Authors
New at BAB: “Land is Life, Conservancy is Life.”
Land is Life, Conservancy is Life.” The San and the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy, Tsumkwe District West, Namibia by Cameron Welch. Basel: Basler Afrika Biliographien
Community-based natural resource management or CBNRM, with its attention to community participation, its call for de-centralization of rights to local resource users through democratic and equitable structures, and its potential to deliver benefits to local livelihoods and national conservation interests now forms the predominant strategy for rural development in the communal areas of Namibia. This framework is presumed by the Namibian government and international bodies concerned with conservation and development to deliver measurable and positive economic, environmental, and political results for the State and all of its citizens. CBNRM has taken on particular form and significance for the San in Namibia.
Focusing on the experiences of a group of predominantly San communities in the North-East of Namibia, the historical and contemporary situations of the San of the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy and their engagement with CBNRM are examined. In looking to the future, this work seeks to understand what mechanisms and institutions give indigenous groups, such as the San, a foothold in the State and an avenue through which to navigate and shape their own modernity(ies). This work explores the modalities through which conservation comes together with interests of indigenous groups and how these groups deploy leverage gained through invoking conservation as discourse and practice.
Land is Life, Conservancy is Life.” The San and the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy, Tsumkwe District West, Namibia is available in print (ISBN 978-3-906927-02-2) or as e-book (ISBN 978-3-906927-03-9) from Basel Afrika Bibliographien (see https://baslerafrika.ch/product/land-is-life/).
BAB does it again…
The Basler Afrika Bibliographien in Basel just released a another batch of Namibia-focused publications. Check them out below, or on http://baslerafrika.ch/verlag/publikationen-shop/. There you can also have a look at their 2017 catalogue.
Ulla Dentlinger, Where are you from? ‘Playing White’ under Apartheid
Ulla Dentlinger’s life history begins in poor, rural apartheid Namibia of the early 1950s. Growing up in the Rehoboth Baster territory, she early on discovers that her parents are not prone to reminisce about their family’s past. The most mundane information about their background is guarded much like a state secret. As a child, she begins to panic at being asked the question so normal to others: Where are you from? Only in later years it dawns on her that she had to be … <<read more>>
Jennifer Hays, Owners of Learning. Education, Rights and the Nyae Nyae Village Schools in Namibia
This book describes the Nyae Nyae Village Schools, an innovative and unique mother-tongue education initiative set in north-eastern Namibia. Inspired by the optimism of Independence, the project was designed in close consultation with the Ju|’hoansi community in the early 1990s. Drawing upon their traditional knowledge transmission strategies, and initiated in a supportive political environment, the project exemplified ‘best practice’. During the two decades that have followed, the Village Schools have transitioned from a donor-supported ‘project’ to government schools, and have received much attention and… <read more>
Ellen Ndeshi Namhila, Native Estates Records in Namibia: Mobility across Colonial Boundaries
In many instances, the colonial state has left a strong imprint on the postcolonial archive. In the National Archives of Namibia (NAN), for instance, it is difficult to locate pre-independence person-related records of the black majority, while the same type of records of their light-skinned compatriots are easily accessible. This lecture discusses a substantial corpus of about 11 000 so-called “Native Estates” files which previously were not accessible through the existing finding aids. What is the research potential of these formerly neglected and untouched records, in particular regarding the social history of contract … <read more>
Maano Ramutsindela, Giorgio Miescher, Melanie Boehi (eds.) The Politics of Nature and Science in Southern Africa
This book brings together recent and ongoing empirical studies to examine two relational kinds of politics, namely, the politics of nature, i.e. how nature conservation projects are sites on which power relations play out, and the politics of the scientific study of nature. These are discussed in their historical and present contexts, and at specific sites on which particular human-environment relations… <read on>
Vilho Amukwaya Shigwedha, The Aftermath of the Cassinga Massacre. Survivors, Deniers and Injustices
It took the former South African Defence Force (SADF) less than four hours to kill more than eight hundred Namibian refugees at Cassinga on May 4, 1978. Thousands of survivors were left with irreparable physical and emotional injuries. The unhealed trauma of Cassinga, a Namibian civilian camp in southern Angola before the massacre, is beyond the worst that the victims of the attack experienced on the ground. Unacceptable layers of pain and suffering continue to grow and multiply … <read on>
Namibia at 25.
Special Issue (vol 18) of the Journal of Namibian Studies
In this special issue, edited
by Steven Van Wolputte and John Friedman, thirteen experts from various disciplines reflect on 25 years of Independence. Apart from the editors’ introduction, contributions are from the hands of Heike Becker, Toni Hancox, Henning Melber, Karine Nuulimba; Julie L. Taylor, Immolatrix L. Geingos-Onuegbu; Retha-Louise Hofmeyr, Robert Gordon; Pandu Hailonga van Dijk and Michael Mulunga. See the Journal’s website…
Online Exhibition: (Not) Remembering Namibia
South Africa had a long and frequently traumatic colonial relationship with Namibia, but this seems little remembered in contemporary South Africa. Namibia became a South African protectorate after World War I, and subsequently apartheid’s ‘fifth province’, winning its Independence only in 1990, after a cruel and highly censored war that lasted more than 20 years.
(Not) Remembering Namibia, curated by Julie Taylor, draws on the photographic archive and considers its role in remembering, not remembering, and reconfiguring historical moments, in individual and collective narratives and silences. (Not) Remembering Namibia is part of the Guns & Rain culture spot that offers contemporary fine art online by emerging artists from Africa.
Photographs are the ongoing sites of social encounters, in which archivists, historians and curators are implicated. This online exhibition explores the ways in which archival and documentary photographs have been appropriated by contemporary artists (John Muafangejo, Christo Doherty and Erik Schnack) to ask fresh questions and build new layers of meaning around these images.
This exhibition is also part of a collectively curated group exhibition by postgraduate students in the Wits History of Art programme. The full set of curating projects can be found at http://hartcurating.wits.ac.za.
From the Vaults: Political cartooning. An interview with Dudley Viall
In July 2012, Bernard Moore and Matthew Ecker interviewed cartoonist about his time in the SWA Military, his anti-apartheid activism, and his use of posters and political cartoons to further the cause. The interview is on YouTube, in the Namibia Documentary Series. Watch it now…
Usakos – Photographs Beyond Ruins. The Old Location Albums 1920s-1960s
The BAB publishing house has issued an exhibition catalogue for the exhibition “Photographs Beyond Ruins”. This exhibition focuses on a central Namibian town, Usakos. The town’s history is linked to the development of the South African railway system in Namibia, which brought remarkable prosperity to Usakos in the 1940s and 1950s but which caused a major socio-economic decline in the early 1960s. During this time, the South African apartheid administration decided to transform the town according to racial segregation and apartheid urban planning by moving the African population out of their residential area into newly built, racially and ethnically segregated townships which were situated on the town’s outskirts.
The exhibition chooses a particular point in the history of colonialism and apartheid and of community building and forced removals. It places at its centre stage three private archives of photographic collections assembled over several decades by four women residents of Usakos. These photographs constitute personal albums, subjective narratives and aesthetic interventions in the course of a history that denied them visibility and voice as women, residents, citizens and human beings.
Representing the social, cultural and aesthetic variety of life in the ‘old location’ (‘ou lokasie’), the photographs inform the ways in which people relate to them today: with pride and a deep sense of nostalgia and loss. It is this reflection of the past in the present that characterises Paul Grendon’s photographs and which complements the display of the Usakos old location albums. Here, Usakos’ landscape emerges as a palimpsest of scar tissue: a place and space of colonial ruination, interwoven with histories and memories, silences and voices, absences and presences of those who lived and those who continue to make a living there.
This full-colour exhibition catalogue is a joint work by two historians (Giorgio Miescher and Lorena Rizzo), an exhibition curator (Tina Smith) and a photographer (Paul Grendon).
The exhibition was already on display in Paris in July and will be exhibited in Basel, Switzerland from 28 August until 25 September 2015.
The Namibian is telling it like it is, for thirty years already…
The Namibian celebrated its 30th anniversary on 30 August. The Supplement compiled for the occasion is now online at http://www.namibian.com.na/index.php?section=5.
Afrika Süd: Schwerpunkt Namibia
The latest April issue (Volume 44, 2) of the Journal Afrika Süd focuses on 25 years of Namibian Independence, and contains contributions (in German) by, among others Hennig Melber, Liz Frank, Guenay Ulutuncok, Manfred Lohmeier and many others. Check it out on http://www.issa-bonn.org/afsued.htm.
The journal concentrates on the member countries of the the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC)
BOOK LAUNCH: Gerhard Tötemeyer’s autobiography
Gerhard Tötemeyer (2015)
Das Werden und Wirken eines Rebellen – Autobiographische und historische Notizen eines Deutsch-Namibiers. Windhoek: Kuiseb Verlag, 406p.
On June 10, the Namibian Scientific Society (Kuiseb Verlag) launches the autobiography of Gerhard Tötemeyer’s -one of Namibia’s foremost scholars and politicians: Das Werden und Wirken eines Rebellen – Autobiographische und historische Notizen eines Deutsch-Namibiers.(“The becoming and life of a rebel – Autobiographical and historical notes of a German-Namibian”). Hon. Minister of Poverty Alleviation Dr. Z. Kameeta will deliver the launching speech. Venue: June 10 2015, 19.00h, Namibia Scientific Society, 110 Robert Mugabe Avenue, Windhoek.
Cameroon-Company in German Southwest Africa
Almost a year ago The Atlantic published a piece by Allan Taylor on World War I in Photos: Global conflict. Among the pictures this one, captioned “Cameroon-Company in German Southwest Africa during Word War I. (Koloniales Bildarchiv, Universitatsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main)“. A hidden history of Cameroonian forces in Namibia. Or Tanzanian troops. And conversely: did Namibians die in Tanzania, or in Flanders Fields? >>>to the original.
Latest Posts »
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Online Exhibition: (Not) Remembering Namibia
South Africa had a long and frequently traumatic colonial relationship with Namibia, but this seems little remembered in contemporary South Africa. Namibia became a South…
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From the Vaults: Political cartooning. An interview with Dudley Viall
In July 2012, Bernard Moore and Matthew Ecker interviewed cartoonist about his time in the SWA Military, his anti-apartheid activism, and his use of posters…
-
Cameroon-Company in German Southwest Africa
Almost a year ago The Atlantic published a piece by Allan Taylor on World War I in Photos: Global conflict. Among the pictures this one,…
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Video: Namibia Doc
Bernard Moore (History department, Michigan State University, USA) together with his colleague Matthew Ecker produced a documentary film on the Namibian Liberation Struggle. The first…
namibian studies network 