichotomies such as advanced and primitive, coloniser and colonized, it is adamant to regard the colonial encounter as a social process of adaptation and negotiation. However, this emphasis on process and interaction may not blind us for the (threat of) violence that to an important extent shaped this interaction. o Ambiguity as central element in experience of state o Remarks o ambiguity and contradiction vary with the level of analysis one applies: if one focuses on colonialism as a whole, it is not difficult to find anomalies and discrepancies. This has been one of the reasons to opt here for a ‘micro-physical’ (term is Foucault’s) analysis of colonial rule. o It is also erroneous to regard colonial discourse and practice as fragmented and contradictory only; they were partly integrated and coherent, if only because of the fact that all measures relied on a modernist vision of control and state intervention, and, most importantly perhaps, on the (threat of) violence. o For a good understanding: this does not imply a revisionist or aestheticizing attempt to soften the edges of a brutal, exploitative and abusive reality which – as more than ‘just’ a political system – inscribed itself in both habitus and hexis of ‘colonizer’ and ‘colonized’ (see, for example, Dedering 1993). On the contrary, it constitutes a first attempt, in line with my phenomenological approach, to understand and reconstruct (or re-imagine) colonial and postcolonial realities from a multiperspectival stance. My agenda is to remove the inhabitants of northern Namibia from their one-dimensional and stereotyped role of ‘victim’ and passive subject of colonization to a position that is able to account for their agency, re-imagination and re-appropriation in and of a encompassing, global, political reality (Apartheid) in which they found themselves, this in order to better understand their role and position in the postcolonial landscape (see Fanon 1986). This ‘victimization’ itself is a consequence of a paternalizing, Western power-discourse that denies multiplicity and erases counternarratives from memory. In other words, colonization had many sides and angles that hitherto, and despite recent and outstanding scholarship in the field, have remained underexposed.

4 CATTLE AND COLONISATION

4.1 Cattle and the colony

• Cattle is ambiguous: see Comaroff & Comaroff 1991): cattle as ancestral heritage (cattle is history) and cattle as commodity (Hutchinson 1996) • Cattle and the state effect (Mitchell): cattle was the main medium through which the state was experienced; the embodiment of the state effect (taxes, passes, permits, ‘destruction’ of infected herds, vaccination, branding, …) • Also nowadays: Cattle and the (post)colonial state; state is experienced through procedures aimed at, for instance, controlling livestock; current importance of the veterinary cordon fence in political discourse. • Cattle as bodies of power and change: o through cattle: modernist intervention at the margins on behalf of the colonial state; o through cattle: experience of state effect; (Epunga as embodiment of alienation). Through cattle: move in/ out of the margins of the state

4.2 Colonial livestock policy It would be erroneous to assume that colonial livestock policy was a coherent, orchestrated set of policy measures regarding cattle. Rather, it was a divergent set of measures taken in a wide variety of policy fields (such as tax law, labour law, development, …) that directly or indirectly targeted or involved livestock.

Other measures: - interdiction of trade (though uncertainty: sometimes prohibited, sometimes discouraged by the SWA, despite/ because veterinarians; owners could be fined, sometimes trespaazsing cattle was ‘destroyed’) - Cattle excess fees - water - development - Kaokoveld Tribal Fund

Keep in mind that these measures were made and implemented by different actors, each with different priorities and motives; veterinarians were, for instance, in favour of drastic measures and of a strong interdiction on cross-border trade; the successive Bantu affairs commissioners in Ondangwa and, later, Opuwo, however, were more lenient towards cross-border traffic of livestock because of political motives: they adapted differently to the ‘logic of the situation’ (Bourdieu)

In general: divided into five overlapping periods 1. dispossession and expropriation: subjugation; 2. development: upliftment 3. militarisation and civil conflict: gaining trust 4. drought and its aftermath (1978-1988) 5. Independence (1990-present).

4.3 Local responses Examples: • Tax evasion; • Labour evasion • Moving livestock around • …

So there was a big discrepancy between colonial discourse and practice, between the intentions and effects of colonial rule in north-western Namibia, not least because it met with the ‘unwillingness’ of the local population (Comaroff 1985; Mamdani, 1996). As one might expect, this resistance was the heaviest when it came to livestock, especially when animals came under threat of starvation or disease (or, usually, both). For the herders in the northern Kunene Region, especially lungsickness disease in particular came to incorporate the alienation and violence experienced during indirect rule and apartheid.

5 CASE: EPUNGA/ LUNGSICKNESS IN NORTH-WEST NAMIBIA, 1920- PRESENT I will illustrate the point made above by building on ethnographic and archival material from the Kunene region, north-west Namibia. Hodgson 2001: modernist order implied by vaccination

5.1 Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia (CBPP) Lungsickness (Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia, CBPP) is a bacterial infection of the … (cite archives, veterinary Surgeon Windhoek).

Note: in principle, vaccination is only recommended when the disease is endemic in an area; otherwise, vaccination may result in unwanted/ adverse results.

The sight of an afflicted animal must have been terrible. Jeffrey Peires (1989) for instance, attributed the Xhosa cattle killings (1856-1857) in part to the horrifying psychological effect the lungsickness epidemics must had on the Xhosa.

“Starting off as little more than a dry, husky cough, lung sickness slowly tightened its grip on the hapless beasts it destroyed, bringing to them a lingering and uniquely horrible death. The cough gradually increased in severity, forcing the animals to stretch forward with their front legs wide apart, their heads extended and their tongues protruding, gasping for air. Yellowish fluid crept over their longues which stuck to their ribs, and as the disease spread, the cattle putrefied from the inside out, becoming first constipated and then diarrheoatic. In their final agony, the beasts were unable to move or lie down at all. Their nostrils dilated for lack of air, their muzzles frothed with saliva until, unable to eat, they wasted away and died mere skeletons” (Peires, 1989: 70).

[More on Peires and Xhosa cattle killings]

Local descriptions of the disease’s symptoms emphasize the coughing and saliva, but especially the smell of putrefaction, also because, like humans and sheep, but other than goats or wild animals, cattle are said not to smell. This undoubtedly contributed to the psychological effect contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (epunga, in Otjiherero) must have had on the predominantly pastoral, cattle-breeding population of Kaoko, and probably was an underlying motive to sharpen resistance against colonial measures aimed at combating the disease: from the local point of view, the disease had been introduced by the state’s veterinarians. They and the colonial regime were blamed for spreading and maintaining the disease to ‘keep the lid closed’ (see below).1 In general, epunga came to be a metaphor and metonym for the colonial presence in the region. This presence was, as we will see, riddled with contradictions and uncertainty. Nowadays, epunga still plays an important role in the memory of colonial rule. Also, it has become an element in the way the contemporary, postcolonial, government is being perceived.

However, also for colonial agents the image of suffocating animals and the smell of putrefaction must have been horrible. For them, however, the sight of the disease (longsiekte in Afrikaans) legitimated, even necessitated their presence in the region, the draconian measures taken during the first lungsickness campaigns, and the cattle free zones that were established around the region.

[[possible thematic approach: • Quarantining and destruction of infected herds • Vaccines and vaccination • Administration’s methods vs local methods • Brands • Cattle free zones • Fences (smuggle) • Veterinarians • Administrators • Headmen • Other actors]]

5.2 Outbreaks In Kaoko: o Isolated outbreaks in 1925, 1931, 1938, 1954, 1963, 1968, and 1975. All these outbreaks were confined to the north-eastern corner of Kaoko (the vicinity of Ehomba, …), except in 1963. Then it broke out in the vicinity of Opuwo, in local perception because it was brought in through the offices of the Administration.

1 M. Kaneto, in 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. o Lungsickness: never endemic in Kaoko o Disease did not appear in south-western Angola. Reports in this sense were largely ignored by the SWAA

5.3 Epunga vs longsiekte This section takes a closer look at the successive outbreaks of lungsickness in north- west Namibia.

Hodgson 2001: slight return

In general terms, the approach taken by the South West African Administration evolved from shooting and quarantining during the first outbreaks in 1925 and 1931 to experimental attempts at ‘keeping the Kaokoveld clean’ in 1938 and afterwards. These experiments implied vaccination and large-scale branding and vaccination campaigns as new and modern techniques that had demonstrated their worth in other parts of southern Africa. Gradually, this experimental approach became routinized in the course of the 1960s. The fact that it became a standard procedure in a rapidly professionalizing veterinary services department, however, did not automatically mean it became more acceptable to local herders in Kaokoland. From 1938 until far into the 1970s, local herders regarded state veterinarians in particular as the personalization of apartheid and segregated development. This perception sharply contrasts the view of the veterinarians, who regarded vaccination as an efficient way of dealing with a dreadful disease, and who attributed local resistance and counterworks (Fardon 1995) in the first instance to conservatism and irrational traditionalism (the so-called cattle complex’) on behalf of the local population. This implied that especially veterinarians were quite distrustful towards local ways of dealing with the disease o ‘with meat’ o Using lymph from the heart of diseased animals and applying it to a wound inflicted just above the tail (in essence: the same as ‘modern’ vaccination); o Even if, later on, herders in northern Namibia turned to syringes to perform the operation; even when offering to pay for the material themselves, not accepted. o (reason: warding off modern veterinary expertise, see below)

1925 According to Carl Hahn: Lungsickness raised its head for the first time in 1925, after being introduced by the settlers van Zyl and Yssel, and afterwards through contact between Ovambo and Tjimba cattle, and through import of cattle form Angola.2

1931-1932 The next major outbreak was reported by Carl Hahn, during the drought of 1931- 1932. He instructed his officers to destroy all infected cattle without compensation and despite the fact that his measures had only little effect on the spread of the

2 NAN NAO 30 24/12 vol 1, Native Affairs Commisisoner, Ondangua, Ovamboland to the Secretary for South West Africa, Windhoek, lungsickness: Kaokoveld, 22/11/1935 disease, Hahn got credit for having confined the disease to the region’s north-eastern corner. At that time, shooting and quarantining were the principal means the administration had at its disposal. But these measures also provoked reaction: as Hahn noted (even though he had reasons of his own to exaggerate the threat and the difficulties he and his administration were facing), the ‘wild Ovatjimba natives’ were a very difficult lot because ‘they simply cannot resist moving their stock from place to place’3; they ‘conceal any new outbreaks instead of reporting them’.4

More on the 1932 outbreak.

1938 The events of 1931 and 1932 had traumatized the region. But the impact of the next outbreak of lung sickness on local politics and on the memory and experience of colonialism would be even more severe. Then, in 1938, large-scale livestock vaccination was practised for the first time in the northern Kunene Region. What appeared to be a new, modernist technology that had proven to be relatively efficient in the Cape and other parts of southern Africa also was a technology of power and subjection that throughout the subcontinent had shaken up the political stage. As Gilfoyle (2003) demonstrates, reactions to its introduction were not that straightforward: reception was dependent upon the experiences and aspirations of each group and subgroup involved.

Probably suspicious and afraid because of what happened six years before, many if not most African livestock owners refused to have their animals inoculated during the 1938 epidemic. Hereupon, Carl Hahn decided to bring in the military. On at least one instance he had some 800 head of cattle shot because, he claimed, they were infected with lung sickness.5 This indiscriminate and massive slaughter of both sick and healthy animals, together with the fact that many injected animals died because of the poor quality of the vaccine, constituted another traumatic event in the social memory of the region. It fuelled the fear and distrust of the region’s inhabitants vis- à-vis colonial livestock policy and especially towards the regime’s veterinarians. In colonial discourse, the veterinary services constituted a separate, clearly distinct domain of technical intervention. The local population, however, considered the veterinarians as the government’s cousins. This would become especially clear as the animal doctors would acquire a more prominent position on the political stage during the years of (segregated) development (1945-1968). Until years afterwards, the veterinary services were held responsible for the introduction and spread of the

3 NAN NAO 28 24/1/1, Native commissioner Ovamboland (Carl Hahn) to secretary for SWA, Lung sickness: Ehomba and Kauapehuri, 5 October 1931.

4 NAN NAO 28 24/11, Native commissioner Ondangua (C.H. Hahn), Lung sickness: Ehomba and

Kauapehuri. Letter to Secretary for South West Africa, 26 February 1932.

5 NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3 Bantusakekommissaris Ohopoho (B.J. van Zyl), Vergadering gehou te

Otjijanjasemo met OvaHimba hoofmanne op 12 Februarie 1968, (February) 1968, p. 2. disease in 1938. After that date, in local perception at least, government intervention always implied the risk that both healthy and sick animals were shot, or that they succumbed because and not despite of the vaccine. As people said, ‘Tjongola was angry when we refused to inoculate, so he introduced the disease to kill our animals.’6 By the administration, this campaign was considered to be a failure. o Experiment with field virus (+how to make) o experiment with virus from Kambete (Kenya), but expensive and without result o risks o may be African cattle is less resistant. o African methods of vaccination [picture lungsickness campaign] o Joint report by Dr. Zschokke and Van der Merwe o comparison draft/ final version: all references to resistance and unwillingness left out o later reports deemed this campaign a failure: o use of ‘field vaccin’; use of Kabete (Kenya) vaccine: costly (took several years to settle the bill), not effective (too strong)

1954-1956 Local distrust only grew after the SWA administration, during the 1954 outbreak, decided to combine its vaccination with large-scale branding campaigns. Brands were not uncommon. More on brands: • Remarkable is that brands were obligatory in the communal areas after 1923; only in 1931 was this obligation extended to the private farms in the Police Zone. • Punishment for faking brands • Brands before 1956

From the point of view of the colonial authorities, brands were a means to distinguish between vaccinated and non-vaccinated animals, hence to gain control over their owners; to check livestock movements; to discourage large livestock holdings; to prevent illegal trade and smuggle (especially across the ‘Red Line’ into the Police Zone); and to introduce private property and encourage cash.7 One of the ambitions, indeed, was to impose a limited number of animals per household and to

6 NAN BOP 1/15/4, Bantoesakekommissaris Ohopoho (B. Van Zyl), Notule van vergadering gehou te

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

7 Officer in Charge of Native Affairs, Ohopoho (A.W. Jonker), letter to Chief Native Commissioner,

Windhoek. Branding of native stock: Kaokoveld, 13 June 1954. introduce an excess fee –a strategy that, as in the rest of Namibia, proved to be a failure as ‘excess cattle is immediately transferred to a child or relative’.8

Brands, too, were unable to stop the illegal traffic of livestock across the well- guarded Red Line – which also suggests that European settlers must have been actively involved in smuggling cattle to the Police Zone. More importantly, people regarded government measures such as brands, vaccination and so on as attempts to control their herds and everything their animals represented. In local imagery, these attempts were symbolized by the ‘X’: the sign found on government cars and equipment that also featured in the brand used by the SWA administration to mark the (vaccinated) animals from the northern Kunene Region (‘XH’). By the time the administration decided to drop the ‘X’ the inoculation and branding campaign in northern Kunene had come to a halt because of the resistance offered especially by the inhabitants of the northern parts. The price the northern Kunene Region had to pay was that the livestock trade embargo was (even) sharpened, and that the administration refused to further issue export and import permits – which were difficult to obtain anyway.

o Reports on failure (resistance, vaccine used, branding)

1963 In the course of the following years, protest against apartheid rule grew louder and less implicit. As the region experienced another drought, between 1959 and 1963, elders in the Council pointed out that many waterholes were located in the cattle- free zone that was declared along the eastern border in 1959. Regularly, trespassing animals were shot.9 It was rumoured, moreover, that the government deliberately located new water points in the areas bordering the Game reserve ‘so that our animals would cross the border and could be shot and exterminated’.10 People also noticed that the cattle-free zones on the ‘white’ side of the border were smaller, and denounced the fact that European stock was allowed emergency grazing in the Etosha Game Reserve and even in the cattle-free zones in the northern Kunene

8 NAN BOP 53 N8/5/1, Kantoor van die Hoofnaturellesakekommissaris, SWA Naturellesake omsendbrief nr. 15 van 1957 gedateer 31 December 1957, 31 December 1957 (my translation).

9 NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/1 Toesighoudende Beampte Ohopoho, Kaokoveld (B.J. Van Zyl), Vergadering te Ruacana gehou op 16 februarie 1959, 18 February 1959; NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/1, Toesighoudende

Beampte(B.J. Van Zyl), Vergadering met Herero hoofmanne en inwoners te Otjikekua op 25 julie

1961, 7 August 1961.

10 Joel Tjihaharua, in NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3/, Administratieve Beampte Ohopoho, Kaokoveld (B.J.

Marais), Notule van vergadering met hoofmanne: Kaokoveld: 20 tot 23 maart 1962, 24 March 1962, p.

11. Region whereas the limitations on stock movements were much more strictly enforced for African-owned animals. The latter were never allowed to move outside the fence, and only very sporadically they were permitted into the cattle-free zones of Kunene North.

Nevertheless, rather than ‘politics’ (in the specific sense outlined by apartheid discourse, namely inequality and segregation), local resentment and resistance mainly targeted the state veterinarians (‘doctors’ or ‘Bantu cattle inspectors’ as one of the elders called them).11 On many occasions from 1938 to 1975 they were chased away from the herds, accused as they were of not dealing with the disease at all; of – instead – perpetuating the disease because they gained a living from it; of not doing their job (since outbreaks were reported by the local population); and of keeping the gates closed thus killing both animals and the people who depended on them. Despite their continuous inspections the ‘doctors’ had been unable to find indications of lung sickness (defined as ‘a yesterday’s disease’). Cattle inspections, the Council elders claimed, were a waste: animals were starving, and even if the embargo was ended immediately, all of them would have died of hunger and thirst before they could be exported. At a meeting in January 1963, they told the Officer- in-Charge to ‘take away these cattle inspectors and let us stay as we did in the past. We will go and steal in Angola (...). Time and cattle inspections have proven there is no disease.’12

In May 1963 also this drought ended in an outbreak of lung sickness. This time, its first victims were in the vicinity of Opuwo (in Omuhiva and Ehumbameo). For the Council elders, it was therefore clear that the disease had entered the region ‘via the offices of the Commissioner’.13 During a meeting on May 15 they turned down the Commissioner’s request for cooperation during the pending vaccination campaign, arguing that ever since 1938, the government had promised to allow the export of cattle (‘like in the days of old’) should they vaccinate and prevent the spread of lung sickness. But for 25 years the gates had remained closed. The elders criticized the administration for citing outbreaks even outside the northern Kunene region in order to forbid the export of their animals. On different meetings in the course of May 1963, they repeated that even if the government vaccinated their animals they still died and that they did not want a vaccine that killed. Moreover, because of the drought, to vaccinate now was useless since the animals were too meagre to sell. For the elders, there was no difference between an animal that was shot and one that died of lung sickness. In their eyes, colonial policy was responsible for overstocking

11 Joel Tjihahurua, in NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Toesighoudende Beampte Ohopoho, Kaokoveld (B. Van

Zyl), Vergadering te Ohopoho op 10 en 11 januarie 1963, undated.

12 NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Toesighoudende Beampte Ohopoho, Kaokoveld (B.J. Van Zyl), Vergadering te Ohopoho op 10 en 11 januarie 1963, undated, p. 2-5, my translation.

13 Willem Hartley, in NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Toesighoudende Beampte Ohopoho, Kaokoveld (B.J. Van

Zyl), Notule van vergadering gehou 15 tot 18 mei 1963, undated, p. 1, my translation. and for the fact there was not enough water and grass to feed each animal. Instead they proposed that the SWA administration allow them to vaccinate their animals themselves (‘with meat’, a local method by which healthy animals were given a small piece of the lungs of an infected one) or else allow them to watch their animals die. Then at least they could eat their meat and drink their milk.14 So the elders reversed the administration’s argument: they claimed that since they were not allowed to export or trade their animals it was senseless and even dangerous for the animals to be vaccinated.

During that meeting in May 1963 tensions reached a climax and the Bantu Affairs Commissioner in Opuwo, Ben van Zyl, called in the help of Dr. J.S. Watt, the then Director of Agriculture. He was flown in from Windhoek to cool things down and convince the region (or at least the Council) of the gravity of the situation and the necessity of a large-scale vaccination campaign.

Dr. Watt called together the elders on May 21. Himself a veterinarian, he prided himself in his experience in Kaokoland as he had led the 1938 vaccination campaign. But this only made things worse. Willem Hartley, one of the Council elders, accused the SWA Director of Agriculture of personally having introduced and 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”.15

Hartley’s words met with much approval and Dr. Watt had to return to Windhoek empty-handed, as he could not meet the elders’ main demand: a guarantee that the embargo be lifted should they allow their herds to be vaccinated. Probably the elders realized that their lung-sick cattle gave them a certain – if very limited – form of power vis-à-vis the colonial administration. The administration, in the first instance, had to defend the interests of the farmers further south. Their precarious economic position was threatened, it seemed, by the outbreaks in Kunene North. Then, at that stage of apartheid rule, with the limited means the Commissioner’s Office in Opuwo had at its disposal, the cooperation by the Council elders was maybe not indispensable; but it was very needed to keep lung sickness from afflicting the white- owned animals south of the so-called Red Line.

In his 1964 annual report the Bantu Affairs Commissioner remarked that by now all the inhabitants of the Kaokoveld were fiercely opposing inoculation, and that the

14 Joel Tjihahurua in NAN BOP 5 N1/15/4/3, Toesighoudende Beampte Ohopoho, Kaokoveld (B. Van

Zyl), Notule van vergadering gehou te Ohopoho op 21 mei 1963, 28 June 28 1963, p. 7.

15 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. ‘Herero have turned to a general boycott of everything, even if the development is to their advantage’.16 Lungsickness, therefore, not only heralded the difficulties of a so- called traditional society in its confrontation with a regime of violent exploitation. It also signified the crisis and laid bare the contradictions of this regime in its confrontation with a ‘different’ subjectivity. In this, it is remarkable how contemporary the argumentation of these so-called traditional elders was, as they used the colonial discourse on development or, for example, on ethnicity, to elude colonial rule (see van Wolputte, 2004a, b).

1968 A similar scenario repeated itself five years later, in 1968. The embargo had not been lifted and government inspection and vaccination had been made impossible; the half-hearted attempts by the administration to provide an outlet for surplus cattle and smallstock and to ease resistance in Kaokoland remained unsuccessful. For the ‘bush’ auctions organized by the government no sellers showed up along the roads where the trucks were passing. As is obvious from the reports by the Agriculture Department, people judged the price offered by the Bantoe Beleggingskorporasie (BBK, the Bantu Investment Cooperation, also referred to as the government’s brother by the local population) as way too low, also because they got better prices on the (both ‘black’ and ‘white’) informal market.17 But this lack of success the administration attributed to the long distances in Kaokoland, and not to the economic calculus of people who until the 1990s were still considered, by some, to be ‘innumerate’ (Crandall, 1992: 229fn). These auctions, moreover, were organized not to to, but to please the United Nations:

1975 • Fission in tribal council between the ‘small group’ wanting to inoculate their cattle vs ‘large group’ opposed to it • Exploitation of fission by administration

Present • Isolated outbreaks in 1995 • Experienced continuity • Local perception on lungsickness and ‘politics’ (politika) • Veterinary perspective on lungsickness (import European Union) • Red line as political issue

16 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.

17 NAN BOP 53 N8/5/4, agricultural overseer (G. Owen-Smith), Report on the buying of smallstock for export from the Kaokoveld during February and March, 1969, 20 March 1969. 6 DISCUSSION: THE PLACE OF AMBIGUITY IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

6.1 introduction Max Gluckmann o Can ambiguity be approached analytically, or is it something that defies analysis? o One of the few systematic analyses of the notion of ambiguity is offered by Max Gluckmann, in his analysis of the judicial process among the Barotse (Lozi) of Zambia (northern Rhodesia). Gluckmann regarded the ambiguity of crucial notions such as ‘law’ or ‘justice’ as crucial to the functioning of the judicial system, whether among the Barotse or among British judges. o Elasticity and multiplicity of legal concepts o It would be tempting to apply Gluchmann’s method and concepts to South African colonial discourse. o For instance development: o Progress (general, also ambiguous) o Material development o Administrative development o In SWA political discourse: always ‘segregated development’ (is what provides degree of coherence)

o Problem: such an analysis would only be able to focus on colonial discourse by colonial agents, not on the discourse waged by local elders, councillors, let alone common herders, labourers whose voice is virtually absent in the archives. Moreover, the focus of my research is not colonial discourse as such, but the interaction between various local agents, be them administrators, policemen, headmen, councillors, traders, and so on.

Victor Turner (1988, the anthropology of performance): uncertainty and subjunctivity

Semantic anthropology and the third truth value - epistemological: western logic is based on logic of exclusion; no vocabulary to indicate ‘sameness’ or ‘inclusion’ - Semantic anthropology: dyadid and triadic logic (structuralism; post-structuralism; le demon de l’analogie, Pierre Bourdieu) (see Jacobson-Widding 1991).

Postmodern approaches - phenomenological and postmodern approaches: emphasis on ‘problems of meaning’ (Flax 1991, Hutchinson 1996): emphasis on contradiction, paradox, … - yet: despite lipservice: no systematic analysis of useability of ‘ambiguity’ Fernandez & Huber; Lambek & Antze: the anthropology of irony The anthropology of the state State and its margins

6.2 The ambiguity of colonialism

• The margins of the state; kaoko as a border region • Double-faced nature of the state • Thematic recapitulation [[?]] • Continuity of the state effect wrt lungsickness and cattle • Ambiguity/uncertainty and subjectivity • Ambiguity and modernism

7 CONCLUSIONS

8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

9 REFERENCES