Steven Van Wolputte

Cattle Works: Livestock Policy, Apartheid and Development in Northwest Namibia, c 1920–1980

Segregated development. On 3 September 1969 M.C. Botha (the then South African Minister of Bantu-Administration and Development) delivered a speech on the political development of Bantu ‘homelands’. According to Botha, segregated development (afsonderlike ontwikkeling) guaranteed each culture in South Africa independence and self-governance: it warranted that each could develop its own collision-free orbit in the constellation of peoples in southern Africa. Botha linked development to administration, and identified state with culture. Nevertheless, the centre around which each culture was supposed to orbit remained conspicuously absent in his speech: while the latter emphasised civility (burgerskap) it also, implicitly, denied the rights associated with citizenship to the majority of the South (West) African population (see Mamdani 1996).

The interdependence of mobility and faith–an introduction

The introduction to the special issue draws together theoretical and analytical strands that run through the four papers. As the four papers illustrate, devotion and mobility, belief and trajectory, go hand in hand. The main argument is that the religious movements discussed in this special issue are not local phenomena attempting to transcend fixed boundaries: they are transcendence, in the sense that they always are (and have been) part of the border land between global and vernacular, modern and traditional. They are not at the border: they are the border. Concepts such as mobility, postcoloniality and translocality are being discussed, which in turn lead to a problematization of concepts such as “Africa” and “Diaspora”. A second strand that combines the various papers is that trajectories along which religious practitioners travel are not nicely established routes, rather these are constantly “interrupted”; travellers move between localities, hopping from one hub to another. Such an approach allows a focus on networks and concrete interactions; and it destabilizes the assumed homogenous tracts along which Africans (or Pentecostalists) venture into the world “out there”.

Africa-Centred Knowledges

Beginning in the early 20th century and peaking in the 1930s, this initial challenge was steeped in labour politics, representing the interests of labourers vis-à-vis those of white sugar plantation owners, the Franco-Mauritians. Salverda notes that despite the fact that this initial challenge directed at FrancoMauritian interests led to the collapse of about 150 years of white hegemony (symbolised by the 1948 elections), a new chapter – of ethnic politics, as opposed to class politics – began. In particular, Indian elites, who represented the bulk not only of the population, but also of labourers, slowly began to dominate the movement (in this case, the Labour Party) that challenged Franco-Mauritian hegemony, and, with this, attention shifted to ethnic, rather than, class interests. Therefore, through his interpretation of the political events of the early 20th century, the author offers a useful addition to a wider debate concerning the relationship between class and ethnicity within African studies. Ethnicity is central to the author’s analysis of the maintenance of Franco-Mauritian hegemony in postcolonial Mauritius, where they have lost dominance in Mauritian politics. On the social front, ethnicity is celebrated, and this celebration is seen as a key plank of Mauritian social cohesion. In examining how the Franco-Mauritians have maintained their economic hegemony in the sugar industry despite losing political power, the author employs theoretical tools used in the examination of western elites by early sociologists such as Vilfredo Pareto (1991), Gaetano Mosca (1923), Robert Michels (1911) and Max Weber (1958, 1997) – authors who set the philosophical foundations built upon by other influential figures such as C. Wright Mills (2000) and Robert Dahl (1961). In this way, the book offers a significant contribution to the anthropology of elites. In particular, Salverda argues that the organisation of Franco-Mauritian social life is closely linked with its economic activities, and eventually, economic hegemony (pp. 172–3). The book’s central premise is that the maintenance of Franco-Mauritian economic hegemony is made possible by the celebration in postcolonial Mauritius of symbolic ethnicity (what is referred to as the ‘unity in diversity’ consensus), as ‘Franco Mauritian ethnic endogamy and exclusivist patterns of social interaction [such as the maintenance of ‘white’ only social clubs, schools, marrying within the race, and so on] ... are hardly challenged by non-white Mauritians’ (p. 173). These ‘hardly challenged’ practices explain the creation of a unified, well-connected elite class that sees itself as superior to non-whites, leading to its continued hegemony in the economic sphere. In sum, the latter explains why observers such as Deborah Brautigam (1999) have made reference to the ‘Mauritian miracle’, with a prosperous economy and a stable political system, despite inequality and diversity. In conclusion, the wide array of themes covered in this reader-friendly book will be of interest to students of history, anthropology, heritage/memory studies, and political science.

Sex in troubled times: moral panic, polyamory and freedom in north-west Namibia

In Namibia, early missionaries among the Herero were intrigued by the important role of the matriclan, as it did not fit their ideals of a pastoral society. Despite their obsession with female sexuality, metonymically expressed in concerns over political organisation and kinship, female agency did not feature in their considerations. At first sight, contemporary public discourse on “traditional” sexuality in north-western Namibia is characterised by an opposite tendency, informed by genuine and justified concerns over gender equality. However, by concentrating on exotic practices such as “wife-swapping” and by embedding them in a normative and moralising discourse on marriage and sexuality, this discourse threatens to fall into the same trap as that of the erstwhile missionaries, namely of essentialising categories of gender and desire. This paper provides an ethnography of polyamorous practices in north-west Namibia, arguing they provide women with a great degree of freedom and space for agency. Women in present-day Namibia who engage in these polyamorous relationships thus find themselves in the paradox of having to choose between political emancipation and sexual liberty.In Namibia, early missionaries among the Herero were intrigued by the important role of the matriclan, as it did not fit their ideals of a pastoral society. Despite their obsession with female sexuality, metonymically expressed in concerns over political organisation and kinship, female agency did not feature in their considerations. At first sight, contemporary public discourse on “traditional” sexuality in north-western Namibia is characterised by an opposite tendency, informed by genuine and justified concerns over gender equality. However, by concentrating on exotic practices such as “wife-swapping” and by embedding them in a normative and moralising discourse on marriage and sexuality, this discourse threatens to fall into the same trap as that of the erstwhile missionaries, namely of essentialising categories of gender and desire. This paper provides an ethnography of polyamorous practices in north-west Namibia, arguing they provide women with a great degree of freedom and space for agency. Women in...

The Politics of Distinction: African elites from colonialism to liberation in a Namibian frontier town by Mattia Fumanti (review)

itself, stage political struggles between competing ‘masters’, whether they be masters of narrative or of politics. (Adebanwi’s examples and terms are exclusively male, but he does not discuss masculinity as a form of ‘master narrative’ or political meaning-making.) The modern Nigerian nation state cannot be understood without this ‘media–nation interface’ (p. 7). Press campaigns to realize non-‘Nigerian’ identities are regarded as wholly negative in the book, exacerbating conflicts such as the Biafran war and fuelling other types of animosity (p. 108). Yet Adebanwi also recognizes that Nigeria comprises a plurality of minorities, including those sub-national, nearly national and proto-nationalist groups that, encouraged by the press, contest and contribute to current ‘grand narratives’ of Nigerian identity. Adebanwi explicitly locates his study in hermeneutic theory rather than in more obvious media, communications and postcolonial frameworks such as public sphere theory or Fanon’s description of the emergence of national culture in anti-colonial struggles. While this means that his antagonistic models of discourse and politics are not debated in the book, his turn to hermeneutic theory (explained in detail in the second chapter) allows him to meticulously examine the ways in which Nigerian newspapers have mediated national identities over time. The book offers a wealth of historically specific assessments of the ways in which Nigerian public opinion, prejudices, self-understandings, and global and regional identities have been shaped by the press. Adebanwi reinstates a national – but not in any ordinary sense a nationalist – historiography in his analysis of Nigerian newspaper history. His book continues the outstanding project started by Fred Omu, whose Press and Politics in Nigeria, 1880–1937 (1978) remains a vital resource for newspaper historians of the earlier period. Nation as Grand Narrative challenges those of us who focus on the ordinary and minor narratives through which West African non-elites and sub-elites signal their social (if not political) emergence in the elite-owned press. Stretching across the full period of Nigerian independence, Adebanwi’s book is a timely reminder that, simply because we do not accept nationalist accounts of West African newspapers, we should not ignore the national story in our social histories of the press. With its recuperation of the nation as an entity, and its insistence on the reality of identity politics both as a contested terrain and as the most meaningful narrative for Nigerian press history, this book represents a significant landmark in the new African print cultures scholarship. Adebanwi calls us back to the most successful – if the most hotly contested – storyline in Nigerian history and shows that ‘Nigeria’ is perhaps one of the grandest and oldest ‘narratives’ on the continent, creatively produced through power struggles and relations of domination and subordination, and critically mediated by a century and a half of newspaper production.

“The natives are clever enough”: contagious bovine pleuropneumonia and the politics of ambiguity in north-west Namibia

In Kaoko, north-west Namibia, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia was the background to the local experience of colonialism and South African rule, a period that is locally remembered for the smell of putrefaction spread by animals bearing the disease. This article investigates what this smell tells us about the particular modalities of colonial rule in this remote borderland. By means of two case studies, it argues that in this particular context creating and sustaining a “state of ambiguity” was a social and political strategy engaged in by coloniser and colonised alike.In Kaoko, north-west Namibia, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia was the background to the local experience of colonialism and South African rule, a period that is locally remembered for the smell of putrefaction spread by animals bearing the disease. This article investigates what this smell tells us about the particular modalities of colonial rule in this remote borderland. By means of two case studies, it argues that in this particular context creating and sustaining a “state of ambiguity” was a social and political strategy engaged in by coloniser and colonised alike.

Interview: Rosalind Hackett reflects on religious media in Africa

In October 2013, the editors of this special issue conducted an interview with Rosalind Hackett, one of the pioneering scholars in the field of media and religion. The interview took place via email and consisted of five questions that address the discussion in this special issue of Social Compass and attempt to look into the future of religion and technology studies. As African societies and their media production and reception are transforming at a high pace, the interview offers a unique opportunity to get acquainted with what, according to one of the pioneers in this exciting field, are the weaknesses, challenges and future themes in the study of religious mediation and mediatization.