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Chiefs, Policing, and Vigilantes: “Cleaning Up” the Caprivi Borderland of Namibia

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Chiefs, Policing, and Vigilantes: “Cleaning Up” the Caprivi Borderland of Namibia BUUR_Ch03.qxd 31/5/07 8:48 PM Page 79 CHAPTER 3 Chiefs, Policing, and Vigilantes: “Cleaning Up” the Caprivi Borderland of Namibia Wolfgang Zeller Introduction Scholars examining practices of territorial control and administrative action in sub-Saharan Africa have in recent years drawn attention to the analytical problems of locating their proponents unambiguously within or outside the realm of the state (Lund 2001; Englebert 2002; Nugent 2002; Chabal and Daloz 1999; Bayart et al. 1999). This chapter analyzes situations in which state practices intersect with non- state practices in the sense of the state- (and donor-)sponsored out- sourcing of policing functions to chiefs and vigilantes, where chiefs act as lower-tier representatives of state authority. My point of departure is an administrative reform introduced by the Namibian Minister of Home Affairs, Jerry Ekandjo, in August 2002, which took place in the town Bukalo in Namibia’s northeastern Caprivi Region. Bukalo is the residence of the chief of the Subiya people and his khuta (Silozi, council of chiefs and advisors).1 Before an audience of several hundred Subiya and their indunas (Silozi, chief or headman), the minister announced two aspects of the reform that had consequences for policing the border with Zambia. First, Namibian men from the border area were to be trained and deployed to patrol the border as “police reservists,” locally referred to as “vigilantes,” Secondly, Namibian police were going to conduct a “clean-up” of the entire Caprivi Region, during which all citizens of BUUR_Ch03.qxd 31/5/07 8:48 PM Page 80 80 WOLFGANG ZELLER Zambia living and working permanently or part-time in Caprivi without legal documents would be rounded up, arrested, and deported back to Zambia. To the audience at Bukalo the reform had a bitter-sweet taste. On the one hand, it held out the promise of possible future employment for young Namibian men in the police force, as well as of protection for private property against suspected Zambian (cattle) thieves. On the other hand, it threatened to put an end to the wide- spread practice by Namibian borderland residents of employing illegal Zambian immigrants as cheap cattle-herders and housemaids. This chapter traces the maneuvers of selected individuals who, indi- vidually or collectively, sought to limit the disadvantages and maxi- mize the opportunities arising from the attempted reform. The results bear little resemblance to the outcome officially intended by the reform. While this is hardly surprising, a number of rewarding insights into the nature and practice of authority and citizenship at the mar- gins of the Namibian state become clear. The Namibian government’s police reform can be regarded as an attempt to assert sovereignty over a peripheral part of the state territory through producing distinctions between citizens and noncitizens and those who officially represent the state and those who do not. As illustrated, the reform largely failed to achieve its official goals because key state tools such as identity doc- uments and the security forces’ capacity to regulate the movement of people were missing or not sufficiently available. However, if we consider the outcomes of the reform beyond its apparent failure, we discover a process in which official policy was renegotiated and a specific kind of political subjectivity in the border- land remade. My case study of the borderland police reform serves as a prism through which I examine the relationship between the Namibian state and local traditional authorities in a setting in which chiefs and vigilantes are important actors. The study therefore attests to the vernacular imagination of the Namibian state and the internal contestation of state sovereignty in its borderlands. Everyday Policing and Chiefs in Namibia In the absence of strong state monopolies on organized legitimate violence, security is presently a major growth business in southern Africa. Its fragmented spectrum includes various kinds of commercial private security enterprises, community participation, and the private interests of members of the police force (Hills 2000: 166). Community policing emerged in the United States and United Kingdom during the BUUR_Ch03.qxd 31/5/07 8:48 PM Page 81 CHIEFS, POLICING, AND VIGILANTES 81 1980s aimed at controlling crime effectively by outsourcing policing functions to private citizen groups (ibid.: 171). Community policing has been exported to Africa in recent years “as part of a package of measures ostensibly designed to improve security in contexts where crime is perceived to be out of control” (Ruteere and Pommerole 2003: 587–88). Brogden (2004: 637) notes that community policing is actively promoted by specialized Western donor agencies selling products such as policing strategies, security advice, training courses, and materials to African and South Asian governments. These come with the promise of low-cost solutions for establishing public order, serving human rights, and providing solutions to a host of other complex social issues. However, African governments are not entirely new to the idea of community policing or “everyday policing,” as Buur and Jensen (2004: 146) more inclusively call it, thanks to direct and indirect colo- nial rule (see Mamdani 1996). The literature on everyday policing occasionally makes brief references to the role of traditional authori- ties or chiefs, but few authors have examined the triangle of state authority, chiefs, and everyday policing more explicitly.2 The condi- tions under which chiefs become involved in community policing are the same as those that underlie their persistent relevance in other fields of governance in Africa, namely the difficulty centralized states have in extending their power into geographical, temporal, or cultural fron- tier zones where state authority is viewed as absent, ineffective, or cor- rupt (Englebert 2002; Kyed and Buur 2006; Buur and Kyed 2006; Koelble 2005; Gould forthcoming 2007; see also the introduction to Please update this volume). Cooperation and mutual cooptation have characterized the rela- tionship between chiefs and both the colonial and postcolonial state in Namibia. As in South Africa, the apartheid authorities were particu- larly skillful in extending the reach of their power through the “tra- ditional leaders” they chose to do business with. The formalization of this kind of governance took a major leap forward from the mid- 1960s onward when the Bantustan concept was put into practice in South West Africa, including the Caprivi Strip. Here it further cemented the arrangements originally introduced by a German offi- cer, Kurt Streitwolf, in 1909. Streitwolf successfully reappropriated existing institutions and practices that formed part of the precolonial Lozi Empire but severed these from the Lozi rulers by establishing two separate chieftaincies with equal status, those of the Fwe and the Subiya. Under his supervision two paramount chiefs were selected by existing local elites and then formally recognized by the German BUUR_Ch03.qxd 31/5/07 8:48 PM Page 82 82 WOLFGANG ZELLER resident. Streitwolf openly referred to the British system of indirect rule as his main source of inspiration (Streitwolf 1911). He regarded this as the way forward in the handling of native affairs after the disas- trous and costly war of genocide against the Herero and Nama of 1904–1906. The dual chieftaincy system survived the following decades and was further formalized in 1972 with the establishment of a Legislative Council and a Caprivi Bantustan government in 1976. With regula- tions for a rotating chairmanship, the two paramount chiefs headed an elaborate hierarchy of regional and local sub-chiefs. Their regulatory powers were considerable and included natural resources, land alloca- tion, tax collection, and some aspects of criminal justice. Their formal autonomy, however, was in reality tightly constrained by the apartheid authorities. The liberation movement, the South West African People’s Organization or SWAPO, accordingly denounced the chiefs as col- laborators in cahoots with the white minority regime. However, although incidents of violence and intimidation occurred, there were no large-scale organized campaigns against the chiefs by SWAPO. In the run up to independence, SWAPO toned down its official antichief rhetoric, and in 1989 and 1990 the future ruling party participated in the drafting of a constitution that included the legal foundation for the present role of traditional authorities in Namibia. Article 66 acknowledges customary law in force as legally valid. Although customary law cannot be amended and is therefore de facto inferior to statutory law (d’Engelbronner-Kolff 1996), several acts of parliament passed since independence have firmly established the formal role of traditional authorities in the day-to-day governance of Namibia, in particular in the rural areas of the former apartheid home- lands. Their legally regulated functions now go well beyond the pro- motion of “peace and welfare” among the members of “traditional communities” in a hazily defined realm of “custom” (Traditional Authorities Act of 2000 section 3(1)). The Act currently in place expands considerably the rights and duties of traditional authorities laid down in its 1995 predecessor. It provides for the reimbursement of chiefs and twelve of their advisors through public funds. It also ascribes members of traditional authori- ties the role to “assist the Namibian police . in the prevention and investigation
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