This is a study on flooding and its impact on the Nkondo community in Rundu, in the Kavango area of Namibia. It draws from archival sources at the National Archives of Namibia. Whilst archival documents provide an idea of what and how colonial officials thought of and related to the colonial subjects, they cannot represent the feelings, beliefs and interpersonal relationships of the ordinary people. This article thus made use of oral interviewing, not as a means to fill the gap but as an alternative to exploring memories of former Nkondo residents about the 1950s flood and its impact. Interviews were carried out in 2004 and 2005 when 14 people were interviewed for the histories of forced removals in Rundu, but only five are used for this article as they specifically speak to the story of flooding. Interviewees were chosen through referrals from the headmen of the surrounding villages of Rundu. Interviewees were asked questions that provide a chronological representation of a case study of forced relocations in Rundu. The article is an important historical piece that draws on unique oral-history regarding flooding and its impact. Furthermore, it is a story about power, politics and colonial dynamics and forced relocation using flooding as a pretext. The article indicates how colonial authorities made use of this benevolent excuse of a natural disaster to compel people to move permanently to new areas so as to fulfil the colonial administration’s political agenda of security and control over the population. The article indicates that flood-prone communities may fear relocating permanently due to cultural, social and economic factors. Thus, the government should not use force to relocate communities but should address communities’ fears and provide them with support in relocated areas.
The gendered historical investigation of migrant labour in Namibia (and southern Africa more broadly) has rightly considered the ways in which women left behind in the sending areas were obliged to take on additional agricultural duties in the absence of men. This has been viewed by some scholars as a form of material exploitation of women and a potential subsidy to white employers in these settler colonial spheres. While there is some validity to these claims, the relationship between the sending areas and the work site was not simply a material one, and contract/migrant labour recruiting systems entered spaces with existing gendered cultural repertoires concerning how to deal with absent men. The significance of these cultural frameworks is worthy of additional empirical, comparative and theoretical investigation. Through the use of oral interviews supplemented by archival materials, this article discusses these issues in the context of Kavango, north-eastern Namibia, which, for much of the 20th century, was a major source of contract labourers to the colonial economy in what was then South West Africa. The article argues that colonialism and labour recruiting schemes built upon and transformed existing precolonial cultural frameworks such as 'the people's child', women's observance of taboos and a local conception of 'home'. This article further posits that the maintenance of this migrant labour system was dependent upon its integration into local worldviews.
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