Infrastructures of Migrant Labour in Colonial Ovamboland, 1915 to 1954

Lovisa Nampala

Description

Most research on the migrant labour system in Namibia under South African colonial rule emphasises its dehumanising aspects. In a complete contrast, this study highlights the social and ritual resources that contract workers and their families in colonial Ovamboland mobilised to provide forms of support and connection across great distances and absences. Based on extensive oral research, this study peels back the layers of intangible infrastructure that sustained migrant workers through all the stages of their contract, including observances around workplace deaths. This thesis vividly demonstrates the persistence of older practices that sustained the bonds of life, fellowship and family under stress, as well as adaptation to new colonial system, such as the postal system.

Sujets

• Ethnic Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Basler Afrika Bibliographien
• Date de parution: 23 septembre 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9783906927480
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Infrastructures of Migrant Labour in Colonial Ovamboland, 1915 to 1954

L ovisa T egeLeLa N ampaLa Foreword by Patricia Hayes

Infrastructures of Migrant Labour in Colonial Ovamboland, 1915 to 1954

Basel Namibia Studies Series 27

Basler Afrika Bibliographien 2023

©2023 The author ©2023 Basler Afrika Bibliographien

Basler Afrika Bibliographien Namibia Resource Centre & Southern Africa Library Klosterberg 23 PO Box 4010 Basel Switzerland www.baslerafrika.ch

Cover image: Parcels awaiting delivery at the tribal depot, Oshikango, Native Commissioner Office in Ohangwena Region, Ovamboland, Namibia, September 1954. Source of image: Dr. Nicholas Jacobus van Warmelo Collection, University of Johannesburg Digitised Archive

Efforts were made to trace the copyright holders of photographs used in this publication. We apologise for any incomplete or incorrect acknowledgements.

All rights reserved.

eISBN 978-3-906927-48-0

In memory of Dr Jeremy Gale Silvester, my history lecturer since 1997, supervisor of my Masters thesis, and one of the external examiners of my PhD thesis. He passed away on 5 July 2021, a month after I graduated as Dr. Nampala.

Basel Namibia Studies Series

In 1997,PublishingP. Schlettwein  (PSP) launched theBasel Namibia Studies Series. Its primary aim was to lend support to a new generation of research, scholars and readers emerging with the independence of Namibia in 1990. Initially, the book series published crucially important doctoral theses on Namibian history. It soon expanded to include more recent political, anthropological, media and cultural history studies by Namibian scholars. P. Schlettwein Publishing,as an independent publishing house, maintained the series in collaboration with theBasler Afrika Bibliographien(BAB), Namibia Resource Centre and Southern Africa Library in Switzerland. All share a commitment to encourage research on Africa in general and southern Africa in particular. Through the incorporation of PSP into theCarl Schlettwein Foundation,the series, by then a consolidated platform for Namibian Studies and beyond, was integrated into the publishing activities of the BAB. Academic publishing, whether from or about Namibia, remains limited. TheBasel Namibia Studies Series continues to provide a forum for exciting scholarly work in the human and social sciences. The editors welcome contributions. For further information, or submission of manu- scripts, please contact theBasler Afrika Bibliographienat www.baslerafrika.ch.

Contents

Forewordby Patricia Hayes

Acknowledgements

Introduction Historiographical Currents Sources, Methods and the Structure of the Book

1 Preparation and Arrangements for a Man Leaving onOkaholo Egumbo omukulukadhi Onghuta yomunakaholo Tramping to Ondangwa AanakaholoAccommodation in Uukwambi and at Ondangwa AanakaholopOndangwa Returning and Arrival ofAanamoonda Ina mu ka lya Uulekenisa? NgandiorNtumba okwe ya po Conclusion

2 Recruitment Procedure, Medical Examination andOkaholo OofolomanaatOmuteteSite “Ngee nge ito lidula noushimba ito u mono” How the Migrant Community Widely Accepted Recruitment Procedures Okaholo?What did it signify? Conclusion

3 Lodging, Rations, Sanitation and Industrial Mortality Rations and Sanitation in Compounds Housing and Rations on Farms and other Sectors Sanitation on Farms and other Industrial Sectors Mortality in Migrant Labour Impact of Andreas’ Death on other Workers and Family back home Conclusion

4 Technology and the Contract Labour System Remittances Early days of the Post OĹce in Ovamboland Ovambo Communities and Postal Services Who writes or readsoontumwafo? Conclusion

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1 5 9

17 24 25 29 31 33 35 38 40

41 42 50 55 55 60

62 65 67 73 73 83 85

87 87 95 98 104 108

5

Conclusion

List of Illustrations

Abbreviations of frequently used Archival References

Bibliography Oral History Interviews (conducted by the author) Unrecorded conversations Archival Sources National Archives Namibia (NAN, Windhoek) Unpublished papers and theses Published Literature

Index

109

 114

115

116 116 116 117 117 117 118

 122

Foreword

Where do we ⁞nd new historical knowledge? It is not always by following the well-worn paths laid down by other scholars who have made inroads into the most obvious records, and then set their interpretations into familiar frameworks of thought. The late Jeremy Sil- vester often remarked that the author of this book, the Namibian historian Lovisa Tegelela Nampala, was led by her own personal life experience to try new questions and approaches. South African colonialism was tinged with a certain kind of extractive extreme. If we consider De Beers diamond operations in Kimberley and deep level gold mining on the Wit- watersrand, the labour systems they devised in the late nineteenth century were something new. Based on the most precious of gems and minerals, their high rewards allowed for not just a new biopolitical ordering of impermanent and migrant labour, but a new scale of ac- commodating single male migrants, transport, and distant chie y control. This is what was envisaged for Namibia, from the very ⁞rst representations made by Colonel Pritchard to the Ndonga king Martin Kadhikwa, and the Kwanyama king Mandume ya Ndemufayo when the Union Government sent an expedition to Ovamboland after the Germans surrendered South West Africa in 1915. German colonial enterprises had already come to rely increas- ingly on labour drawn from the well-populated northern region of Owambo, but it is the speci⁞cs of the South African construction of a migrant labour system in Namibia that has attracted much scholarly attention. Lovisa Nampala’s book therefore addresses a very big historiographical ⁞eld in Namib- ian studies. In the past, a close connection has been made between labour history and the emergence of Namibian nationalism under South African colonial rule, and this in ects a great deal of existing literature and public rhetoric. This collective weight of research and public history has produced an impression of systematic dehumanisation of those contract workers who were recruited into the system, which has fed into another vein of historiogra- phy that is the binary opposite, namely resistance and more recently agency studies. Over time, this has left a predetermined framework with a dichotomised set of possibilities for historical interpretation. Nampala’s work completely escapes this framing by putting the question of infrastruc- ture at the centre of inquiry and asking about the mechanisms through which men entered into, endured and returned from this system. Infrastructure studies represents a relatively new ⁞eld, but the material focus of most literature had its limits for Nampala’s research, which is substantially based on oral research with former migrants and their families. The

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