The Ovambo in Context: the People, Their Land And
Chapter One THE OVAMBO IN CONTEXT: THE PEOPLE, THEIR LAND AND EUROPEAN COLONISATION The Ovambo People The Ovambo are part of the larger Southwestern Bantu group (Murdock 1959), and consist of 12 culturally related peoples - originally kingdoms - which occupy the international border regions of southern Angola and northern Namibia. In northern Namibia reside the Ovakwanyama, Ondonga, Ukwambi, Ongandjera, Ombalantu, Ukwaludhi, Uukolonkahdi and Eunda (Hahn 1928:1; Tuupainen 1970:12). The Ovakwanyama, Evale, Dombondola, Kafima and Ombadja1 (a divided kingdom under two different ruling clans), inhabit the southern Angolan region (Estermann 1976:51, 117) (see Map 1). Of the 12 peoples, the Ovakwanyama and the Ondonga (occupying eastern Ovamboland) are larger and more prosperous than the smaller Ovambo groups to the west. They are also better documented in the source literature (Loeb 1962:18). Demographic information for the Ovambo does exist, although it tends to be extremely scanty and fragmentary in character, and of somewhat questionable accuracy. For example, a population census was carried out by the South African Administration in the early 1920’s, and on the basis of the results Hahn (1928:2) estimates a total Ovambo population of 150,000 in northern Namibia, compris- ing 65,000 Ondonga, 55,000 Ovakwanyama, 8,000 Ukwambi, 6,100 Ukwaludhi, 5,100 Ombalantu and 600 Eunda. Some 50 years earlier, the Finnish missionary Peltola (quoted in Hiltunen 1986) numbered the pop- ulation at around 100,000, but Hiltunen does not mention his sources for this figure. According to Bruwer (1966), the Kwanyama population in 1960 was apparently 87,511 for the Namibian region, while in south- ern Angola they numbered around 200,000 (Rodin 1985:7).
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