Books published by Basler Afrika Bibliographien

Voices from the Kavango explores the contribution that the life histories and the voices of the contract labourers make to our understanding of the contract labour system in Namibia. In particular it asks: is it possible to view the migration of the Kavango labourers as a progressive step, or does the paradigm of exploitation and suppression remain the dominant one? The study highlights contract labourers engaging in a defeating activity and their disappointment with the little rewards which were non-lasting solutions to their problems. The realization of their entrapment under the contract system and the eventual frustrations led to the political mobilization for independence by SWAPO.

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. For residents of many of the communal areas of Namibia the "Conservancy" has become the primary avenue through which rural residents engage with development and conservation in various efforts to improve local livelihoods and to conserve natural resources. CBNRM has taken on particular form and significance for the San in Namibia.This book examines the current position of the San as marginalized indigenous peoples in Namibia. In doing so, it explores how CBNRM has become a nexus through which questions of indigeneity, conservation and development have come to bear on San communities. 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 though 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. In examining San engagements with the Conservancy structures in N‡a Jaqna, this study seeks answers not only to the question of what San engagements with CBNRM can tell us about the potential of the CBNRM framework itself for facilitating rural development and conservation, but also the question of what engagement with CBNRM can tell us about how the San of Namibia actively engage in rural development. The following work focuses not solely on how policies and governmental or non-governmental interventions have impacted San realities and life ways, but also the ways in which the San of N‡a Jaqna have negotiated, impacted, and shaped these processes.

How does a peoples' music reflect their history, their occupations, cultural beliefs and values? These are the core questions that this book addresses in relation to the Aawambo people of Namibia. The author, herself born and bred in Namibia, brings to the fore the nuanced views of different people, describing their personal musical experiences - past as well as present. This is the first time that the music and stories of contemporary Namibian musicians is shared alongside those of the elderly. Similarly, it is the first time that some of the traditional Aawambo dances are analysed and described, abundantly illustrated with colourful photographs and several songs. Based on years of personal research, this book will appeal to research scholars, students and other interested readers alike, since its style is accessible but detailed, personal yet objective. Recommended for all those interested in culture, anthropology, the arts, and Namibian studies.

This collection of essays documents the growth of African history as a discipline at the University of Basel since 2001. It thus pays tribute to fourteen years of research and teaching by Patrick Harries at the Department of History and the Centre for African Studies Basel. The Festschrift covers a broad range of topics from mine labour to missionary endeavour and the production of knowledge, reflecting some of his core research interests. The contributions engage with Patrick Harries' oeuvre with reference to the authors' own scholarship or vice-versa. Some directly address his publications while others take his teaching, correspondence, remarks or intellectual life more broadly as a point of reference. They all pay tribute to a brilliant and inspiring scholar, a great teacher and a kind person.

My family did the unthinkable: after getting away with 'playing white' for some years, we went one step further and 'jumped the colour line'. By various obscure and not well-documented processes, we changed our 'racial classification' from 'coloured' - as defined by the apartheid policy of the day -to that of 'white'. We juggled colour … The price we paid was anguish, constant fear of detectionand a sacrifice of family connectedness. The decades-long process of becoming completely comfortable with my ultimate identity was psychologically so unnerving that I have only recently feltfree to talk about it. This is certainly the first time I ever write about it. 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 a 'Coloured'. The sense of conflict increases immeasurably. By then she is growing up in apartheid South Africa, but now in a 'white' suburb of Cape Town. She goes to a ‚white' school and bears herself in a German fashion. She and her family had, in fact, jumped the colour line. Returning to southern Africa from the United States in the 1990s, she now openly pursues investigations into her family background. In this book, Ulla Dentlinger portrays her wider family - some who simply ignored 'race' and colour, others who opposed it and those who dodged or tolerated it. Their intimate, painful or straight-forward stories and recollections lead her to the emotional realization of the wealth of her heritage and its final acceptance.

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 following two decades, the Village Schools have transitioned from a donor-supported 'project' to government schools, and have received much attention and support from donors, civil society organisations, researchers, and others. However, the students still do not seem to succeed in the mainstream schools. Why is this? Based on long-term field-work in the region, including interviews with Nyae Nyae residents over several years and work with involved organisations, the book addresses this question. Contextualising the Village Schools within post-Independence Namibia, southern African history and the global indigenous rights movement, it examines the enormous paradoxes that schooling presents for the Nyae Nyae community. 'Owners of Learning' is the English translation of the Ju|'hoansi word for 'teacher' and it serves to highlight a fundamental question - to whom does education belong?

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 are forged or contested. This spatio-temporal juxtaposition is lacking in current research on political ecology while the politics of science appears marginal to critical scholarship on social nature. Specifically, the book examines power relations in nature-related activities, demonstrates conditions under which nature and science are politicised, and also accounts for political interests and struggles over nature in its various forms. The ecological, socio-political and economic dimensions of nature cannot be ignored when dealing with present-day environmental issues. Nature conservation regulations are concerned with the management of flora and fauna as much as with humans. Various chapters in the book pay attention to the ways in which nature, science and politics are interrelated and also co-constitutive of each other. They highlight that power relations are naturalised through science and science-related institutions and projects such as museums, botanical gardens, wetlands, parks and nature reserves.

'National Culture in Post-Apartheid Namibia' addresses the challenges of creating a 'national' culture in the context of a historical legacy that has emphasised ethnic diversity. The state-sponsored Annual National Culture Festival (ANCF) focuses on the Kavango region in north-eastern Namibia. Akuupa critically examines the notion of Kavango-ness as a colonial construct and its subsequent reconstitution and appropriation. He analyses the way in which cultural representations are produced by local people in the postcolonial African context of nation building and national reconciliation by bringing visions of cosmopolitanism and modernity into critical dialogue with the colonial past. Competing cultural festivals are used as celebratory social spaces in which performers and local people participate whilst negotiating a sense of national belonging in an ongoing tension between the need to celebrate diversity, yet strive for unity. This is the first study to discuss the comprehensive role played by those cultural festivals, which were organised in the ethnic homelands during the time Namibia fell under South African control.