Date

Recorded Event

1800s

The exonym ‘Nama’ comes to be used by missionaries instead of the endonym ‘Khoekhoegowab’ as the glossonym for the Khoekhoe language, contributing to the now disproved ‘popular claim’ that ‘the ethnically distinct Damara … adopted the language from the Nama’^[2].

1824

Captain Nourse of the British surveying vessel the Espiegle ‘discovers’ the mouth of a river that becomes known as the Nourse, now the Kunene, finding it to be in flood and about three miles wide, in a coast that is ‘thinly peopled’^[3].

1846-48

The explorer Captain W. Messum mentions Cape Cross and claims to have seen the padrão, [12] he also finds ‘the remains of a stranded wooden sailing vessel almost covered by sand’ and ‘a metal stove in good condition’ deducing that ‘the survivors must have been ashore for some time’^[4]. He goes in land ‘to reconnoitre a big mountain visible from Cape Cross’ which inhabitants of the area call ‘Dourissa’, despite which he names the mountain after himself^[5]. He encounters ‘a tribe of Berg Damaras’ at a ‘high mountain’ inland from Cape Cross, with ‘water, and plenty of goats, but no cattle’^[6].

1851

Galton and Andersson reach Etosha Pan in this year and are considered the first Europeans to have done so^[7].

1850s

In the vicinity of Etosha Pan, Galton refers to ‘Bushmen’ there as ‘Saen’^[8]. The Swedish explorer Charles John Andersson learns the name ‘Kaoko’ for the north-west^[9]. Oorlam commandos raid the ‘Bantu-speaking pastoralists of Kaokoland’, abducting large herds of cattle and killing many people, causing migration northwards over the Kunene River to southern Angola where they become involved through trade and labour contracts in expanding Portuguese colonial economy^[10]. Some Herero seek refuge in Owambo and may have been sold into slavery^[11]. ‘Kaoko’s’ supplies of ivory reach as far as Ongandjera in the east^[12].

1857

C.H. Hahn notes in this year that many so-called ‘Saan’ described as settled throughout Namibia are not ‘Saan’ or ‘Bushmen’ but impoverished ‘Namaqua’^[13].

1858

In the Cape Colony, Government Notice 263 is issued concerning the ‘Preservation of Elephants and Buffaloes’, thereby formalising ‘a latent (and mainly urban) interest in the protection of the remaining isolated population of large mammals in the South Cape forests, which had been heavily reduced by ivory hunting’, stimulating establishment in this year of the first state game reserves in Africa, in the Knysna and Tsitsikamme forests^[14].

1859

Apparently Khoekhoegowab-speaking people in the vicinity of Etosha Pan are proposed to be ‘impoverished Nama’^[15].

1860

Jonker Afrikaner makes a raiding expedition to ‘Owamboland’/Ndonga, plundering cattle which were traded in the Cape^[16], and making punitive attacks on the Owambo allegedly for their hostility to the missionaries Hahn and Rath. On his return to Okahandja Jonker falls prey to an illness contracted in Owamboland and from his deathbed he tried to convince his son Christiaan Afrikaner (who dies two years later) and the Chief Maharero to rule over both ‘Hereroland’ and ‘Namaland’ peaceably.^[17] The elderly Chief Tjamuaha of the Okahandja Hereros reportedly makes a trip to Kaoko in the north-west to visit old friends whilst he was still alive. He also contracts a disease and on his return to Okahandja also calls on Christiaan Afrikaner and Maharero to encourage them to live together peaceably, although apparently he then urged Maharero that it was time to throw off the yoke of the Nama, for which he had already drummed up support from Herero in Kaoko.^[18] 

1862

Serious drought affects the Cape coinciding with the appointment as second Cape Colonial Botanist of a Scotsman (John Croumbie Brown) with strong views and Scottish Romantic proclivities towards environmental conservation, influenced by observing impacts of this drought^[19].

1863

By this year, the Swartbooi Oorlam Namas who are later to play an important role in Sesfontein and the north-west, the ‘youngest tribe of Oorlams’, had left the others and settled in Gibeon from where they were trying to assert leadership. They were a well-organised Nama community who had broken away from the Rooi Nasie Nama (Red Nation / Kai||khauan) and were ‘under’ the leadership of missionary Kleinschmidt at Rehoboth.^[20] 

1864

1864 is a critical year in the dramatic combined Oorlam Nama, Herero, Damara / ≠Nūkhoen, European history leading to the relocation of Oorlam Nama families to the north-west (!Nani|aus / Sesfontein and ‘Kaoko’).

In January of this year Swartbooi Oorlam Nama, whose territory in Gibeon the Herero had to move through in order to prevent Nama advancing from the south, are sent ‘a strong contingent [2,500 strong^[21]] to Rehoboth’ by [Ka]Maherero [of Okahandja], led by Frederick Green who at the time was employed by Andersson^[22], ‘to support the Swartboois’ who had recently joined Maharero ‘against an alliance of Nama-Oorlam leaders’^[23], specifically Jan Jonker of |Ae||gams [Windhoek] who was planning to wage war on the Herero. The Swartbooi are the only powerful group in central SWA/Namibia who allied with Kamahereo instead of the Afrikaners^[24]. Andersson’s trading activities were ‘bring[ing] him into direct conflict with the Namaland chiefs and especially the sovereign, Jonker Afrikaner’ and his sons Christian and Jan Jonker, the Afrikaner family claiming a monopoly on the cattle trade in central Namibia^[25]. During the two-week march to Rehoboth ‘Maharero’s and Andersson’s forces robbed Damara settlements of sheep and goats to provision the troops’^[26]: the Anglo-Swede trader Charles John Andersson records on Jun 21 that they “more or less surprised some Bergdamara werfts’ from which they got ‘a few hundred sheep and goats’^[27].

Andersson advises Maharero to stay on the offensive and Maharero again calls up the Herero and appoints Andersson as commander in an attack on Windhoek / |Ae||gams^[28]. Jan Jonker and his Nama followers retreat to fortified hills south-east of |Ae||gams [Auas], and Andersson is badly shot in the shin as they advance on these hills. The Herero succeed in driving off the Afrikaners; Andersson is treated by Kleinschmidt and moved to the mission station at Barmen^[29]. Thomas Baines also assists whilst Andersson prepares a manuscript on The Avifauna of South Africa^[30]. Europeans who become militarily and politically involved with Andersson in attack on Afrikaners include the trader Latham, who suffers substantial losses^[31].

The Swartbooi construct embankments around Rehoboth to protect against Nama attack, following their realisation of the Swartbooi-Herero alliance that facilitated Herero southward advance. The Swartbooi are defeated in the struggles that followed and forced to leave |Anhes / Rehoboth in due to this attack by Jan Jonker and Afrikaner commando^[32] with Kleinschmidt whose mission station they have inhabited, and they trek ‘along the Kuiseb River, and thence to the Swakop River in order to find new dwelling places in Hereroland’^[33].

They are pursued by Jan Jonker who overtakes them and sets fire to their wagons [recorded in Andersson commission 1]^[34], speeding up their retreat along the Kuiseb, from where they settle at Salem on the Swakop River and then move towards Fransfontein and Sesfontein where they settle, via Ameib in the Erongo mountains^[35] where a Rhenish Mission is established in this year^[36]. Missionary Kleinschmidt, deserted in the attack, treks overland with his family to Otjimbingwe and dies there soon afterwards^[37].

Elsewhere, these circumstances are described as,

a “trading expedition” allegedly initiated by the people of Rehoboth in 1864 to the Bergdama people in Erongo. As the story goes, the Bergdama, on seeing the Rehobothers, somehow did not recognise the nature of this visit and escaped without their flocks, which were appropriated by the “traders”, since this was so convenient. When they left, the Bergdama attacked them with arrows, but the Rehoboth people “defended” themselves effectively with their guns. Thus, the anticipated trading could not take place.^[38]

It is reported that,

When the SWARTBOOI-Naman trekked into the Kaoko-veld round about the middle of the previous century, and captured Otjitambi [north-west of Kamanjab] from the Herero, they took with them from the Erongo (Ameib) some [≠Nūkhoen] clans of the !OE +AN, whose descendants call themselves U-SAU-BETA (we followers = those who were led away.^[39]

Oral history research, however, indicates that ≠Nūkhoen from this area moved northwards of their own accord to escape the disruptions caused by Oorlam Nama - Herero conflict^[40]. The chronicle of Otjimbingue documents that ‘Topnaar living in the Kuiseb valley joined forces with the Zwartbooi, headed northward under the leadership of the missionary Bohme, and settled in !Am-eib on the Erongo mountains. When the water in !Am-eib became scarce, the Zwartbooi and the Topnaar moved northwards to reach Okombahe, Otjitambi or Franzfontein. From there, many Topnaar moved to Zesfontein (aka Sesfontein), where at that time lived Bushman and Bergdama, who were under the influence of the Herero [see 1867]. The Topnaar were later followed by a smaller group of Zwartbooi and also settled in Zesfontein’^[41].

1860s

A section of ‘the Topnaar tribe’ also retreats to Kaokoveld ‘after the defeat of the Hottentots by the Herero in the sixties of the last century’; ‘the other section lives in the dunes around Walvis Bay and in the bed of the Kuiseb river at various places’^[42]. A parallel separate movement of !Gomen|gôan, i.e. people from Walvis Bay, under the |Uixamab lineage leadership moves northwards and settles in Sesfontein to become the so-called ‘Sesfontein Topnaar’^[43]. Fuller, based on oral evidence in Sesfontein writes that the Dama / ≠Nūkhoen of the area lived between Topnaar Namas who had moved into the Gowareb [Kowareb] area ‘to escape the conflicts raging in the central region of the country’ and ‘various groups of Herero, [68] Ovahimba, and Ovatjimba living to the north in the Kaokoveld’, and also notes at the time of his field research the perennial ‘dispute Hereros and Damaras over who actually lived there first’^[44].

Game stocks in southern Angola are depleted encouraging increasing commercial interest in valuable animals in Kaoko and Owambo^[45].

James Chapman pioneers the use of stereoscopic pictures in his travels in south-west Africa^[46].

1865

By this year 6k elephants are being killed annually in the Kalahari for ivory, with a dozen wagon trains passing each year from Gobabis to Rietfontein^[47].

1866

‘Berg-Damara’ from Kaisabis / Windhoek move to Okambahe under Chieftainship of Abraham, a great-uncle of Judas Goresib^[48].

1867

The Palgrave Commission asserts that it is in this year that the Swartboois retreated northwards, regrouping at Ameib in the Erongo mountains^[49].

From this year Swedish trader Axel Eriksson becomes established in Walvis Bay from where he sends,

out his well-known hunting and trading expeditions to the distant interior, up towards Lake Ngami and the Kunene River. Eriksson had up to sixty wagons, each representing a value of about 10000 [Swedish] crowns, on the road at the same time. As he always treated whites as well as natives in an honest and generous way, his name “Karuwapa” - the white face - was on everybody's lips and still is wherever he travels.^[50] 

1870s

By this decade the Oorlam Afrikaner power has been broken, opening the hunting fields and trade routes of southern and central Namibia and precipitating ‘an immense expansion of trade’^[51]. Around one hundred Afrikaner pioneers, the Dorstland / Thirstland trekkers, pass through Nyae Nyae in ox-carts towards Angola^[52]. In southern Angola the Huila highlands are settled by Portuguese and Dorsland trekkers from Transvaal, and the ports Mossamedes (Namibe) and Porto Alexandre (Tombua) are flourishing, exporting, for example, cane sugar from plantations inland on the Coroca river^[53]. Following ivory depletions in central Namibia, commercial European hunters from Walvis Bay resettle in Mossamedes, seeking untapped ivory resources in Kunene valley^[54]. ‘[S]everal hunting trips to Kaoko and western Owambo’ made by James Chapman in this decade^[55]. Also, expansion of Transvaal Boers [‘Trekboers’] into Kaoko, accompanied by commercial hunting^[56]. Strongly connected with Oorlam expansion into Kaoko plus export through Walvis Bay = coastal route through western desert beyond rival European access^[57]. In this decade ‘business with ivory from the northern areas both to Mossamedes and to Walvis Bay flourished’ but also ‘traders complained that there was no longer enough ivory and cattle to buy in Owambo’^[58].

|Uixamab Oorlam settlement in Sesfontein precipitates centralization of settlement here plus ‘the intensification of agricultural production [esp. tobacco], the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of water and grazing resources’^[59]. Rizzo reports from Herero interviews that forced coercion is rarely mentioned although argues that Oorlam [in otjiHerero = ‘ovaKuena’^[60]] organisation of the Sesfontein economy involved ‘enforced patronage and loyalties’^[61], and other oral histories are more ambiguous on this point, and . Tobacco is used to barter for small stock and sometimes cattle^[62].

Tom Bechuana and Vita Tom reach southern Angola in this decade and the latter begins ‘to establish himself as a key figure within the militarized raiding economy’ accessing ‘arms, horses and cattle’, his successful advancement being ‘due to his closeness to the colonial economy and administration, bolstered not least by his multilingualism’^[63]. He could thereby act as ‘an intermediary, linking African, Boer and European activities… in the realm of commercial hunting and the transport business’, while his accumulation of herds allowed him ‘to increase his own wealth and through this to maintain a following through a system of loans and patronage’ which he bolstered symbolically through the use of military uniforms^[64].

Gert Alberts of the Trekboers led a small mounted party down the valley of the Hoarusib River to the sea, in an attempt to collect supplies gathered in response to appeal by the Swedish trader Axel Eriksson, becoming the first white men to traverse the Kaokoveld from east to west.

Overall, the 1870s saw the ‘integration of Kaoko into the capitalised economies of the Cape and into the sphere of action of advancing Oorlam [in otjiHerero = ‘ovaKuena’] commandos began in the mid 1870s and triggered off an extensive socio-economic transformation in the region throughout the 1880s and 1890s’, including the emergent Fransfontein and Sesfontein leadership ‘claiming territorial authority’^[65] [see ** below].

1875

Jan Petrus |Unuweb |Uichamab (of the !omen / !Gomen / Topnaar who had left Walvis bay area some distance from the sea and moved to Sesfontein) is already kaptein in Sesfontein, having succeeded his brother Hendrik Anibab |Uichamab, who had been leader when the !Gomen moved to Sesfontein (having succeeded from his father |Uichab who died in the south before they moved)^[66].

1877

WC Palgrave writes of ‘Berg-Damara’ at Okambahe (and considered to still be true at the time of the Union of South Africa Blue Book enquiry) that,

They make gardens in which they grow mealies, pumpkins and tobacco. In 1875 they had a mile of the river-bed under cultivation and harvested 300 muids of wheat, the greater part of which was sold for more than 40 shillings a muid. For people who have been so recently reclaimed from a perfectly savage state the progress they are making is astonishing. They are a provident people, and are fast becoming rich in cattle and goats. They have not that love for cattle which distinguishes the Hereros and [106] Namaqua, and from the fact that so long as they have been known they have made gardens it is assumed as probable that they were originally an agricultural people, like the Ovambos. . . . They are industrious and make good servants.^[67]

1879

In the beginning of the year the trekboers travel south from the Okavango, where reportedly ‘[s]everal of the men were caught by natives during hunting trips and murdered in the most cruel way’, and reach Etosha salt-pan^[68]. In the beginning of the year the trekboers travel south from the Okavango, where reportedly ‘[s]everal of the men were caught by natives during hunting trips and murdered in the most cruel way’, and reach Etosha salt-pan^[69],

[f]rom here scouts were first sent northwards to Ovampoland, but when the reports from there were unfavourable, they turned westwards to the so-called Kaokoveld south of the Kunene River and continued on right down to the sea. The country was rocky and arid however, poisonous springs were discovered in several [42] places; it was observed that birds which drank from these pools fell dead after a few flaps of their wings. It is said that some time afterwards the well-known ivory trader and hunter, Eriksson, lost nineteen valuable horses through poisoning from such springs. On returning from the Kaokoveld, however, a fairly good place a few day’s travel south of the Kunene was discovered [Otjitambi?] and here, towards the end of July 1879, the whole expedition gathered to rest for some time.^[70] 

1881

The last herd of elephants near Klein Namutoni are shot by European hunters, and lion and rhino survive only in remote and inaccessible areas^[71].

1880s-90s

Multiple accounts of livestock raiding by Oorlam Nama (kuena) in Kaoko and into southern Angola^[72].

ca. 1880s

Approx. 30 years before 1917 -
Vita Tom / ‘Oorlog’ states to Major Charles N. Manning at a meeting on 9th August in Sesfontein:

I mention here that before my sons were born (about 30 years ago? CNM.) an OVATSHIMBA named MUHONA KATITI being driven out from Kaokoveld by Hottentots came to me in Angola with his people for protection. He had nothing and I gave him cattle and small stock also a blanket. He wears no clothing like us. I got Portuguese authority for him to live near me. He got rich and left me to go to TSHABIKWA§ in Angola. There he murdered a Portuguese trader named INASO and took his property besides burning his wagon. He fled from Portuguese Police to an island in Kunene River. Hearing that I was coming together with a party of Europeans ordered by Govt. to arrest him, he killed 26 Kaoko Hereros who had a vee-post near the Kunene. The survivors fled to us without any property at all. Some are with me now (Statements will be taken. CNM.) It is now 5 years ago when this occurred. MUHONA KATITI then fled south to the Kaokoveld and settled at MUHONGO river (vide German map CNM). He then trekked to OMBUKU which is junction of Muhonga and Kunene Rivers. The Boers William Venter, Andries Alberts and several others came with Portuguese to arrest him but he got away to his former place on Muhonga River. Some of his cattle were however captured. The Portuguese still want MUHONA KATITI. During this year MUHONA went across the Kunene and killed a herd boy of Jacob Erickson’s (living in Angola) and he stole 150 cattle bringing them back to Muhonga. I have one of Erickson’s riding oxen and know his brand. …^[73]

1883

Earl of Mayo makes references to ‘Hottentot raids’ into south-western Angola^[74]. [**check date]

1885

Otjitambi (a big waterhole north-west of Kamanjab) is occupied by !Gomen and Swartbooi families under Jan |Uixamab’s leadership^[75]. At Otjitambi near Kamanjab in March, German scientist Waldemar Belck conducts anthropometric measurements and on behalf of the merchant Adolf[?] Lüderitz enters into negotiations here with Kaptein Cornelius Swartbooi and his Raad with a view to gaining land and mining concessions^[76]. Cornelius Swartbooi of Fransfontein and Jan |Uixamab of Sesfontein sell ‘their respective territories’ in ‘the Kaoko-area’ to businessman August Lüderitz, through which Lüderitz acquires ‘the right of development and utilization of all mineral resources, while the captains reserved control over their places of residence and their pastures’^[77]. Thus Lüderitz acquires the ‘coastal strip’ from 22°S (around mouth of Omaruru River, present-day Hentiesbaai) to Cape Frio, ‘from Jan |Uixamab, chief of the !Gomen, whose father |Uixab had moved on to Sesfontein after a spell in the Bokberg [Erongo]’, described later as:

“[o]f all the devious land acquisition treaties negotiated by Leutwein the one covering the coastal area between Swakopmund[?] and Omaruru was the most devious”.^[78]

1890

Missionary Reichmann of the RMS opens the first mission station in ‘the far north-west’ in Franzfontein^[79]. From around this year ‘the Angola settlers clashed with Petrus Swartbooi, the Hottentot leader from Sessfontein in the Kaokoveld … who led cattle-raids into southern Angola’^[80].

1891

The botanist Schinz, who travelled in SWA in the mid 1880s, publishes his “Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika. Forschungsreisen” ‘which becomes the first comprehensive and illustrated "Länderkunde" (country monograph) on this newly acquired German colony’^[81]. He labels apparently Khoekhoegowab-speaking inhabitants of Etosha Pan area as ‘Nama-Bushmen’^[82].

1893

The German Colonial Society transfers all rights it has acquired from Lüderitz (incl. to Sesfontein and Franzfontein) to Hirsch and Co., later the Kaoko Land and Mining Company, a London-based company represented by Georg Hartmann in strategic alliance with the German colonial governor Leutwein^[83].

The Earl of Mayo makes references to ‘Hottentot raids’ into south-western Angola[**check date], and to ‘Hottentot and Griqua hunters’ employed by trader Axel Eriksson^[84], who ‘spent some years as an elephant and ostrich hunter, [and] made a good profit [61] out of it’^[85]. In a ‘final clash … between Boers and Hottentots’ in southern Angola the latter are ‘soundly defeated and did not venture to cross the Kunene again’[f38] 37 Hottentots were killed, Z. Bronkhurst and H. Robbertse were killed and W. Venter badly wounded. The cattle were scattered during the fight. Jan Robbertse led the party of Boers which was encountered by the fleeing Boers^[86].

Some groups of Bergdama (around 200 people) led by their leader !Naruseb [i.e. !Nauriseb] arrive at Okombahe from Sesfontein complaining that |Uixamab’s people made war on them, and ask the people of Okombahe to take them in^[87]. Oral history tells of how !Nauriseb and his family grouping was already established at the springs at Sesfontein which they called ≠Gabia≠gao, after which Nama people arrived from the south causing the !Nauriseb and |Uxam families to move to to ||Guru-daos [meaning rocks/flints that you can make fire with – perhaps near ||Guru-tsaub / Orupao] and south of ≠Naueb mountain (the mountain to the south of ≠Os pass that leads eastwards out of Sesfontein) to Warmquelle, then moving further south. Fuller writes that ‘[w]ith time friction arose between the Topnaar at Gowareb and the Namidaman at Sesfontein. Because the Topnaar had guns, they were the likely victors over the Namidaman who did not. To avoid being massacred, the Namidaman of Sesfontein fled southwards to Ani≠gab [see 1893], just north of the Brandberg Mountain. The Topnaar took control of Sesfontein, and imposed themselves onto the local social situation’^[88].  

The Deutscher Kolonial Atlas of this year depicts ‘Kaoko’ as stretching southwards from the Kunene to beyond the Huab River towards Dâures / the Brandberg^[89]. Namaqualand and Damaraland are described as being ‘at that time, and had been for generations, under the unofficial protection of the British, and were regarded as the annexe of Cape Colony’^[90].

1893-1914

Jan Petrus  |Unuweb  |Uixomab, is traditional leader of Sesfontein^[91].

1894

Theodor Leutwein, arrives at Swakopmund on 1 January 1894. The Berg-Damara Chief Cornelius Goresib was reportedly at Swakopmund when Leutwein landed, ‘with a wagon to fetch provisions’ – in the words of Gottleib Goresib, brother of Cornelius, in the Blue Book of 1918,

Cornelius happened to be at Swakopmund on business when Major Leutwein landed. He invited Cornelius to come to Windhuk and see him there. Cornelius did so, and ordered his councillors, Mattheus, Lucas, Jonas, Joshua and Solomon to meet him at Karibib. They all went to Windhuk. There Leutwein got Cornelius to sign an agreement placing the Berg- Damaras under the German protection. Cornelius came back and explained matters. He said he had pointed out that the land belonged to the Hereros, and that we were really under their protection by verbal agreement with their Chiefs, and that he, Cornelius, could not sign such an agreement as Leutwein suggested. Leutwein said that he would fix up all disputes with the Hereros, and that he would protect us from them. Then the agreement was made. Cornelius had to agree to German protection and the posting of German troops at Okambahe. He also undertook to supply the Germans with all Berg-Damaras they required for labour on public roads, &c. In return for this Cornelius received 25l. and then 75l. in gold and silver. Leutwein also promised him (a) that the Berg-Damaras would be ruled as an independent nation by their Chief and his successors, (b) that our laws and usages would be respected, (c) that all the scattered Berg-Damaras living under the Hottentot and Herero Chiefs would be collected and one big nation formed at Okambahe, (d) that a big piece of land extending from Okambahe north up to the Ugab River and beyond would be allotted to the Berg-Damara nation.

     These were the inducements we had, not a single one of these promises was ever fulfilled. On the contrary, our customs and laws were over-ruled, and the soldiers at Okambahe became the real governors. Cornelius hardly had any power. Our people were flogged and beaten, and there were no courts to which they could go for justice.^[92]

1895

Dr George Hartmann is commissioned by the Kaokoveld Land and Mining Company ‘to explore their newly acquired territory for minerals and guano’, and he sets off in this year ‘on the first of a number of expeditions in which he was to traverse the region from east to west and also travel along the whole coast from the Kunene mouth to Swakopmund’ – and ‘[a]lthough he discovered no deposits of value’, in 1904 he ‘produced the first map of the Kaokoveld that was based on actual observation’ (see below)^[93].

Von François publishes that ‘Bushmen’ in the vicinity of Etosha Pan are known as ‘Haiumga’^[94].

Captain Peter Möller, a Swedish traveller who from 1883-1886 served in the Association Internationale de Congo and founded the station Matadi on the Congo River, journeys from the Angolan coastal town Mossamedes§ southwards through ‘Owampoland’ and ‘Damaraland’ to Walvis Bay, later [1899] publishing an account of his travels^[95]. He describes his fascination for southern Africa’s ‘undiscovered secrets’, its interior belonging ‘to the most isolated parts of the world … still largely untouched by the European intrusion which has been taking place for a long time in the Cape Colony and neighbouring areas’, and because of which he ‘could count on finding the country and people in the original state and the veld filled with noble big game’^[96].

Whilst in Humpata, Möller writes about Oorlam / ‘Hottentot’ raiding activities from southern Kaoko:

But the colonists [Portuguese] have encountered an enemy, still more difficult to fight than the natives, in the plundering hordes of Hottentots who come from as far away as Namaqualand and have extended their marauding expeditions through Damaraland Ovampoland right up to Mossamedes which they have actually besieged on a couple of occasions.  In parties of up to a hundred persons these feared foreigners advance through the country; all are excellent marksmen and as they are also mounted on horses or riding-oxen, they travel fast and appear unexpectedly, today here, tomorrow there, [34] everywhere robbing the natives of their cattle and killing people. When it finally becomes too hot for them, when the natives and whites are too close on their tracks, they collect their booty, often consisting of several thousand cattle, drive them southwards by forced marches, pass the Kunene and then disappear in the desert areas of the Kaokoveld. As long as the stolen cattle last, they live sumptuously, thereafter to repeat their visit to the rich ‘Portuguese land’ up there on the other side of the Kunene.^[97]  

Möller writes further of engagements between ‘Hottentots’ and ‘Boers’ that,

[t]here are many tales of battles with the Hottentots. The last time they were here, a party of about forty had stolen cattle from the natives close to Chibia. Ten Boers set off after the Hottentots, following their tracks until at night they reached the unsuspecting robbers, who had made camp inside the palisade of a kraal, the inhabitants of which had been driven out. During the night the Boers quietly and cautiously occupied positions around the kraal, well hidden in the high grass, waiting for dawn. At sunrise they saw a scout of the Hottentots climbing a tree from where he scrutinized the surrounding country. However, he did not notice anything and in a while the gateway of the kraal was opened, the cattle driven out, and then seven men mounted on horses were seen, among them the leader of the party. When the latter had moved only a few steps he all at once discovered one of the Boers and made a sign to his followers, but at the same moment shots rang out and all seven Hottentots fell, mortally wounded, from their horses. The rest of the party now remained in the kraal and a heated battle commenced. The Hottentots, who soon realised that they were superior in number to the Boers, sent out some men to attack them from the rear. Soon two of the Boers were shot dead and one badly wounded, and the others had to withdraw, which they succeeded in doing only with the greatest difficulty; but during the retreat they encountered and were reinforced by a party of compatriots and again turned towards their enemies. On arriving back at the kraal, however, they found it empty; ten dead Hottentots and two horses lay there, but the robbers had taken the cattle with them and, as usual, they could not [35] be overtaken and succeeded in escaping to safety in the wilderness with their booty and all.

   Thanks to the Boers being used to warfare of that nature the Hottentots have also been severely punished on previous occasions and partly for this reason and also because of shortage of ammunition which they have great difficulty in obtaining these days, they have left the country in peace in recent years.^[98]          

At Humbe and southwards to the Kunene River Möller meets meets Eriksson and describes how,

[i]In later years, since the elephants have been heavily exploited and the Damara people have become more and more unruly, Eriksson has trekked right across the continent to the Transvaal where he has purchased large areas of land along the Crocodile River and where his large herds of cattle graze. However, a quiet life on a cattle farm does not suit him; one day the urge to travel overpowers him, he again longs for adventures and the free life of the wilderness; then he loads up a few wagons and treks away westwards across the Kalahari and its thirst-veld, through troubles and difficulties of all kinds, which nobody knows better how to overcome than this experienced and seasoned traveller. After a journey of a year he was again in Damaraland, where he has now been living the last few years, occupied with the buying of cattle and ostrich feathers. During this period he also made some trips up to Angola and Mossamedes; it was on such a journey that he had now reached the Kunene.^[99] 

Möller also describes the bustle of activity he witnesses in this ‘otherwise … completely uninhabited wilderness’ where,

[a]part from Eriksson's two wagons, I also saw wagons belonging to three Boer families, who had made the journey here through the Ovampo tribes under the protection of Eriksson. There were about 600 oxen and cows, goats and sheep, apart from dogs and numerous horses. The natives of the Humbe tribe had come here and new crowds of them were still arriving; apart from me, there had also arrived a colonist from Katekerou. … the river. Behind the camp, towards the south, began the vast wilderness that separated the Ovampo tribes from Humbe, a dangerous area to camp in because of the roaming cattle thieves, but known for its wealth of game of all kinds. In this game-veld I now stayed together with Eriksson and undertook some excellent hunts; I shot mostly the large, beautiful roan antelope, great numbers of which occur here in small herds, and also palla and hartebeest.^[100] 

The lions were especially numerous round the camp and fresh spoors were seen daily.^[101] Eriksson himself had killed several lions, once encountering ‘a pride of eight lions, four of which he killed with the help of his hunters’^[102].  

Legitimising claims to land against central Namibian Herero rivals, David Swartbooi of Franzfontein signs protection treaty (Schutsvertrag) with the German colonial government (Leutwein in association with Hartmann of the Kaoko Land and Mining Company)^[103].

1897

The German Geographer Georg Hartmann refers to the north-west as ‘Kaokogebiet’ (i.e. ‘Kaoko area’)^[104].

The rinderpest epidemic reaches German South West Africa by April 1897^[105] with the first infected animals reported in and around Windhoek, Grootfontein and in the north-east, despite attempts by the German colonial government to close ‘the border to cattle and animal products from British Bechuanaland or the Transvaal’^[106]. Rinderpest precipitated the collapse of the Herero and Oorlam-Nama pastoral economies and caused the death of some 90% of cattle (including Himba herds) in southern Angola, pushing pastoralists further into the Portuguese colonial economy, including working as mercenaries, with Thirstland Boers, as the Portuguese sought to contain rebellions of Owambo-speaking groups in southern Angola^[107]. This is the context in which leaders such as ‘Vita’ Tom / ‘Oorlog’ (meaning ‘war’ in otjiHerero and Afrikaans respectively) and Muhona Katiti whose backing by Portuguese colonial authorities enhanced their significant regional power^[108]. It is also likely that as elsewhere rinderpest has significant impacts on buffalo and large antelope like eland, kudu^[109].

Following a conference on the rinderpest crisis convened by the British Cape Colony at Vryburg (British Bechuanaland) in late August 1896^[110], a border - the ‘defense line’^[111] or Absperrline^[112] - is established to control movement of livestock between northern ‘native’ areas and southern and central European settlement areas^[113]. This cordon consisted of ‘a chain of [16] military outposts, established between November 1896 and February 1897^[114], some of which became permanent after the pandemic had run its course, in part due to local resistance to colonial authority^[115]. There was a roughly 30-kilometer neutral zone or “no go” area to the north of the line’ - in practice ‘defined by the specific water holes that were banned from use’^[116]. An officer named Kaiser was stationed at Outjo, and the four most north-western stations were located from west to east at Tsawisis on the coast^[117], Omaruru on the Huab River[?], Kauas-Okawa/Okaua, from which it ran along the southern margin of the Etosha Pan to Okaukeujo^[118] (the largest station)^[119].

Fransfontein, which by this year had a mission congregation under Reichmann of 460 people or half the Swartbooi population of the area^[120], was thus positioned inside the Police Zone. Sesfontein, which gained the young evangelist Nicodemus Kido in this year after a visit by Reichmann^[121], and most of ‘Kaoko’ were beyond the red line^[122]. Mission stations in the north-west in this year were also maintained by African evangelists at Tsumasas** near the Brandberg / Dâures and at Otjitambi^[123].

Local support and ‘auxiliary troops’, and especially local knowledge of waterholes, was essential for the siting of outposts along the cordon, and was garnered especially from Kaptein David Swartbooi of Fransfontein, the “Bushman chief”, Johannes Krüger from Gaub**, Kambazembi, the Herero chief at Waterberg, and traders such as Axel Eriksson^[124]. It is reported that 50 Swartbooi men were provided and played an important role along the cordon ‘because of their “great influence on the Bushmen and Bergdamara of these regions”^[125]. These outpost guards ‘were instructed to maintain the “neutral zone” along the cordon, keeping it free of humans and animals, including killing all wildlife found in the zone’^[126].

According to Deputy Governor von Lindequist the northern parts of the protectorate (beyond the veterinary cordon) are to ‘be treated as foreign territory’^[127], except Kaoko in the north-west, for which the intention is ‘to include the inhabitants of Sesfontein, Kaoko’s former centre of power, within the cordon’^[128]. Jan |Uixamab, then Nama ‘chief’ of the settlement, refuses ‘to support the cordon’s construction’ and rejects ‘the suggestion that he, his followers, and their livestock should temporarily leave Sesfontein and move south near Fransfontein’, their feet-dragging indicated further by refusals ‘to provide more than vague assurances that they would move their herds [out of the “neutral zone”, i.e. so their herds must have been spread throughout this area] north to Warmbad (Warmquelle), south of Sesfontein’^[129]. Beyond Sesfontein, ‘Kaoko had no military or Christian missionary presence and so did not benefit from the colonial inoculation campaign’^[130]. Although herds may have survived through retreat to remote areas, the ‘devastating toll’ of the [rinderpest] pandemic is suggested by residents of Sesfontein remembering, 50 years later, ‘the destruction of their herds’^[131].

A Swartbooi attack on Namutoni is noted on map of Eberhard Rosenblad’s[**] main journeys^[132]. Resistance to the colonial authorities is led ‘by a coalition of Herero under Kambatta, as well as other groups from Fransfontein and Sesfontein’, as ‘a response to the economic stranglehold on the region that had resulted from the destruction of herds during the rinderpest outbreak and to the rising debts owed to European traders’^[133].

The Otjitambi !Gomen (Oorlam Nama) community moves to Sesfontein^[134]. Although cattle numbers are reduced in Sesfontein and the newly established Christian congregations threaten to fall apart^[135], ‘people managed to keep substantial numbers of goats’, unaffected by rinderpest while ‘[g]ardening and crop cultivation, i.e. tobacco, maize and sometimes wheat, increased significantly and were used both for subsistence farming as well as in small-scale trade’, and men from ‘Kaoko’ are also reported to have taken up work on farms and as wagon-drivers^[136].

1898

The Portuguese explorer Pereira do Nascimento writes in this year of the Nama ‘marauders’ from Sesfontein and Fransfontein into Kaokoland that:

[f]or a long time those ferocious bandits have been invading … every year, robbing and killing the natives, the cultivators and the herders established in Gambos, in particular the Vu-Kuvale, Ova-himba, and Vu-ndimba … It is estimated that 2 000 head of cattle are stolen annually from these poor people from the Hottentots.^[137] 

Around this year, Jan |Uixamab recruits the evangelist Nicodemus |Naistab Kido (referred to in oral histories as Gâseb^[138], also ‘Hudo’) from the Rheinische Mission in Franzfontein [connected with RMS Outjo] to Sesfontein to come and teach the people gardening there - they had been severely impoverished due to rinderpest and Kido taught them how to prepare land for gardening, sow wheat and irrigate as well to give religious instruction^[139].

After initial successes, the African resistance [described variously as by ‘a regional coalition of Herero and Oorlam leadership’^[140], and as ‘Topnaars of Sesfontein and Zwartboois of Franzfontein’^[141]] to colonial authorities along the western cordon meet with a ‘devastating defeat in Grootberg’ led by Captain Ludwig von Estorff^[142]. He and a company of cavalry sent to negotiate with the Nama in Fransfontein led to the battle of Grootberg on 13 March^[143], after which ‘[s]ome coalition forces withdrew to Sesfontein, and others fled to Owambo or surrendered to the German military’^[144]. Viktor Franke wins an Iron Cross ‘for his leadership in battles against the Topnaars, notably at the Battle of Grootberg’^[145]. Swartbooi uprising at Franzfontein and ≠Anhes (Otjitambi) is brutally crushed by three colonial Schutztruppe divisions under Captain Ludwig von Estorff as head of Outjo District, Major Mueller, Victor Franke and Captain Kaiser, and reportedly resulting in the torturing, rape, disease and malnutrition of Topnaar, Damara, Herero and Swartbooi women and children in military camps, e.g. at Kai|uis (Grootberg) and Tsunamis§^[146]. Prisoners of war are marched to Windhoek via Outjo. David Swartbooi, the Kaptein of Fransfontein, is deported to Windhoek but Kaptein Swartbooi dies at |Ubab (Farm Palmfontein 158), events witnessed and recorded by the young |Gaio Dama Max !Gâgu Dax^[147]. In August Jan |Uixamab, Kaptein of Sesfontein, surrenders in Outjo, hands over most of his weapons^[148], and is forced into a protection treaty (Schutsvertrag) with the German colonial government in association with Hartmann of the Kaoko Land and Mining Company, as well as charged 1000 head of small stock^[149].

The Kaoko Land and Mining Company begins selling farms to German and Boer settlers with Jan |Uixamab of Sesfontein selling 4,000has constituting the farm Warmbad (Warmquelle) on 3rd October of this year that is later taken over by Carl Schlettwein^[150].

Around this year, Jan |Uixamab recruits the evangelist Nicodemus |Naistab Kido (referred to in oral histories as Gâseb^[151]) from the Rheinische Mission in Franzfontein to Sesfontein to come and teach the people gardening there -  they had been severely impoverished due to rinderpest and (according to Van Warmelo) Kido taught then how to prepare land for gardening, sow wheat and irrigate as well to give religious instruction^[152].

1900

Early in the year German troops under Lieutenant Franke advance to Sesfontein^[153]. Resistance led by Jan |Uixamab, makes Sesfontein a priority for a military station despite being located ‘nearly 150 kilometres northeast of the [veterinary] cordon’^[154]. Carl Schlettwein buys a further 20,000ha of land from Jan |Uixamab of Sesfontein^[155].

In May, missionary Reichmann – the first member of the RMS in the north-west – from Fransfontein (see above) journeys to Sesfontein, his observations legitimizing further missionary and government expenditure there: this was,

a trip which would take him several arduous weeks of meandering with his heavy ox-wagon through an inhospitable landscape or thorny bush, stony gorges and sandy riverbeds. In his report to the deputation [Franzfontein] the missionary sketched a picture of desolation and squalor. He encountered numerous herds of small and big game along the way, but most places, which had been inhabited in earlier years such as the big fountains at Otjitambi, had been deserted and people had apparently dispersed far beyond the main routes and sites known to the missionary. When Riechmann eventually reached Sesfontein, his expectations were no less disappointed. A small group of around 80 people were said to be residing there. The copious gardens where maize, wheat, vegetables and tobacco used to be harvested looked shabby and abandoned. To the missionary's discontent the few goats [p. 25] the people kept were used to barter coffee, sugar and other items sold by traders and there were no signs of a stock economy covering the local community's subsistence. Indeed, the Rhenish Mission’s most remote outpost which, but a few years before, had induced expectations of a long-standing and successful missionary endeavour in Kaoko had lost its prosperity. Rinderpest, several years of drought and a fever pandemic had hit the area. Yet, Riechmann left no doubt that the main cause of Sesfontein's economic and social disintegration had most of all been the Topnaar leadership's incompetence and mismanagement.^[156]         

Georg Hartmann writes in a secret report written in Sanitatas (southern Kaoko) that informants in Sesfontein tell him of ‘Portuguese hunters, who usually spent several months (August to November) at Otjijandjasemo§, a significant water-place in northern Kaoko’ who would ‘enter the region with their ox-wagons or would cross the Kunene on horseback’, [d]epending on the Kunene’s water-level and on the quality of the roads’^[157]. They would be ‘[w]ell-armed and supported by large numbers of African carriers and guides from southern Angola and from Kaoko’ and ‘would shoot up to 100 elephants all over the area and collect their loot at Otjijandjasemo’^[158]. Hartmann considers Herero headman Kakurukouje / Kasupi of Ombepera in north-east ‘Kaoko’ to be involved with Portuguese hunting in the areas, ‘supplying these hunters with guides and carriers’ and with Ompebera acting as ‘one of the northern bases of the Portuguese business men, from where they got land for corn and oat cultivation to be used as forage for the horses’^[159]. Kakurukouje / Kasupi is also allied with the Sesfontein Oorlam leadership, and is ‘involved in herding cattle belonging to Jan |Uixamab’, Nama ‘kaptein’ of Sesfontein, as well as paying tribute and supplying the Oorlam leadership ‘with information on herds, with herders, guides and menial work’^[160]. He is ‘among the first men in the northern area to own a gun’^[161].

Englishmen Speak and Peterson (?) reportedly in the Kaokoveld area since this year, as reported by Kuntz in 1910^[162].

1900-03

Reported as drought years^[163].

1901

By March ‘a district command under Lieutenant Viktor Franke’ is stationed permanently in Sesfontein and begins to construct a military fort there so as ‘to supervise the entire area up to the Kunene’: so as to ‘undermine the smuggling of arms and ammunition within the area and through Kaoko into Owambo’ and ‘to put an end to illegal hunting activities by Portuguese and Boer hunters regularly entering Kaoko from the north’ and ‘successfully cooperating with local guides and hunters’^[164] = i.e. big game hunting linked Angola, Kaoko, Owambo^[165]. A ‘commando of 40 soldiers with 25 horses were deployed’, and ‘[i]t was further planned to have ten (10) acres of good soil used for agricultural purposes for planting carrots, cabbage, tomatoes maize, wheat, tobacco etc. and date trees were

also imported, [with] [s]prings … used for the irrigation of the garden and date trees’^[166]. German personnel reportedly begin ‘raping women and young girls’:

[u]pon realizing what was happening Captain Levi /uixomab start advising his people to start hiding in the field during the day and stay away from the military station. Because they mostly targeted women and young girls^[167].

Franke  tries to use the networks of Kakurukouje / Kasupi in the north to control Portuguese hunting^[168]. Also to prevent rumoured ‘Boer-driven attempts to undermine Topnaar leadership in Kaoko and dominate commercial trade’ and to supervise ‘European-driven commercial activities in the area’^[169]. Construction begins on a new military station building in Sesfontein^[170]. Franke counts 40 head of large stock in Sesfontein, but this omits animals dispersed beyond the settlement^[171]. ‘These soldiers also established a garden drawing water from a different spring than the one used by Nicodemus [= Tâsib]. Initially they tried to employ local men to till this field, but were unsuccessful. Instead residents of outlying areas [mostly Namidaman], people who did not have plots, but were instead reliant upon pastoral activities for subsistence, were imported into the community to work these fields … [representing] ‘the first major ethnic realignment of the community since the [69] Topnaar had arrived’.^[172]

Post-rinderpest, archival sources report price increases for livestock in southern Angola and northern Kaoko to 60 Milreis (200 Reichsmark), impacting negatively on exchanges of cattle for imported goods such as arms and contributing to increases in violent raiding^[173].

Smallpox strikes Cape Cross with 12 reported cases and one death, but quarantine of the settlement contains its spread. At this time a Herero man is employed by the trading company Mertens and Schel of Swakopmund to carry a postbag between Swakopmund and Cape Cross.^[174]

1902

The German Administration imposes the first hunting proclamation ‘to protect this financial resource’ and attempts ‘to regulate closed and hunting seasons’ and making provision ‘for the potential establishment of game reserves, if the hunting regulations were not sufficient^[175].

Under Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, ‘the driving force behind Germany’s acquisition of colonies’^[176], the largely uninhabited north-west of the country was leased to the Kaokoland Land and Mining Company’ [Kaoko Land und Minengesellschaft], with Carl Schlettwein as its local representative^[177]. Schlettwein’s instructions were ‘to prospect for minerals, as well as divide the Territory into farms for sale to immigrants’^[178]. Schlettwein moves ‘to Warmquelle, where he planned to breed horses for the colonial forces’^[179], having ‘bought a farm in Warmquelle’ near Sesfontein and in this year is observed as benefitting from ‘his almost exclusive monopoly on small scale trade in tobacco and stock with the local African people’^[180].

Van Warmelo reports for this year that the Germans establish a military post in Sesfontein after Swartbooi uprising at a time when Jan |Uichamab is still the !Gomen [i.e. Topnaar from Walvis Bay] kaptein there^[181], at which time ‘[t]he garrison consisted of Germans and Hottentot soldiers or police’^[182].

The population of Sesfontein is reported as 120 people, mostly women and children, but ‘the station commander conceded that he neither knew how many people lived in Sesfontein’s surroundings, nor what their economic activities consisted of, beyond growing maize and wheat in the local gardens’^[183]. Letters from Nicodemus Kido in Sesfontein report ‘cases of women being forced into sexual relations with German military personnel’^[184].

1904

War breaks out with Herero and Nama in centre and south of German colony. ‘Schlettwein moved to Warmquelle, where he planned to breed horses for the colonial forces’[**check date]^[185]. In Sesfontein / !Nani|aus, the resistance includes involvement by the !Gomen Nama leadership, against wishes/advice of evangelist Nicodemus Kido^[186]. Oral history reports that two German men at the Fort were killed by Nama – one was hit with an iron bar and another was shot – and that these are two of the men in the cemetery behind the Fort^[187]. One is indeed dated 18-09-04 (Karl Pietrowski)^[188].

Although largely not part of the broader uprising, northern Owambo troops from Ondonga attack the German Schutzruppe police station at Namutoni to the east of Etosha Pan^[189] = the ‘battle of Namutoni’. The state forbids trade and movement into Owambo ‘thereby hoping to prevent export of arms to the north and any potential conflicts between European traders or recruiters and Owambo leaders’^[190].

The German Geographer Georg Hartmann produces a map of ‘Kaoko’ derived from his travels for the Kaokoveld Land and Mining Company, starting 1895[?] into 1897[?].

1904-05

A list and map of this year specifies ‘the following closed areas of occupation for the Bergdama before the Herero Wars’ as:

a larger tract of land at the Chumib and two smaller ones at Oachab and at the Hoarusib, further east of Sesfontein at the water source of Anabib and at Urieis§, and one larger one south-west of Fransfontein, besides southwards of Okaukuejo at the water sources of Ombika and Otjovasandu and at the central region, the land to the south of the Ugab, which includes the Brandberg, Okombahe, and the Erongo, and furthermore, smaller groups at Esere [SE of Otavi], Otjikango and Outjo, west of Otavi; in the mountain land of Gaub, at the Waterberg, Otjipaue§, Etjo, Omburo, northwestern[?] Omaruru, in the Khomas Highlands at Seeis, in the Onjati Mountains and at Otjisauna and in the Kaukauveld.^[191]

1904-07

A protracted genocidal colonial war is concentrated in these years^[192].

1905

The Kaoko-land und Minen Gesellschaft marked on map stretching from Kunene to Ugab River. Sesfontein and Fransfontein designated as Topnaar Hottentotten and Swartbooi Hottentotten areas respectively.This map basically carves the land area of Namibia up into company land for economic, especially mineral exploitation.^[193] 

1906

The Police Zone under direct colonial control and where whites are permitted to settle under police protection comes into existence comprising the southern and central areas of Namibia and beyond which ‘it was prohibited to trade in guns, horses and alcohol’^[194]. On 23rd March, the colonial government issues an ordinance that makes provision for the confiscation of Herero stock (movable property) and land^[195], enabling ‘the colonial state to appropriate vast parts of formerly African-owned land and stock’^[196], and precipitating the confiscation, i.e. primitive accumulation, of Nama property in livestock (see below) at a time when they were experiencing post-rinderpest impoverishment following their ascendancy.

Reportedly, in Sesfontein in August 1906,

without having any other choice of helping his people Captain [Jan? Levi |Uixomab] further advice [sic] the inhabitants to resist this immorality of the military, from the Lieutenant to the cavalrymen. Because their immorality act has affecting the missionary work and people could not attend services as they did in the past and the Evangelist becomes very worried.

     The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that the military has used force and has taken more than eighty (80) people to the concentration camp at the military station (fort).

More than fourty (40) people had died of thirst and hunger while kept at the concentration camp and had been buried in a mass grave at the military station in one of the rooms to cover up their [2] dirty job, Captain Levi /uixomab and his two assistants were taken to Outjo but unfortunately Captain Levi /uixomab died on their way and had been buried halfway at Aob river, and assistants also died on their way before reaching Outjo and buried  in Outjo, subsequently declared of died because of malaria.

Lieutenant Schmidt’s replacement at the end of 1906 was met with great relief in Sesfontein. Fortunately situation improved considerably under the new commander.^[197]

German colonial intervention in Sesfontein is ‘legitimised by the participation of the Topnaar [!Gomen] leadership under Jan Uixamab in the colonial war of 1904’^[198], although military forces are then ‘withdrawn from the north-western outposts in order to be available in central Namibia’ and missionary activities here collapse temporarily^[199]. The RMS urges the colonial government ‘to forcefully remove the Zesfontein community to Fransfontein in order to raise the number of residents and hence to guarantee the continuity of the mission work’^[200].

In March, ‘missionary Heinrich Brockmann, who had followed the deceased Reichmann in 1904, reported to the Rhenish Mission Society’s deputation that [p. 27] a group of leaders from Sesfontein and Fransfontein, including the caplains Jan |Uixamab and Lazarus Swartbooi, had been arrested and taken to Outjo charged with murder, plundering and unspecified involvement in the war against the Germans. Imprisonment, bad treatment and the strenuousness of the journey had soon caused the death of six men, among them |Uixamab [who died on the way to Outjo; Swartbooi in the Okahandja prison^[201]]. This gave the German authorities the legitimate [?!] right to replace the removed leaders with new ones. While the missionaries of the Rhenish Mission Society blamed |Uixamab and Swartbooi and disparagingly qualified their involvement in the war against the Germans as a matter of individual interest and ambitions, the colonial government, by contrast, presented it as a matter of collective rebellion and … expropriated all tribal property.’^[202]   

On 17th July, Sesfontein’s ‘tribal property’ (Stammersvermögen) is expropriated under the 23 March government ordinance^[203], as a consequence of alleged involvement by the Topnaar leadership of Sesfontein in uprisings associated with the colonial wars further south^[204]. A meeting takes place in Sesfontein of a commission appointed to estimate ‘the value of the community’s possession in large stock, which the German colonial authority intended to confiscate’ ‘for sale at auction in Outjo to local European farmers’^[205]. This exchange led to the community in Sesfontein receiving small stock purchased ‘with two-thirds of the compensation money, while the remaining one-third was refunded in the form of allocation of additional garden land’^[206]. The commission included^[207]:

• the mission evangelist Nicodemus Kido (known as ‘Hudo’ check**^[208]) associated with the RMS station in Outjo - originally of a Swartbooi family from Fransfontein, but considered at the time to be of the Sesfontein Topnaar leadership;

• the government surgeon Jungels;

• the trader and settler Carl Schlettwein who had settled at the farm Warmbad [Warmquelle] (= C. Schlettwein, Agent for the Kaokoveld Land and Mining Company ‘which has most of the interests in this vast territory’, who in March 1917 was occupying Otjitambi, north-west of Outjo^[209]);

• the district commander Lieutenant Schmidt.

Their report, compiled by Schmidt, ‘listed the large stock owned by - or rather attributed to - seven men and two women’. The financial compensation was 14,560 German Reichsmark for 81 cattle that had been intended for sale to European settler farmers in Outjo^[210].

Having lost the land of Sesfontein to the German government, on the basis of regular lease payments the ‘Sesfontein community’ is granted right of residence^[211] to the 31,416ha ‘farm Zesfontein’ in the district of Outjo for use by the ‘Topnaar Swartbooi Hottentot’ for grazing purposes, being bounded as ‘a 10km radius from the waterhole Zessfontein’^[212]. Residents could be relocated by the district commander at any time, and thereby ‘forced into dependent work relations’, but right of residence included ‘the allotment of 2 ha of garden land and the ownership of small stock, provided it did not exceed a total of 1500 animals’^[213]. Unsettled were the community’s savings ‘of 1665 Reichsmark and 41 small stock… intended for the building of a church building’^[214]. Kido was allowed to keep his 18 cattle but this privilege would expire on day of his death when his large stock would be taken over by German authorities.^[215]

Rizzo writes that ‘[b]y 1906, the community of Sesfontein was [already] seemingly impoverished, most people had left and dispersed into the bush [see comments re: impacts of military above]. Colonial reports as well as those by the missionaries of the Rhenish Mission Society portray an image of an almost unpopulated area, where there was limited economic activity... [thus] the expropriation of 1906 marked the low point of a gradual collapse of a society and its economic and political basis, a process in which German colonial intervention was but only one factor and… a rather marginal one at that’^[216] [see 1900 – missionary Reichmann had already observed impoverishment in Sesfontein].  

North of the Koigab and Huab George Elers, on his expedition to seek northern deposits of guano, builds a road so as to travel northwards towards Sesfontein, doing this with 'a large number of Berg-Damaras who live in this [sic] Velds. I may say that these natives gave me every assistance and made nearly 100 miles of new road taking in new water places, as so many of the known ones were dry. [He subsequently arrives at Sesfontein, a small military post under the command of Lieut. Smidt.]'^[217].
Elers writes further that,

Lieut. Smidt informed me he thought it was impossible to proceed further north near the coast on account of the drought. However although it looked hopeless I decided to try and am glad to say got through to the mouth of the Hoanib. I got the cart down to the high dunes and proceeded over them with carriers.
I found plenty of water in the sand dunes but of very bad quality [e.g. Auses?] and my oxen would hardly touch it although they had come through a long thirst. I also found much better water on the sea-side of sand dunes and there made my base. I stayed and examined all this part of the coast thoroughly. An old sea Bushman remembered the birds [white breasted cormorants] nesting there as he used to kill them for food and take the eggs.

From Hoanib I proceeded to Hoarusib, I found this the only river that has run for many years. I have no difficulty with water but could not get cart nearer the sea than 40 miles, on account of wash outs and dense reed and bush … I found some Berg-Damaras and Bushman who live close to the sea and these people are constantly walking up and down the coast in search for whales that come ashore, you will find their Kraals all the way to Khumib and also a long way south to the Hoanib … North of the Khumib it was impossible to go on account of the drought.^[218]

In this year Fransfontein too experiences similar treatment: ‘land and cattle was [sic] confiscated, the community was allowed to keep 2ha of garden land and a maximum of 500 piece of small stock, five mission evangelists were allowed to keep their large stock, and the district commander reserved the right to determine where people would be allowed to reside and to work’^[219].

1907

To protect wildlife considered over-exploited since the 1850s, especially in northern areas, a series of three Game Reserves / Wildschutzgebiet^[220] are proclaimed in the wake of the German colonial war, through Proclamation No. 88, issued on 22 March by Imperial Governor of Deutsch Südwestafrika, Dr Friedrich von Lindequist^[221]. Hunting is prohibited from these areas ‘without written permission of the district office’ and vehicle traffic is also prohibited^[222]:

1. Game Reserve No. 1 is north-east of Grootfontein ‘and protected game in the Omuramba Omutako’^[223];

2. Game Reserve No. 2[5] – at the time, the largest conservation area in the world – is from Etosha Pan to the coast and includes Kaokoveld (today’s northern Kunene);

3. Game Reserve No. 3 was south of the Swakop River and east of the British enclave of Walvis Bay^[224]: Game Reserve No. 3, today’s Namib-Naukluft National Park, restricts the lifestyle and mobility of the !Khuiseb peoples / ≠Aonin^[225], which occurs without consultation with local people and rules hunting in the park illegal, although the ≠Aonin already controlled hunting through an established traditional hunting season (!amis). Herding and all other activities were restricted to the river and official ownership of the land and resources was shifted to the state. Schutztruppen posts (i.e. ‘stations manned by colonial protection troops’) are positioned at Ururas and Haigamkap ‘in Topnaar territory’^[226]. Repeated changes in park regulations have also brought ≠Aonin lifestyles in conflict with Park management, resulting in incidences of direct confrontation between the two^[227].]

Game Reserves / Wildschutzgebiet proclaimed through Proclamation No. 88, 1907. Source: scanned from Bridgeford 2018, p. 13.

The proclamation of huge areas of land as ‘Game Reserves’ in this historical moment was made possible by the violent depopulation of areas of southern and central Namibia through the German colonial war of 1904-7 and the clearance of indigenous Africans and restrictions on owning livestock effect through various mechanisms. Native Ordinances issued by Governor Friedrich von Lindequist in August legally recognise distinctions between ‘whites’ and ‘indigenes’^[228] so that ‘confiscations all over the German controlled territory had become effectual in legal terms’ and ‘[t]hereafter, African ownership of large stock required special permission, the size of settlements were limited and Africans were forced to carry passes [brass tokens worn around the neck^[229]] and subjected to rigid legislation regulating dependent working conditions’^[230], with out which they could be punished by law as vagrants^[231]. A central ‘register or natives’ was to be developed, work contracts regulated, settlers given ‘the right to engage in “fatherly chastisement” of their workers’ and ‘loiterers’ ‘punished as vagrants’^[232]. As Gordon writes, these ‘sets of regulations locked together in a mutually supporting way to forcibly incorporate indigenous people into the settler-controlled economy’, and indeed the Windhuker Nachtrichten is quoted as saying ‘[t]he native must be made aware that he has a right to exist only in direct dependence on the territorial authorities; without this, he is in a certain sense an outlaw: a livelihood outside of working for whites is not available to him’^[233]. The settlement border between northern and central parts of Namibia ‘was established to serve as a Police Zone border that would aid in advancing European settlement efforts in the colonial heartland - the area known as the Police Zone’^[234]. This border corresponds with much of the southern boundary of Game Reserve No. 2.

1909

The German Kaoko Land and Mining Company sponsors an expedition by the German Kuntz to Kaokoland and the Norwegian Toenissen^[235].

The military station in Sesfontein is reportedly closed in this year and ‘handed over to the colonial police who stationed three policemen’ here^[236].

1910

This year sees ‘over 50 applications for land in the Kaokoveld, but the Company [see above] held out for higher prices and none were approved until 1912. … [but] After ten years no exploitable minerals had been found and no development had taken place, resulting in the company not even being able to pay land taxes due to the Colonial government’^[237].

The geologist Kuntz reports to the Kaoko Land und Minengesellschaft, at ‘Kowares in Zesfontein’, that ‘[t]he cavalry sergeant there proposes to make shortly a tour to the Kunene and hopes for support, as he cannot obtain guides owing to the natives’ fear and hatred of the police’, adding that he ‘does not want the expedition to get involved into the affairs of the police’, and that ‘in any case travelling together with police or other officials must be avoided’^[238].

Kuntz also notes (from Ombombo?) that ‘[t]he Bergdamaras living at Gamgamas [place along the Uniab River] had run away’, and were hiding in the mountains but courted by presents; and at Zwartmodder [on the !Uniab] he contacts Bergdamaras who say they do not know the country between Kaias and Hoanib, but promise to fetch ‘Bushmen’ living in the Hoanib Valley (but they never came back with the Bushmen). He meets Bergdamaras returning from Uniab-Mund. While Kuntz explores the coast for guano, Liesejang [**= same as Toenissen?, see 1909] proceeds to Ombombo, inspecting land for farming suitability and reports that Boer families are settled at Otjitundwa§ [near Kaoko Otavi].^[239]

The Outjo District Council decides that all Bushmen in the district should report for work with police in rounding up more than 100^[240].

1911

‘Berg-Damara’ numbers have fallen to 13,000, according to the official German census of this year^[241] (from an estimated 30-40,000 before German occupation).

The Schutztruppe commander as well as the district commandant of Outjo argue for more draconian measures including that ‘any Bushman who did not stop on command could be shot’ and that women should be included in the definition of Bushmen, ‘as they “were just as dangerous”’^[242]. The government’s chief medical officer, Dr Siebert, recommends in a circulated memorandum the creation of ‘reserves’ for the preservation of Bushmen (with the northeast of Grootfontein – the Kaukauveld – seen by some as aready constituting a de facto reserve):

[Bushmen) are unsuitable as settled employees, and the relinquishment of their nomadic lifestyle spells their doom. While they are of little economic value, they are of large scientific value. And even the Cameroons have a law, which protects gorillas by placing them in reserves.^[243]

1911-12

Police with soldiers ‘undertook more than 400 Bushman patrols in the Grootfontein, Outjo, Rehoboth, and Maltahohe districts, covering some 60,000km2’, accompanied by the issuing of metal ‘dog tag’ passes as well as discussion by the Landesrat of ‘tattooing Bushman vagrants’, dropped due to technical difficulties and ‘the possibility of public outcry in Germany’^[244]. The fact that these patrols take place in such distant areas indicates that ‘Bushman’ here is perhaps a catch-all term for anyone living relatively independently of the emerging colonial state and speaking a click language.

1912

Lieutenant Fischer, first ‘warden’ at Namutoni, reports that lion are heard here again after decline due to hunting^[245].

Outjo, where European settler farms occupy 431,125 ha, now boasts the largest police station^[246]. By the early part of this year ‘the area west of Etosha Pan had been “cleansed” of Bushmen and the police station at Okaukeujo reinforced with additional personnel’^[247].

1912-15

The Luderitzbucht Chamber of Mines requested the government to sanitize ‘Bushman hordes’ affecting migration of labourers from Owambo, the Outjo district head (Dr. Schultze-Jena) proposes that ‘all Bushmen in his district be forcibly removed to the coast’, a suggestion vetoed because the climate would certainly kill them’, and Otto Link, the acting head of Grootfontein District, ‘urgently requested that the governor deport all the collected Bushmen to the Luderitzbucht diamond fields’^[248].

1913

It is estimated that Etosha’s plains host between 20 and 30 000 animals^[249].

‘Loose natives’ are ‘rounded up’ through ‘a conscriptive method’ adopted by the police, ‘apportioning them to masters in need of servants’, although ‘the scheme is made inoperative by the perverseness of the natives, who melt away from the unpopular farms and betake themselves to the wilderness’^[250].

1913-14

Map dating to these years shows the southern boundary of Wildschutzgebiet / Game Reserve no. 2 to stretch in a N-W diagonal line from Okaukeujo up to the Hoarusib River, Sesfontein and the Hoanib River, and the area stretching north from Hoanib to Hoarusib, is demarcated as ‘Gesellschaftsland’ [company land, see above?] and stretches southwards down to the Ugab River^[251]. Very small pockets of farmland dating 1910-14 are found in the more favourable areas in this Gesellschaftsland, e.g. around Sesfontein/Warmquelle.^[252]

1914

Vedder visits Kaoko^[253] and documents for the colonial government Ovaherero, Ovahimba and Ovatjimba peoples there as part of an over-arching Herero-speaking community, in context of perceiving work by the Rhenish mission as simply an extension of the Herero mission elsewhere in Namibia^[254]. But this description ‘as an OvaHerero area’ conflicted ‘with the realities on the ground’, given that ‘the main stronghold of missionary work in Kaoko in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was … Sesfontein and its Topnaar leadership’, drawn into the Rhenish Mission Society’s Nama mission field with strongholds in Outjo and Fransfontein^[255]. Thus ‘Hudo’ [check], i.e. Nicodemus Hendriks (father of Pastor Hendriks in Sesfontein who died in early 2016), would travel to Sesfontein from the Rhenish Mission Station in Outjo to preach in Sesfontein^[256].

Van Warmelo reports that by 1914 there were only three [German] men left in the garrison/fort in Sesfontein, and when the first world war broke out the Germans arrested the kaptein of Sesfontein Jan |Uixamab, taking him to Outjo, and he died on the way from Outjo to an unknown destination being buried at Palmfontein**? 6 miles from Outjo^[257][** this seems inaccurate, see 1906]. Jan |Uichamab’s son (by ||Gaubes) – Levi |Nabeb |Uichamab - becomes kaptein of Sesfontein^[258]. When the German garrison in Sesfontein was abandoned in the early days of WW1 the garden plots ‘were “inherited” by those who had worked them’^[259]. Elsewhere it is written that ‘Uixamab’s brother and successor Jan |Uixamab [grand-father of Husa], died in 1914 a prisoner of the Germans’^[260].

Major Viktor Franke sends a company of sixty Schutztruppe (‘protection troops’ to Grootfontein district ‘to deal with troublesome Bushmen’[‘Bushmen’ or ‘Dama’?] for which a Gunther Walbaum describes in vivid detail beatings and hangings of ‘Bushmen’ with firearms for killing a white settler farmer, and saying of a patrol that:

[a]fter three kilometers we reached an open field where Jan [the guide) showed us to go down. One kilometer in front of us some Bushmen were busy digging out uintjies [tubers). Now Jan did not want to walk in front anymore, because he did not want to have anything to do with the shooting. We discussed our next step for a moment so that we could encircle them. We had to sneak up to them like one does with game. On a sign, we all got up with our guns ready to shoot. We were about fifty to seventy meters away from them. The Bushmen stood in astonishment. When we approached them, ten or twelve men ran away. Falckenburg and one of our natives shot two. Unfortunately, I missed.^[261]

‘Heikum’ is recorded for ‘Bushmen’ in the vicinity of Etosha Pan^[262].

1914-21

Levi |Naneb |Uixomab took over from his father as Headman of Sesfontein because his father fell sick^[263].

1915

The concession to the Kaokoland Land and Mining Company was nullified by the South African government. ‘[O]nly four farms had been surveyed and sold and they were never occupied’.  

This year marks the formal colonisation of land and peoples north of the Red Line^[264] under ‘a military administration run [until 1920] by the Union of South Africa’^[265]. The revenue and expenditure for the year ending March 31st is estimated to balance at £2,081,157^[266]. The ‘natural boundaries of the Union of South Africa are to be expanded northwards from the Orange River to Portuguese Angola, and westward from Bechuanaland to the Atlantic Ocean’, providing ‘the Botha Government, in Namaqualand and Damaraland, with more land for the “bijwohners,’ or poor white class’^[267]. General Louis Botha thus declares on 26 July that ‘“[i]n German South West Africa homesteads are waiting for many a South African son’^[268]. A contemporary British commentator remarks that ‘inter-tribal warfare is practically unknown [in South West Africa’, and ‘the danger of a native uprising is nil’^[269] and states that:

[i]n order to colonise it is necessary to possess some sort of perception of the rights of humanity, and Germany has invariably committed the fatal error of misjudging humanity altogether. The lessons which must be mastered before a nation can control and govern a subject race she has systematically refused to learn, until her violations of treaties and her brutal treatment of the natives compelled the Hon. W. P. Schreiner to the conclusion that it would never be possible again for Germany and Britain to march side by side in the work of colonisation in Africa.^[270] 
At same time..
Retreat and defeat of German forces opens the way for indigenous reconstruction and pastoral recovery (in terms of numbers of livestock rather than access to markets^[271]), especially amongst Herero and Nama communities in southern and central Namibia^[272].
Bushman hunting’ is banned by the incoming South African administration, and the first South African military magistrate in Grootfontein district writes of how ‘the Bushmen have all lost faith in the white man’s methods [of justice], more especially as their women were being constantly interfered with by both farmers and police’^[273].
After German surrenders Vita Tom leads some Himba and Herero ‘back into sparsely populated Kaokoland’, having accumulated herds through cattle raids of Kuvare, Ngumbi and Kwanyama peoples of southern Angola^[274].

The concession to the Kaokoland Land and Mining Company is nullified by the South African government (as martial law takes hold in the territory?**^[275]) - ‘[o]nly four farms had been surveyed and sold and they were never occupied’^[276]. Major Charles Manning is appointed Resident Commissioner of Ovamboland, from where he also treks (in 1917) to Kaoko^[277].

?? In January, four South African PoWs escape from a German camp at Franzfontein survive after finding water at Cape Cross, before making their way to Swakopmund^[278].

mid-1910s

Immigration from Angola into Kaoko ‘re-initiated raids and consequently led to the dislocation of many people’ and ‘socio-political distress in the region [Kaoko] by the late 1910s favoured the beginnings of administrative policy’ of indirect rule in Kaoko led by Major Charles N. Manning - ‘concerned with the demarcation of ethnic groups and the identification of political leaders associated with them’^[279].  

In the early part of the decade the governor was being urged by settler farmers to kill off (abschiessen) Bushmen^[280].

mid-late 1910s

In the mid- and late 1910s, immigration from Angola into Kaoko re-initiates raids and leads to the dislocation of many people, favouring ‘the beginnings of administrative policy’ and administrative ‘action in Kaoko by the South African administration’, as led by Manning^[281].  

1916

New colonial authority is established and adopts the inner-Namibian border of the Red Line as the northern boundary of European settlement^[282].
Cases are on record of farmers who have killed Bushmen being charged with murder under the new SWA administration^[283].

Early in the year, Vita Tom / Oorlog returns to Kaokoveld,

After the war with Mandume the Portuguese thanked me for all my services including those at Naulila and as I wished to go back to [2] Kaokoveld under the new government, I trekked with about 200 people and stock South of the Kunene via Swartbooi’s Drift to OTJITAMBI alias OTJIJANJASEMO near MUHONGA river but we have a large spring at OTJITAMBI. There are two big palms there. We found a man named Hangerwa there and he welcomed us. We planted mealies and kaffir corn. This was early in 1916. Muhona Katiti had killed the son of Kasupi of Ombepera and he was also afraid that I was coming with Boer people across the Kunene and he trekked before I arrived at Otjitambi and went to Ongwati thence Ekoko§ (or Owaruthe§) where he now lives. This is 1½ days on foot South of me [where?] and 4 days on foot going North from Zesfontein. I sent three times to Muhona Katiti asking him in a friendly way why he had trekked. He replied he would come back but was grazing his cattle. I then heard that he had sent a messenger to his brother Karapupa (Karahoupa? CNM.) to Cauas Okawi to complain to the English that I had murdered his people. He said I had killed 26 men and 2 women whome I was alleged to have taken from him to wife. A man I sent to buy tobacco from the Zesfontein Hottentots told me about these lying reports and I with my sons and others left home to see the Government [where?] about the matter but at Warmbad we heard the Troops had gone to Ovamboland so we went home and I sent four men Adriaan, Lukas, Edward and Mbepera to Cauas Okawi Police Post. They returned with a letter or pass ordering me to come to Cauas Okawi with Muhona Katiti to have the matter discussed. I sent a messenger Kabiritu to Muhona Katiti saying we should go together to Government. Muhona Katiti would not listen but took away the man’s horse, gun, saddle and everything. He had the man beaten with kerries as one can see from wounds on the man’s chest now (Marks still visible CNM.). I wnet [sic] to Gauko Otwau and from there sent two Hereros to tell Muhona Katiti that the English police ordered us to come. He said he would have nothing to do with the Police and would not go. I went by myself to Windhuk and returned to Zesfontein after seeing Government. I have not gone further than here because I have heard from many people that Muhona Katiti is waiting for me on the different roads near Onganga. If I go we may fight and I am afraid of offending the Government and the Law. I only wish to have peace and have no wish to have war but I want to get home for food.

Sgd. VITA alias OOLOG. His X mark.

Statement to Manning, Sesfontein 9th August 1917.^[284]

Proclamation 10 of 1916 is the first law in the territory to protect a plant, and protects Welwitschia mirabilis, especially in Game Reserve No. 3^[285].

1917

Journey by Major Charles N. Manning, first Resident Commissioner of Ovamboland, who  makes two significant treks into Kaoko in the north-west of the country in 1917 and 1919, ‘concerned with the demarcation of ethnic groups and the identification of political leaders associated with them’^[286]. An outcome of Manning’s trips to ‘Kaoko’ in 1917 and 1919 was the production what has become known as ‘the Manning map’: a ‘remarkable’^[287] map of north-west Namibia, a copy of which was deposited with the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London. In 1917, Manning toured Kaoko from Owambo from 2 August to 1 November, a moment that immediately follows the so-called Mandume campaign to remove the recalcitrant Kwanyama king Mandume ya Ndemufayo^[288], who is pictured dead after a skirmish at his homestead Oihole on 6 February^[289].

Manning’s full report and map, submitted from Ondonga on 15th November 2017 following submission of extracts and copies of his personal diary, is split into 4 sections plus additional ‘special subjects’^[290] -‘mountains’, rivers’, ‘water supply’, ‘trees’, ‘roads’, ‘agriculture, farming etc.’, ‘land values’, ‘Zesfontein vs. Kaoko Otavi’, ‘native population’, ‘labour’, ‘firearms, political aspect, administration’, ‘veld fires’, ‘tsama melon’, ‘game’, ‘climate’ - and 12 photos of various places visited. His revised Kaokoland Map marks ‘ROUTES taken by me as also all places actually visited or verified recorded on map for first time are marked or written in red. This also applies to alterations and corrections. [added by hand –] Shaded patches indicate “natives”’^[291]. He frequently notes his frustration with what he sees as the inaccuracy of previous maps, often using this as a justification for denigrating the cartographic work of German travellers to the area. He similarly expresses frustration with the complexity of local names^[292]:

[c]onfusion in names of places thus arisen apart from several inaccuracies, misspellings and important omissions on existing maps. Some places obviously wrongly located have been crossed out and correctly shown.^[293]

Manning is keen to institute a new system of government and control, based on a typical suite of statecraft technologies, including reducing the availability of firearms, controlling the hunting of ‘game’, establishing a hierarchy of headmen in specified areas, and controlling movement and trade^[294]. He encounters people he frames as,

Kaoko Herero viz OVATSHIMBA of Bantu Class, largely outnumbered Nama speaking people such as Hottentots, Namibdaman alias Sandkaffirs, Ghodaman alias Klipkaffirs, and Bushmen who in small numbers near Sea Coast, at and South of Zesfontein only. Languages totally different. Latter have many clicks, Herero like Ovambo, have none.^[295] 

Manning’s instructions in July 1917:

were to accompany the Officer’s patrol then on way to late German outpost, Zesfontein, to particularly co-operate in settlement of hostile dispute between two armed native sections in Northern Kaokoveld,- one under Kaoko-Herero or Ovatshimba headman MUHONA KATITI - represented as headman by his brother KARAHUPA (alias KARAVAPA) who had been to Cauas Okawa^[296] (east of Kamanjab) Police Station and made serious allegations as to murders and robberies against the other [complaining ‘that Oorlog had killed some of his people’), ‘who had gone to Windhuk to personally repudiate charges [complaining ‘that Karahupa had been the aggressor should be called upon to produce the bones of people that Oorlog was said to have killed’^[297]. I was also to see as much as possible of the Kaokoveld and inhabitants and to report generally on conditions for the Administrator’s information^[298].

Manning writes in his diary notes extracts that he was to accompany:

as representative of the Protectorate Administration an officers patrol consisting of Lt. and Troops with wagons, to [‘the late German out-post’^[299]of] Zesfontein where a Police Post was to be established and used inter alia as a base for intelligence relating to Kaokoveld^[300].

Vita Tom (Oorlog) (the son of Tom Bechuana who worked for Francis Galton during his expedition northwards in the early 1850s) moved from Angola into northern Kaoko to become one of two significant Himba/Herero headmen (with Muhona Katiti) in northern Kunene under the South African administration.^[301] Both these headmen encounter in Kaoko pastoro-foragers (‘Tjimba’) who remained in the mountainous areas, trading ivory and ostrich eggshells for iron implements and old-fashioned guns with the western Owambo kingdoms and those around Kaoko Otavi viewing themselves as subjects of the King of Uukwaluudhi^[302]

Manning’s journeys in 1917 (and 1919) are being reconstructed at https://www.futurepasts.net/major-manning-kaoko-journeys-1917-1, focusing on his experiences and his impressions of the territory and peoples of north-west Namibia in this important historical moment.  

1918

Levi |Nabeb |Uixamab, kaptein of Sesfontein, dies succeeded by son – Nathanael Husa |Uixamab (by Levi’s wife Katrina Maria ||Âwes)^[303].

O’Reilly observes in the Blue Book that ‘[t]he chief cause of all the trouble between Germans and Bushmen was that the Germans would persist in taking the Bushwomen from their husbands and using them as concubines’^[304]. Major J. Herbst, secretary for South West Africa at the time, states of Bushmen and game laws that:

the strict enforcement of the game laws has made the country unsafe for them. They profess to be unable to understand by what right Government protects the game and invariably ask to be shown the government brand on the animals.^[305] 

 
At the end of 1918, ‘the government of South Africa orders the expulsion of Germans living in South West Africa’^[306].

1919

Prohibited Areas Proclamation (Proc. 15 of 22 March 1919) by the ‘South African military administration’ confirms the existence of the three Game Reserves proclaimed in 1907 with permanently manned police posts established at Namutoni and Okaukeujo, and also controls entry into Owamboland and Rehoboth^[307].

Post-WW1

Post WW1

Boreholes are provided by the South African administration ‘as part of a policy to discourage nomadism’, including at the entance to the Hungorob ravine, south side of the Brandberg, and ‘[l]ocal men were … issued with rifles to protect their herds from the packs of Cape Hunting Dogs Lycaon pictus’, both innovations perhaps associated at the Hungorob with ‘an increase in the size of the herds and a need for the construction of large enclosures’, as evidenced by ‘several brushwood stock enclosures’ at the Hungorob^[308].
Following WW1 and as the territory came under Union of South Africa ‘protection’, the area stretching from the Kunene to the Hoanib River in the south became known as the ‘Kaokogebiet’ (i.e. ‘Kaoko area’) and ‘Kaokoveld’^[309].

1920

The Masters and Servants Proclamation and the Vagrancy Proclamation are enacted making ‘it a criminal offence for native workers to leave their employment without their bosses’ explicit consent’^[310].

Part of the Himba group that had moved north over the Kunene in response to raiding in late 1800s by Nama settled in Sesfontein ‘again moved southwards into central and southern Kaokoland, although others remained in southern Angola’^[311].

Vita Tom / Oorlog presents Lieutenant Olivier seven head of cattle during the Lietenant’s first visit to Kaokoland, an act interpreted as his seeking of support from the white authorities^[312].

Major Manning as Resident Commissioner for Owamboland goes on tour to the Kunene river for the Boundary Commission, accompanied by C.H.L. Hahn and René Dickman^[313].

1921

Game Preservation Proclamation (13 of 1921), based on German laws, makes the South African police responsible for regulating hunting and game protection^[314].

SWA is mandated by the League of Nations to be administered by South Africa in its own right, after administering the country in the name of Great Britain^[315]. The Mandate speaks of the indigenous population being placed in the “tutelage” of an “advanced nation”, as “a sacred trust of civilization”^[316]. The territory becomes ‘the object of an ambitious Land Settlement Programme for poor white (although not destitute) Afrikaners from the rural north-western Cape’^[317]. The Native Reserves Commission generates legislation to set up demarcated Native Reserves in each of the principal farming districts of the Police Zone and establishes conditions for native settlement and movement^[318]. The ‘Zessfontein Reserve in the Kaokoveld was to remain undisturbed’^[319]. New and excalating location regulatons in Windhoek attempt to impose hut taxes and passes for most adults (exluding married women) and are resisted^[320]. The Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) is established^[321].

Major C.H.L. ‘Cocky’ Hahn becomes Native Commissioner for Owamboland and Kaokoland^[322]. Manning writes a letter to the Royal Geographical Society in 1921 describing his travels and affirming in particular the assistance of local people. He writes that he was:

particularly assisted by the comparatively few wild native inhabitants (viz Herero Bantu type and Hottentot-Bushman Nama type) of the remoter parts who not only guided me and explained matters along many hitherto unknown mountain routes, - frequently without even footpaths or the often useful elephant and other smooth game tracks through stones and bush, - but pointed out water in secluded kloofs and in beds of rivers which once flowed; abandoned settlements of previous generations, sacred piles of stones called OMBINDI to which travellers added something conveniently picked up muttering a few words to propitiate the spirits; method of making fire with sticks and perpetuation of family fires wich [sic] were also regarded with reverence and as altars in case of sickness etc; they also pointed out occasional rhinoceroses, elephants, giraffes and so forth which were very abundant before that greatest of all exterminators of the finest varieties of game viz the European’s firearm.^[323]

1921-41

Nathanael Husa |Uixomab takes over as Headman of Sesfontein from his father Levi |Uixomab.^[324]

1922

Kaokoveld is proclaimed as a reserve^[325] under Outjo District for Chiefs Oorlog Thom, Muhona Katiti and Kasupi, the three Herero leaders inhabiting the region at the time. Oorlog Thom, with well-armed Herero and Himba followers, entrenched as most powerful ruler north of Sesfontein^[326].

Early 1920s

A new body of legislation from SA comes in to regulate labour flows and control indigenous populations^[327]. Occupants of crown land (who often had relocated to land dispossessed during German rule) were forcibly removed to newly established Native Reserves in Police Zone where livestock possession and identity reconstruction could take place, albeit under conditions of inadequate resources^[328].

The Land Settlement Programme settles large numbers of white farmers from SA in SWA, around 10 per cent of whom are ‘fairly well financed’, providing grants of 400 pounds for the building of a permanent dwelling (cf. remaining farmhouses on now communal land)^[329].

1920s

The official Police Zone border is ‘drawn onto Namibian maps with a clearly marked red line’^[330], and ‘reinforced by a chain of police outposts placed at intervals along its length’^[331]. It ‘physically mark[ed] the transition between “white” European southern Africa and the “black” interior, between that which was “healthy” and that deemed “diseased” … the line drawn between what the colonial power defined as “civilization” and what it considered “the wilderness”’^[332]; or the line between ‘tribalised’ and ‘detribalised’ Namibians^[333].

1920s-1940s

Only official presence in the Kaokoveld was at Tshimakara / Swartboois Drift where ‘a lone white police officer cum native affairs officer concerned himself primarily with patrolling the Angola Border’^[334].

1921-1947

Following the 1921 mandate, SA uses the space of the mandated territory for the immigration and settlement of poorer whites in SA^[335]. The territory is constructed, visually and otherwise, as uninhabited terrain, supported by a discourse of ‘vacant land’ legitimately available for appropriation by the new administration^[336].

SA administration in Kaokoland, especially under Major C.H.L. ‘Cocky’ Hahn (also known to the Ovambo as Shongola, i.e. ‘whip’^[337], and grandson of founding Rhenish missionary Carl Hugo Hahn^[338]) as Native Commissioner for Owamboland and Kaokoland from 1924-47, which included wardenship of the then Namutoni Reserve which later became Etosha Game Reserve^[339], embarked on three interrelated processes:

- established boundaries that divided Kaokoland from surrounding areas;

- created chiefs as intermediaries through whom the area and peoples could be confined and controlled – including the replacement of the Kwanyama kingship with a Council of Headmen in Oukwanyama, including prior enemies of king Mandume^[340];

- promoted specific ideas regarding livestock and resource management, involving vaccination campaigns and the criminalisation of hunting.^[341]

Hahn also represented the Union of SA at the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations^[342].

Regarding ‘conservation’, in an undated archived document called ‘Big Game in Ovamboland’^[343], Hahn makes some important comments and observations including the following:

Detached portions of the scattered herds that survive in the Kaokoveld visit Western Ovamboland at intervals during the wet months, where, owing to the easier hunting conditions and the fact that they approach closer to - and even occasionally enter - tribal areas, they are more liable to persecution, as even amongst the Ovambo ivory is in great demand.

He observes that ‘game’ including elephants move seasonally into western Ovambo from Kaokoland, and mobilises Owambo headmen to control local hunting, thus:

I am glad to place on record the assistance and co-operation tendered me by Chief Martin [ka Dikwa of Ondonga], the ruling chief of the largest tribe in Ovamboland. It has been through his help that the bulk of areas I visited are closed to the depredations of his subjects, where in former years they slaughtered and hunted at wil1.  

And notes that ‘the Kwanyama “readily fell in line”, and that Chief Muala (of Uukwaluudhi) also helped prevent the “indiscriminate butchering of game”.

In an undated letter to L. Fourie, Hahn speaks very critically of government officials turning up at Etosha Game Reserve on excessive shooting trips^[344].

1923

Government Notice No. 122 confirms grant of the farm Zesfontein made by the German Government for the use of ‘Topnaar Swartbooi Hottentots’ in 1906.^[345]
Manning makes his last tour of Kaokoland, accompanied by ‘Cocky’ Hahn in March and in April-May.
Georg Hartmann makes an extensive patrol of Namibia’s northern coast and Kaokoveld, recording ‘several hitherto unknown deposits of guano’^[346].

1924

Smuts, hoping to annexe SWA with SA, ‘signs an agreement with the government of the Weimar Republic … giving Germans in the mandated territory dual citizenship: South African in addition to German’^[347]. General Hertzog, National Party leader, becomes Prime Minister of South African government and refers to the Blue Book as a ‘war pamphlet’^[348].

1924-25

During the leadership of Levi |Uixamab the Himba people now resettled at ≠Guwitas (Otjindakui), Ganamub and Puros arrived and approached the leadership of Sesfontein for resettlement in the area, pleading that they have run away from the war of Chief Vita Thom (Oorlog), from the Angolan border side of the Hoarusib River. The families were Kasaona, Karutjaiva, Uararavi, Kasupi and Uatokuya, and this is how Himba people were resettled in ‘Damaraland’.^[349]

1925

The civilian South West African Administration (SWAA) is established and repeals laws relating to the establishment of Game Reserves 1, 2 and 3^[350].

A smaller group of Herero (i.e. fewer than 2,000, see 1917) move into Kaokoveld ‘and now reside in the south eastern region with their headquarters at Otsondeka§ and Ombombo’ who, having ‘adopted many features of European culture, including the contemporary dress’ and being ‘relatively sophisticated’ they ‘have considerable political influence in the Territory’^[351]. First known incidence of lung sickness in Kaokoveld, possibly caused by ‘cattle imported from Owamboland as well as cattle brought across the Angola border by two “European trekkers named van Zyl and Ysel”’, causing a buffer zone of 100 miles long and 20 miles wide to be established between Kaokoveld and Ovamboland^[352].

1925-1926

From September 1925 until January 1926 the ‘trendsetting’ Denver African Expedition, organised by ‘self-styled anthropologist and scientist ‘Dr’ C. Ernest Cadle’ visits Namibia (Etosha, Hai||om) to uncover the putative ‘missing link’ between stone age and modern man, i.e. the Bushmen, precipitating ‘the first large-scale commercial commodification of Bushmen as romantic representatives of humanity’s Stone Age past’^[353]. The the South West Africa Administration, with an eye to publicity, promises the expedition ‘its wholehearted support’, although the Territorial Medical Officer Dr Fourie and ‘foremost authority on Bushmen’ is [217] ‘instrumental in guiding the Denver expedition away from what he considered the “purest” bushmen’, explaining in a letter to Donald Bain, the South African guide for the expedition, that he fears that the film will cause ridicule:

[218] instead of bringing applause … (the) only way to get good Bushman records is to let them go there and not to attempt to stage-manage them. Hahn has told me of the scene he witnessed. Where on earth have you ever heard of six Bushmen stalking the same animal in Indian file etc. etc. The whole affair is ridiculous. The boy I gave you as guide knows ... PS Be guided with regard to the Bushmen by August (the guide) who knows what stuff you require and drop the film.^[354]

The expedition travels to Etosha National Park where they claim to have discovered “the missing link” in the Hai||om ‘Bushmen’ residing there, making a film called ‘The Bushman’ and taking around 500 still photos^[355]:

[t]hrough the successful commercial marketing of both movie and stills, their impact on creating and sustaining the 'pristine' imagery and iconery of bushmen has been of major import. Starting with the Denver African Expedition practically every American, British, Italian or French ‘expedition’ to Namibia and the Kalahari organized by outsiders contained a cinematographer, or at least a still photographer – the lineage is long and distinguished going from Denver to DeShauensee, Vernay Laing, Ciprioti, Loeb, Morden, Panhard, Bjerre and, of course, most importantly, the Marshall and van der Post multiple Expeditions.^[356]

1926

Native “squatters” begin to be removed from Outjo District, progressively forced from Khorixas, Cauas Okawa, Aimab[??] and possibly elsewhere^[357].

A police office is established at Tshimhaka / Swartbooisdrift on the Kunene River.

Trade restrictions with traders in Angola come into effect^[358].

1927

A Game Preservation Ordinance (Ord. 5 of 1927) repeals and replaces Proc. 13, 1921^[359]. Farm Industry Commission and Land Settlement Commission reports are again concerned with maintaining agricultural productivity^[360]. Game Preservation Ordinance No. 5 articles 10, 11 and 25 prohibit hunting on crown land ‘with exception of dignitaries and officials on duty in rural areas’ and applies hunting restrictions on settler farms^[361].

Major Manning, former Native Commissioner of Owambo, after having been transferred to Rehoboth reminds his successor Native Commissioner ‘Cocky’ Hahn, ‘of the urgent need to produce a game reserve report for Kaoko’^[362]. In an undate correspondence from Hahn to the Administrator of SWA, and predating by some five decades later proposals for local people and ex-‘poachers’ to become ‘Community Game Guards’ (see below), Hahn details ‘a plan in which the headman Ikandwa, an “old and experienced ovaHimba hunter”, should act as warden of a game sanctuary on the Kunene where “a good class of tourists and sportsmen” could observe, photograph and hunt game within the reserve^[363].

Austrian anthropologist Viktor Lebzelter visits Etosha Pan ’in search of Bushmen’, but is dismissive of what he finds there as they wore European rags and, while not ‘missionized’. had adopted European names’, although also writing that,

[t]hey are always prepared to put on old [traditional] clothes and to dance for distinguished guests and allow themselves to be photographed. They are in the best sense Salonbushmen who are dependent upon foreign traffic… So for example one tried to sell me his “gun” (that is for practical purposes a worthless bushman bow) which he had bartered in the wilderness for a cup of sugar for one pound sterling. These Bushmen are really protection officials who watch over the game, but they are also volunteer police who catch all Ovambo who try to avoid the Pass controls at Namutoni. Generally they are still the most well-armed Bushmen…^[364]

Amateur ethnographer Jan Gaerdes^[365] ‘probably filmed some 800 meters … en route to the Kunene River’^[366] where he treks to Epupa Falls and the Baynes Mountains^[367].

1928

The 'Prohibited Areas Proclamation' of 1928 declared the Kaokoveld a game reserve - known, with the contiguous Etosha Game Park, as Game Reserve No 2, and covering a total area of 37 000 square miles [33] ‘although the native inhabitants do possess firearms and are not prohibited from shooting any species’^[368], Hahn idealises ‘the whole “uninhabited” north-western area as “naturally wild and full of romance”’^[369]. Game Preservation Ordinance Amendment Ordinance / Proclamation 26 of 1928 re-proclaims Game Reserves 1, 2 and 3 and for the first time accurately defines their borders^[370].

The area below the 19th parallel is ‘designated for whites’^[371].

Through his work for the Boundary Commission, Hahn travels to the Kunene River between Ruacana Falls and Okuvare§ rapids, designating ‘“the old and experienced Ovahimba hunter headman” Ikandwa as informal warden’ resulting in ‘the replenishment of game’^[372]. Hayes writes that:

[h]e wanted to transform the area into a sanctuary, which would offer “fine opportunities for tourists and sportsmen to shoot trophies under special licences and instructions”. This tied in with wider objectives of policing cattle movements in the area and an attempt to stabilise groups in reserves in northern Kaokoland to act as a buffer with Angola. Hahn argued that the administration should proclaim it a reserve and protected area, and run it on similar lines to the Kruger National Park. It was capable of surpassing the best game reserve in South Africa and creating “a real tourists' paradise in SW”. Game was disappearing elsewhere except in the Namutoni Reserve (Etosha), but “the flat and almost colourless country is not in any way to be compared with the wonderful variety and grandeur all along the Kunene.^[373]   

Hahn affirmed that the reserve would bring:  

a good class of tourists and sportsmen who would have the opportunity of travelling through the whole of South West seeing and photographing game and its wildest and most natural beauty and procuring trophies under certain restrictions ... Sportsmen could indulge in the rather unique sport of crocodile shooting. The river teems with the brutes ... Tourists would bring revenue to the country as well as drawing attention to its possibilities^[374].  

In addition, ‘tourists paying for their supplies in SWA would help trade more broadly, thus:

I think experience has I shown that sportsmen of a good class actually assist in the preservation of game and such natural assets of a country^[375]. Hahn even traced a rough itinerary for his imaginary tourists, starting in Tsumeb and proceeding to Namutoni. Here they would view and photograph game. Then, on their way to Ruacana, they would move from nature to natives, with a tour of the “tribal areas in O/land where wild natural life could be seen, studied and photograph (under special supervision)” ^[376].  

1929

Severe drought in north-west Namibia^[377]. Outjo District (‘southern Kaokoland’^[378]) except for Franzfontein Reserve is cleared of people for the Land Resettlement Program through the forcible relocation of people northwards, so as to make the Police Zone border impenetrable for people and livestock^[379]. 1,201 people were removed to more marginal areas in the Kaokoveld in total (‘393 men, 448 women, 360 children’) plus 7,289 cattle and 22,176 sheep and goats^[380], at the height of the lambing season which meant that many animals perished^[381].

Conducive conditions and state-sponsored immigration in SWA, combined with problems attaining land title in Angola, encourage Angola Boers (‘trekboers’/voortrekkers arriving from South Africa in 19th century who had farmed, hunted and traded in Angola) to trek through southern Angola into Namibia. Their return was negotiated by Prime Minister Herzog through church mediators and they were welcomed by ‘the Administration with an enormous fleet of modern transport lorries on the south bank of the Kunene river at Swaartbooisdrift’ and taken to districts with ‘empty land’ such as Outjo, Gobabis and Grootfontein^[382].

The young (white) Gobabis farmers capture ‘fifty or so Bushmen’, burning down their huts and driving them westwards over night leaving them at various white farms in return for a small commission^[383].

1929-48

Political structure in Sesfontein consists of a chief and four councillors, all Nama, who hold authority over Damara, Nama and Ovahimba residents^[384].

1930

In the SWA Annual Report of this year it is reported that,

[c]hanges in regard to the settlements of natives have recently been carried out in the Southern Kaokoveld. Scattered and isolated native families, particularly Hereros, have been moved to places where it is possible to keep them under observation and control. With few exceptions, these natives are well satisfied with the new localities. They also realize the advantage of being controlled by one chief. … All stock has been moved north over a considerable area in order to establish a buffer zone between the natives in the Kaokoveld and the occupied parts of the Territory which remain free of the disease [lungsickness].^[385] 

First inoculation program undertaken by State Veterinary Office destroying approx. 18 animals, vaccinating 6514 cattle, and recommending that cattle from Kaokoveld ‘be prevented from moving into the white farming area’, with ‘regular monitoring of waterholes along the 19th parallel by the police … [considered] sufficient to prevent the spread of the disease southward’^[386].

Regarding the policing of boundaries established by ‘Cocky’ Hahn in north-west Namibia, he writes in his report to the administration that the administration constable (Cogill) should be instructed to shoot Herero and Owambo cattle found transgressing these boundaries^[387].

In the south, South African hunters are reported to be indiscriminately shooting large numbers of springbok, taking the meat back to Upington^[388].

Donald Bain [see 1925-26 and 1936] guides the De Schauensee Expedition to Etosha where they film ‘Heikum’. This was a bird collecting expedition,‘in the interests of the [Philadelphia] Academy of Natural Sciences’, that travelled from Cape Town via Windhoek to a number of places in west and north Namibia, including Etosha^[389]:  

Windhoek was a very pretty little town surrounded by high rocky hills, which are sparsely covered with small gnarled trees, but are quite bare of any sort of undergrowth. We were most kindly treated there by Mr. Smit, the Secretary for South West Africa. Through his interest we obtained permission to collect birds on the Etosha Pan Game Reserve and also to secure a limited number of the protected species. This enabled us to collect many interesting specimens, the majority of which were not in the Academy's collection ...^[390]

Route of the de Schauensee bird collecting expedition, 1932. Source: de Schauensee 1932: 146.

**to be contd.

[1] 

[2] De Schauensee 1832.

1930-32

The Solar Development Company prospects for minerals (specifically gold) at Zerrissene Mountain, west of the Brandberg and south of the Ugab^[391].

1930-34

Prolonged drought and loss of livestock^[392].

1931

Constable F.G. Cogill [who had previously accompanied Manning in 1917?**] is instructed to travel on a special patrol to mouth of Owaruthe / Hoarusib River, leaving Ondangua on 19 November^[393]. He touches on Sarusas and Omburo (Purros) amongst a long list of other places [??], arriving on the coast on 14 December, where south of the Hoarusib month he finds car tracks attributed, after being ‘told by Natives’ to a police officer who came from Kamanjab via ‘Zessfontein’ but had to return due to heavy sand^[394]. Around 10 miles north of the Hoarusib he finds a vacated mining camp which the natives accompanying, from Omburo, state was ‘visited by the Kamanjab Police, 3 European and 1 Native, and the Headman of Zessfontein’ around 20 days previously, finding 4 white people here ‘with a small Boat… two Rifles, two spades, two picks and a Board on which was a name, also a sample Dish’^[395]. Also found nearby is a further ‘Camping Ground, vacated about 2 years ago and Claim Pegs, with name Boards’ reading ‘Mr. Mc Mann, Precious Stones, Telegr. No. 20, dated 24/5/29’^[396]. Cogill returns via Sarusas^[397]. He reports that he sees little game in Kaokoveld after Epako^[398].

At this time, ‘the Natives [‘very willing to assist me in any way’] who reside at Epako and Omburo state that they are subjects of the Zessfontein Headman and those at Otjinjande§ … fall under Oorlog’^[399].

‘Hei-2om’[?] is recorded for ‘Bushmen’ in the vicinity of Etosha Pan^[400].

1930s

The SA administration contemplates settling white farmers in the ‘neutral zone’ north of the Police Zone border^[401]. Caprivi designates West Caprivi as a livestock free zone, resulting in relocation outwards of Bantu language-speaking agropastoralists in the area^[402].

1935

The Kaoko is represented by ‘Cocky’ Hahn to the Secretary of the National Parks Board as ‘the wildest and most inaccessible region of the country’.^[403]

1936

The South West Africa Government Commission on ‘the future of the territory’ notes that the Damara population of 30,000 ‘have lived mainly by serving others’^[404].

‘Cocky’ Hahn, Native Commissioner of Ovamboland, seeks to establish a Native Commissioner in Kaokoveld but is resisted by Oorlog Thom and subsequent Herero leadership (ref?).

1937

The Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance (Ord. 19, 1937) is gazetted^[405].

Native Affairs officers station in Etosha report that the San / Hai||om hardly ever hunt more than what’s needed for subsistence^[406].

The veterinary / ‘Police Zone’ boundary is positioned in the north-west as per map below:

Vita Tom (Oorlog) dies^[407].

The apparently sole entry regarding women in Kaokoland in the archival notes is reported in this year, stating that ‘women should be prohibited from moving into the Police Zone and should not be given passes’^[408].

1937-38

Inoculation campaigns against lung sickness in Kaoko institutes a period of successful establishment of SA administration in the region through these campaigns as an instrument of rule in conjunction with a headman council system^[409].

1938

A large group of ‘Damara-speakers’ are removed from Windhoek to farms and reserves^[410].

1939

In 1939 Kaokoveld became a separate magisterial district with a Native Commissioner stationed at Opuwo^[411].

1939-40s

Africans including ‘BergDama’ are repeatedly and forcibly moved out of the western areas between Hoanib and Ugab Rivers, although inability to police this remote area means that people move back as soon as police presence has left^[412].

1940

The native commissioner of ‘Ovamboland’ and acting game warden of Etosha Game Reserve writes of the Hai||om in Etosha to the secretary of SWA that,

I do not consider the Bushmen population of the Game Reserve excessive; in fact I thought that room could be found for more wild families and that these could be settled at places other than the main springs and game watering places, where big concentrations of various species of game even proved so attractive to visitors. I pointed out too that the Bushmen in the Reserve form part and parcel of it and that they have always been a great attraction to tourists.^[413]

1941

Nathanael Husa |Uixamab, chief of Sesfontein, dies after being mauled by a lion, leaving no issue. The Sesfontein Nama leadership goes outside of the hereditary line to Benjamin Mîn-≠hab Kido, son of the RMS evangelist Nicodemus |Naistab Kido and his wife Kristina, who had come to Sesfontein from Franzfontein (see 1898 above).^[414] He is appointed in an acting capacity [until 1942] because of his ability to read and write, even though he was a spiritual leader from the Swartboois clan^[415].

1942

Rumours are ‘rampant’ that the SWA Administration has ‘proclaimed land in the Kaokoveld (Damaraland) for farming under the grass licence scheme’ allowing farmers ‘to settle not less than five miles (8 kilometres) from one another’ for an annual licence fee, and that following survey of the land they would be ‘entitled to purchase it at a price that would be determined’^[416]. Landless farmers could apply, precipitating a trek northwards of those with the means of moving^[417].

Government Notice No. 42 increases size of Zesfontein Reserve.

1944

African reserve dwellers in Otjohorongo Reserve complain bitterly that ‘thousands of springbok’ are destroying the grazing and request the welfare officer to drive these animals away^[418].

1942-78

Simon Petrus Kaira ||Hawaxab takes over the Sesfontein leadership succeeding Nathanael Husa |Uixomab, because Husab did not have a son who could fill the position, and Simon Petrus ||Hawaxab was brother-in-law of Husab^[419]. Upon assuming his duties as Traditional Leader, Simon appointed other traditional councilors to assist him: Urimunka Kasaona, Hivetira Karutjaiva and Mitjiranga Uararavi represented Himba people, and Levi ||Hoeb and Elia Amxab representing the Damara people^[420].

1946

Tourism in Etosha begins to be promoted:

From Otjiwarongo the next stop is at Outjo. Here the traveller will obtain a permit to enter the Game Reserve. En route to Okaukuejo the traveller may encounter elephants at Ombika, a water hole. No visit to the Pan is complete without a journey to Namutoni. It lies 80 miles to the east and the road, though little more than a track provides fair going. Shades of 'Beau Geste'will be conjured up by the first sight of Namutoni. An old white-washed building in French Foreign Legion style, complete with tower and embattlements.^[421]

Regarding the potential export of wheat, mealies and tobacco from Sesfontein (‘Zessfontein’) to markets in the Police Zone, this will not be approved by the official concerned, ‘unless he could be given the assurance that the natives of Zessfontein are completely isolated from the rest of Kaokoveld’, otherwise there would be the danger of spreading foot and mouth disease from Sesfontein to the Police Zone:

[c]onsiderable hardships have been imposed on the Zessfontein residents by prohibiting export of their cereals, as they are now unable to purchase their supplies and needs such as coffee, tea, sugar and clothes etc. to which they have become accustomed.^[422]

1947

Andries A. Pienaar, an author ‘who wrote adventure stories set in the wild’, is appointed as the first full-time additional game warden (to the Secretary of State as the Game Warden for the territory), stationed in Otjiwarongo and in charge of Game Reserve No. 2 which previously ‘had been ‘managed by the Native Commissioner stationed at Ondangwa’^[423].

Kaokoveld is proclaimed as a native reserve (the Kaokoland Reserve) with Opuwo as the administrative centre, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean in the west, the Kunene River in the north, the Ovamboland Native Reserve in the east^[424], and appears to be part of the western extension of the Etosha Game Park in the south, which at this time follows the 1907 boundary of Game Reserve no. 2.

**Map of Etosha boundaries

Van Warmelo conducts ethnographic research in Sesfontein and Kaoko at which time ‘Sesfontein itself is only occupied by the settled community living there^[425].

‘Schlettwein’s farm ‘Warmbad’ is occupied by one of the Sesfontein Nama ‘voormanne’ - Jafta Hendrik - ‘with a small number of people’^[426]. Grazing posts are used in the area around Sesfontein itself ‘for many miles around’ and:

[a] number of Herero, Himba and Tjimba live a semi-nomadic life in the country north east and north-west of Sesfontein and these also form part, in a loose sense, of the Sesfontein social and economic unit. There is a sort of no-man’s land zone around the Sesfontein sphere of influence which integrates these cattle nomads with the oasis dwellers. The unit is thus much larger than the reserve’^[427] [extending] as far north as Purros and as far south as the mouth of the !Uniab River, and included most of the territory in between[6]^[428], [plus]

Sesfontein itself is only occupied by the people living there .... The Sesfontein people make use of the grazing for many miles around and have a few posts for their cattle. A number of Herero, Himba, and Tjimba live a semi-nomadic life in the country north-east and north-west of Sesfontein and these also form part, in a loose sense, of the Sesfontein social and economic unit. There is a sort of no-man's land zone around the Sesfontein sphere of influence which integrates these cattle nomads with the oasis dwellers. The unit is thus much larger than the reserve.^[429]

Van Warmelo notes that ‘[a]dministratively the Sesfontein community forms a self-contained entity apart from the rest of the Kaokoveld’ describing the ‘traditional leadership of the old Hottentot “kapteins”, a hereditary position’ as ‘weakened’ to the extent that a non-family member was appointed as leader / senior Headman, with a small number of ‘Sub-headmen’ recognised by the government as assisting him^[430]. Although having the right to participate in the Council of Headmen of the Kaokoveld, van Warmelo states that ‘they would probably never dream of doing so’ since they would not ‘concede the right to decide about Sesfontein matters to any but the government’^[431].

Regarding Sesfontein’s history, Van Warmelo asserts that:

[t]he earliest occupation of Sesfontein was probably by the ubiquitous Bushman, of whom, however, little trace or record remains. He was ousted long ago by the Bergdama, and these were in turn subjected by Herero cattle nomads from the north. These two lived together in a symbiosis already familiar from elsewhere in South West Africa, the Herero being the acknowledged masters and living on their herds, the Bergdama hunting, collecting and working for them. Some Himba relate that the last Omuhimba to lord it over Sesfontein was a man named Omusema.  

This state of affairs ended with the arrival of the Hottentots who are now the dominant element at Sesfontein. Two groups of them arrived, at different times. The first or largest were !omen or Topnaars, the later arrivals were a small group of ||kou-|gõan or Swartboois.^[432] 

In addition to the Nama, mostly !Gomen / Topnaar leadership, whose history of arrival Van Warmelo describes, Van Warmelo thus briefly describes other ‘groups’ in Sesfontein as follows:

- ||Kou-|gôan or Swartboois present in Sesfontein had come from Franzfontein where they were a part of the group living under the leadership there of Cornelius |Hoân-|arab Swartbooi;

- ‘Bergdama’, in spite of being the most numerous people in the settlement at the time of Van Warmelo’s visit, are described in the following brief sentence as:

‘[i]n the course of time the Bergdama  who had been driven out of Sesfontein slowly came back and were allowed to make a living there under sufferance’;

- Herero he describes as being very few in Sesfontein at the times of his visits saying that:

‘[t]hose few resident in the vicinity live, like the Himba, a pastoral life and take little or no part on the life of the Sesfontein oasis itself’;^[433]

 - [45] of Bushmen he has rather more to say, despite there being ‘only a few Bush people left’, as he puts it^[434]. He says that he could only interview ‘one old man named !hu-!gaob who had come in to Sesfontein for the reaping of the wheat in the hope of getting something, for the Sesfontein people appear to be kindly towards the Bushmen’ (possessing no bows and arrows, having last used them as a boy^[435]), accompanied by ‘a young man called |nanimab, son of informant’s brother and a Bergdama mother’^[436]. Van Warmelo notes that this man did not pronounce any clicks at all in his ‘own Bush language’ although he spoke Nama with clicks^[437], a situation that has led to subsequent authors remarking on this oddity of Bushmen in Sesfontein who speak a click language without clicks^[438]. Van Warmelo states that ‘[t]his group of Bushmen calls itself Kubun (with click ||Ubun)’ and that ‘the informant said they originally came from a place called !kuiseb [i.e. the !Kuiseb River] which is south of Walvis Bay, near the sea’, with he himself and his nephew |Nanimab ‘born where the !uniab flows into the sea, about seven days walk from Sesfontein’. His informant had ‘never had a Bush wife’, but instead also ‘had a Bergdama wife with whom he had several children, amongst them three daughters all living in Sesfontein’, one of whom ‘was married to a Hottentot, another to a Bergdama, now dead, the third though old enough to be married had not yet found a husband and was living with her brothers’^[439]. Van Warmelo states that ‘[i]t seems as though there is only one pure Bush woman of this group still surviving’, who ‘also lives in Sesfontein and is married to a Bergdama’, and that only ‘[t]wo other pure Bushmen of this group survive’^[440], who also normally ‘live out in the Namib and along the coast, eating what veldkos they can get and especially fish found along the shore’^[441].

At the time of van Warmelo’s visits there was only one road winding through the mountains connecting Sesfontein with Kamanjab [via the Khowarib Schlucht?] and Ohopoho, although people could take shorter routes with pack animals^[442]. He also notes that:

‘there is no travel at all between Sesfontein and the country south and south-west of it in the police zone owing to the arid wastes to be traversed. There is no road leading from it further west and in fact nowhere to go in that direction’^[443] (although this would seem to be contradicted by oral history research returning with elderly people to places of past dwelling in these areas^[444]).

In 1947 Van Warmelo estimates population numbers by ‘group’ (as labelled in his report)  in Sesfontein to be as follows:

Source: Van Warmelo 1962(1951), p. 40. Note the certainty by which ethnic identities are asserted, and the fact that ‘Bergdama’ appear to be the largest group, even though they are little mentioned in his text.

As well as the Herero who are noted to mostly be outside Sesfontein, around one fifth (100 people) are at Warmbad, Puros and in between these two places^[445].

The ‘Headman’ of Sesfontein, evangelist Benjamin Kido dies on 16th December, after which the hereditary |Uixamab line is reinstated via the headmanship of Simon ||Hawaxab, eldest son of Levi |Uixamab’s sister^[446].

1948

Simon ||Hawaxab becomes the headman in Sesfontein with all-Nama council adding two Damara and two Ovahimba members^[447]. Van Warmelo again conducts ethnographic research in Sesfontein and Kaoko^[448].

The first full-time game warden of Etosha Game Reserve is appointed ushering new controls over Hai||om activity in the Reserve: a strict limitation is imposed on the species that can be hunted by Hai||om after being ‘allowed to hunt with bow and arrow for their own consumption’ (‘protected game’ excepted), and stockowners are told they are ‘no longer allowed to possess more than five head of large stock and ten head of small stock each’^[449]. The presence of Hai||om in Etosha National Park is ‘declared incompatible with nature conservation’ and they are ‘loaded onto trucks and then dumped on neighbouring white farms to serve as laborers’^[450].

Damara are uprooted from the former Aukeigas (!Ao||Aexas) Reserve and displaced to Okakarara in the east^[451].

The Long Term Agricultural Policy Commission report expresses concern about soil degradation and ‘veld collapse’ and recommends that land settlement programme be terminated^[452]. The Report of the Game Preservation Commission gives farmers permission to eliminate game species considered a danger to the farming community and recommends that ‘farmers should “decide whether to preserve or shoot (in whole or in part) zebra, wildebeest, ostriches and warthogs’^[453].

1949

‘The residents of the Kaokoveld requested the Officer-in-Charge to inquire whether the Administration will permit them to export tobacco, cereals and livestock for sale in the Police Zone. They say that on account of the restrictions their cash sales have dropped to practically nothing, and they are unable to clothe their womenfolk’^[454].

A Government Commission for the Preservation of the Bushmen is established, chaired by University of Stellenbosch ‘apartheid architect’ Professor P.J. Schoeman, with ‘far-reaching effects for all Namibian San groups in terms of both identity politics and land appropriation’^[455]. The Commission is asked to make recommendations regarding the advisability of ‘Bushmen Reserves’, their final report [published in which year?**] asserting that the Hai||om are not ‘”Bushmen-like” enough to be preserved’:

[n]owhere did your [the Administrator’s] commissioners receive the impression that it would be worthwhile to preserve either the Heikum or the Barrakwengwe [Khwe, another group labelled ‘Bushmen’] as Bushmen. In both cases the process of assimilation has proceeded too far and these Bushmen are already abandoning their nomadic habits and are settling down amongst the neighbouring tribes to agriculture and stock breeding…^[456]

In an ‘Agricultural Survey’ of ‘Owamboland’ that includes Sesfontein, it is reported that:

[t]he wheat crop at Zessfontein can be described as excellent except for a small percentage of the plots where, due to insufficient manure, the growth is poorer. It was noticed that some of the land was lying idle and overgrown with weeds (stickblaar [Datura]) due to the absence of the owners. Owing to the need for increased food production this is undesirable and such land should be allocated at least temporarily to some person willing to make use of the land. The type of wheat grown seems eminently suited to the area and there seems no need to import fresh seed.

     A fair acreage has been planted to Tobacco but due to degeneration of the seed through non-selection the production will be far below a normal yield. The residents have been issue with fresh supplies of seed (Var. Long leafed Swazi[?]) but as the seed had only been issued 14 days previously no plantings had as yet been effected. The same reason was advanced with regard to the planting of vegetable and potato seed supplied. It thus remains to be seen if the residents will avail themselves of the supply of the seed … [illegible] [2] appreciated if the Officer in Charge, Ohopoho would keep an eye on the use made of this seed supplied on his periodic visits to the area.

     Messrs Eedes and Van Zyl joined up with me at Zessfontein and conducted a meeting at which the Headman and people were present. The main complaint of these people are [sic] that they have no access to the outside world and have no outlet for their surplus stock and agricultural products. As usual they could only be advised that SWANLA had promised to purchase their Tobacco for sale in Ovamboland as regards stock, the only wayout was barter and sale to their neighbours in the North. With the restrictions on the export of stock and Agricultural products it seems futile to encourage increased production in this area as the people are fully aware of the futility of production beyond their needs. The importation of a small number of light … [illegible] ploughs (8 inch) wuld help towards a quicker and better preparation of the soil.

     Stock generally are still in excellent condition. Although the environments of the settlement are completely bare, grazing on the outer fringe is still plentiful and should see the stock through well into the next year.

     The farm Warmquelle which was traversed has grassed over well, but as can be expected with Suurgras … and Eragrostis … However, there are still areas where Blinkaar and Langbeen Boesman grass survive. These areas have seeded heavily and if another good season is experienced a certain amount of rehabilitation of the grazing will take place. However, it can be safely assumed that the area probably acts as reserve grazing for Zessfontein stock.

     [Travelling north-east from Zessfontein towards Ombombo…] The party left Zessfontein on Monday 3/10/49 for Ohopoho via the Apies§ River, Okowerango§, Uruwanje§ and Ombombo. The settlements of Hereros along this route have many stock and consequently areas contiguous to the water have been badly tramped out, but the general condition of the stock indicate that grazing is still plentiful within reach of the water. Most of the waters are strong enough to enable gardening to be carried out on a small scale. I have no doubt that these waters, if developed, could be considerable strengthened. At Ombombo the supply is strong probably in excess of 25,000 glns per day but due to fouling of the water by hundreds of stock, game and elephants that drink there regularly … [missing] [3] the filling in of the pool and the building of a large trough to water the stock would effect a great improvement in the purity of the supply. A trough 3 feet by 1½ feet by 120 feet should be sufficiently large to supply the need of stock and game with a continuous inflow into the trough from the spring.

     North of Ombombo to Gauko Otavi no large settlements were encountered although evidence of isolated cattle outposts, now deserted, was noticed. This area is of exceptional grazing potential and due to lack of open water is only ligtly grazed a [sic] certain times of the year when open water is available. Considering the abundant supplies of underground water in the area as a whole, I have little doubt that water can be found to enable this area to be opened up. The carrying capacity of this area can be classed as high compared with the average S.W.S. conditions.

     At Gauko Otavi the spring with with subsidiary springs to the North East, was inspected. The combined output of these springs at present strength would be sufficient to irrigate 35-40 morgen of land. It is also possible that cleaning our of these springs may result in a substantially increased flow. There is plenty of alluvial soil available of which the Hereros are cultivating a small area, probably just sufficient for their needs. Wheat is grown during the winter and Maize during the summer. The wheat crop appeared healthy and promised good yields.

     Grazing in this area is very tramped out. As usual, the stronger the water, the greater the concentration of stock.

     From Gauko Otavi to Ohopoho the road runs through fertile valley land with alluvial deposits of good depth, sometimes up to 25 feet deep. These deposits are rapidly being scoured as a result of increased run-off from the surrounding watershed due to denudation of the vegetal cover. This must have originally consisted of heavy stands of Cynopogon and allied species. These have largely disappeared except for the remnants in the more inaccessible areas. It would appear that inspite of the vast areas of grazing available in the Kaokoveld that the few strong waters are carrying the whole stock and human population. Here as elsewhere, the problem of distribution must be tackled … [missing] … the [4] country can virtually be said to be empty. Especially from Ombombo Ovambo to the cattle outposts of the Ukuluthi§ area. In this area the grazing is good and of good carrying capacity … The possibility of settling in this area is entirely dependent on the provision of water. Old wells scattered about the area indicate that there is water especially to the South East and South. This water is comparatively shallow and of undetermined strength. Geological survey of the area concerned indicates that water is fairly general and can be opened up where required.

     A cut through the unoccupied South Western portion of Ovamboland was made from Akaukeujo [Okaukeujo] via Okahakana and Osema pan which lies approximately on the Southern border of Ovamboland. The general type of veld is Sandveld and vegetal cover mainly comprises A. Uniplumis with Eragrostis types between Mopani schrub. The area as a whole can be described as well grassed and can be opened up for settlement with advantage. It is not anticipated that water will be difficult to obtain in this area. ...^[457]

1950s

Fuller writes for Sesfontein that ‘[a] second influx of outlying residents, again mostly Namidaman, occurred in the 1950s under the leadership of chief Simon IIHawaxab [son of a daughter of Jan |Uixamab], [and that] [t]hese immigrations dramatically changed the ethnic and economic make-up of the community’^[458]. [nb. perhaps linked with westwards extension of ENP?]

Diamond mines established along coast = restrictions etc.**

1951

Game Preservation Ordinance, no 11 provides for the establishment of a Game Preservation and Hunting Board to advise the SWA Administrator and including the ‘appointment of game wardens as honorary or public service officer^[459], and involves regulation of hunting on white farms including restrictions on amount of game that could be taken, length of hunting season and penalties for infractions; although article 27 allowed the administrator ‘to permit visiting dignitaries “to hunt any game in open season” ^[460]. It appears ‘that Africans were generally allowed to utilise wildlife resources in their communal areas’ until restrictions imposed by this Ordinance^[461]. Hunter and anthropologist PJ Schoeman succeeds Pienaar as game warden, and is ‘responsible for the controversial culling of large numbers of Burchell’s zebra and wildebeest in the Etosha area’ on the grounds that they are destroying vegetation^[462].

1952

A SWAA colonial officer complains that Ovahimba Headman are unable to control their ‘subjects’, although Vita Tom is considered more capable and ‘Europeanised’ in this aspect^[463]. An Inspection report for the Kaokoveld by an Agricultural Officer recommends that the derelict gardens at Warmquelle, currently under small-scale agriculture by several families, be used,

to provide grazing and gardening ground for the Damaras who moved to Sesfontein from the Southern Kaokoveld. These Damaras, comprising 9 men, 12 women, and 22 children with 3 families still to come, are at present at Sessfontein and would seem to be virtually destitute. No huts had been built by them and their sole possessions are approximately 50 goats. It would seem imperative that some form of rationing be adopted until these people are Rehabilitated. At present they are living on “veldkos”.^[464]

Farms in the Kaokoveld up to the Huab River are surveyed by a Mr Mendez, including at ‘Twyfelfontein’ (no. 534) surveyed at 12,223 has, [45] double what Levin had previously farmed^[465]. The paintings and engravings at Twyfelfontein are proclaimed a Nasionale Besienswaardigheid (a National Heritage site) under Ordinance 13 of 1948 (but not a maintained as a tourist attraction), following surveys in the area by especially Dr Ernst Rudolf Schertz, and [57] Levin starts keeping a visitors’ book from this year^[466]. Ostrich eggshell beads assumed to be ‘evidence of the San who used to live there’ are collected by the Levin children and ‘strung and sometimes sold to tourists’^[467]. Over new year in this and the next year the Levins spend around a week in Swakopmund in tents rented from the municipality^[468].

Dieter Aschenborn, an artist, is appointed assistant game warden, stationed at Okaukeujo^[469] (the first ranger is appointed in Etosha^[470]). A bone-meal plant is built at Rietfontein, ‘the artisian spring between Okaukeujo and Halali’ to process zebra and wildebeest culled through the programme introduced by game warden Schoeman in 1951, before public outcry causes the culling to be stopped by the SWAA Executive Committee in the absence of records of numbers of animals killed^[471]. Schoeman also starts to develop Etosha for tourism^[472].

1953

The ‘need for wildlife management practices based on scientific principles’ is recognised in SWA and the first biologist, Bernabé JG de la Bat from the Cape, is appointed by Schoeman and stationed at Okaukeujo^[473].

In May a Mr Louis Knobel from Pretoria in company of Dr PJ Schoeman ‘the Game Warden of South West Africa’ encounter in the:

small Sesfontein community a small group of coastal Bush-Hottentot folk consisting of three males and an ancient doddering female, said to be their mother, who were reported by the Topnaar Hottentot elders, their overlords, to be the last remnants of what was once a large body of Strandlopers. It was the custom of the Hottentots to allow these Strandloper retainers to go down to the coast each year when the narra fruit was ripe.^[474]

1954

Damara are uprooted from the former Aukeigas (!Ao||Aexas) Reserve and displaced to Okombahe/Otjimbingwe^[475]. In the wake of the Commission for the Preservation of the Bushmen [1949], and connected with increasing tourism^[476] and international conservation lobbying, from the beginning of this year the native commissioner of ‘Ovamboland’ convenes a series of meetings in Etosha to communicate to Hai||om in Etosha ‘the decision to expel them’, permitting only 12 families employed in the Reserve to remain^[477].

The first mission in Kaokoveld is established at Oromana^[478].

1955

Sesfontein is described as ‘approximately in the middle of the Kaokoveld’ and as ‘occupied by about 200 Topnaar Hottentots, who have continued growing the tobacco, mealies and other crops for their own comfort and sustenance’^[479]. ‘Klipkaffirs’ from ‘across the Kunene … are reported to have mingled with the coastal sand-dwellers or Strandlopers’^[480].

The new veterinary boundary of 1955** (moved from its 1937 position) enables the addition of a large area of potential freehold commercial farmland to the west of Outjo.

1956

A German Professor called Dr. Lutz Heck visits Etosha ‘at least twice’ as a tourist and in an article published this year writes:

[w]hite and never-ending, the plain of the Etosha Pan lay in front of us. The paths of the game lay criss-cross over it, trodden by the hoofs of thousands of thirsty animals who since the beginning of time visit the watering places. Below us, at the foot of a steep ridge the water of a pool was reflected sparkling in the sunlight. It was midday and the zebra, wildebeest and a few gems buck lay peacefully by the water. It was like a picture of the Garden of Eden, and when we looked back on to the steppes the giraffe came into view among the Acacia trees.^[481]

late 1950s

Stoffel Rochér, ranger at Namutoni, sees ‘one of the last buffalo in Etosha killed by lions at Twee palms on the fringe of Fischer’s pan’ and around this time two buffalo are photographed at Andoni water point^[482].

1958

Ordinance 18 of 1958 replaces the ‘Hunting Board’ [1951] with the ‘Parks Board’ which has similar functions but includes ‘civil servants from agriculture, police, native affairs, the chief game warden and members of the farmers’ and hunting associations’, and gives the Administrator ‘the power to declare any area a game park’, to amend park boundaries and to provide for ‘the establishment and proclamation of private game reserves’^[483]. Etosha is renamed Etosha Game Park and extends for 250 km south of the Hoanib River to the Ugab (!U≠gāb) River^[484]: cf. oral history that,  

           [t]hey are only giving us the place from !Nao-dâis to the other side, and they don’t want us to move in this area. They said this is now the wildlife area and you cannot move in here. They had to move to the other side - to Tsabididi^[485].

From 1 June visitors are able to obtain permits to visit Etosha from officers at Namutoni and Okaukeujo, rather than through the Magistrates Office which is seen as increasingly impractical^[486].  

Pre-
Odendaal

Settler farmers are using the western area area^[487].

1960s

Veterinary cordon fence - the ‘Red Line’ - erected^[488], merging the previously established settlement and veterinary borders^[489]. A campaign in Kaokoveld reduces the number of predators^[490]. The glossonym ‘Nama’ is officially changed to ‘Nama/Damara’ or ‘Damara/Nama’ in recognition that ‘it does not cater for the Damara majority that speaks the language’^[491].

1963

The Game Preservation Section is upgraded to the Division Nature Conservation and Tourism under the directorship of de la Bat^[492].

In this year reportedly ‘a mysterious consortium from Pretoria start[s] to buy up farms near Welwitschia [Khorixas]’ … ‘offering prices according to farm size and improvements’ of around R3-4/ha, and late in this year rumours begin ‘to circulate that the South West Africa Administration intended to buy all the farms in the Kaokoveld in order to create a homeland for the Damara people’^[493]. The Odendaal Commission report is presented to the Administration in December and all the farms ‘in what was then known as the Kaokoveld were included into the area that was to be renamed Damaraland^[494]. Many farmers did not want to sell and the farmers’ unions (boereverengigings) tried to protest^[495].

A leopard is seen at Twyfelfontein / |Ui-||aes^[496].

The Namib Desert Research Station with links to the Transvaal Museum is established at Gobabeb on the !Khuiseb^[497] and The !Khuiseb floodwaters reach the ocean^[498].

West Caprivi is declared a ‘Nature Park’, despite recommendations from the Odendaal Commission, ‘a key apartheid land planning body’ that it should be ‘converted into a “homeland” for Bushmen’^[499].

1964

The publication of the report of the Odendaal Commission of Inquiry into SWA Affairs (the ‘Odendaal Report’), recommends the creation of ‘homelands’ in which distinctive and endangered cultures could be preserved and nurtured^[500], and is followed by a ‘committee appointed by the South West Administration’ which ‘valued the farms and made official offers, which farmers were compelled to accept’ – land prices soar as farmers took out options on land elsewhere in the country^[501]. Settlers farmers are documented as required to leave farms that became acquired as part of ‘Damaraland’, such as the Levin family at Twyfelfontein / |Ui-||aes^[502]. David Levin of |Ui-||aes / Twyfelfontein took an option on a sheep farm south of Rehoboth, ‘but when his application reached the Land Bank they informed him that the piece of land had already been earmarked for the expansion of the Baster area’^[503]. There was also uncertainty in knowing when the committee would arrive, and accusations of corruption^[504]. Levin receives an offer of R48k but since >R60k is offered to a neighbour with a smaller land area he complains, but still did not receive what he considers the full value of the farm^[505]. At the end of the year Levin sells his animals to Toy Maritz of the Rokey’s farm (?) and Maritz in fact keeps the animals at Twyfelfontein until 1967^[506].

‘Homelands’ recommended in the report include ‘Kaokoland’ for Himba in the north-west, ‘Damaraland’ for Damara / ≠Nūkhoen in west Namibia, ** and a ‘homeland’ for Khwe in Caprivi (which in 1968 instead became West Caprivi Game Park^[507]).

The report remarks that ‘practically all the home areas still have fairly large numbers of various species of game’^[508]. In September Dr R.C. Bilgalke reports in African Wild Life (‘The Magazine of the Wild Life Protection and Conservation Society of South Africa’) ‘the dangers to wild life entailed in the implementation of the Odendaal Commission’s recommendations’, amidst concerns that ‘realistic proposals based on scientific information’ will be ‘brushed aside as irrelevant’^[509].

The Odendaal Report includes ‘recommendations for the partition of the Kaokoveld/Etosha Game Reserve complex’ [31] in which the Kaokoveld game conservation area would be deproclaimed with approx. 6 000 square miles of the Etosha Game reserve ceded to the Kaokoland, Damaraland and Owamboland ‘homelands’, with a ‘twenty mile strip of Namib desert along the coast’ remaining as a game reserve^[510]. The ‘entire western section of Etosha was excised and added to the Kaokoveld African Reserve’^[511] and Game Reserve No. 2 was effectively reduced to two separate reserves – Etosha Game Park and the Skeleton Coast, a combined area of approx. 14 000 square miles ‘of which more than half is either barren desert of salt pan’^[512].

Recommendations include moving the ≠Aonin from their traditional lands along the !Khuiseb and !nara fields to the proposed Namaland (Gibeon) or Damaraland communal areas, which is resisted on the following grounds: the ≠Aonin have been present in the vicinity of the !Kuiseb for at least several centuries; their culture and livelihoods are intimately linked with the !nara and marine resources of the coast; and legal treaties entitling the ≠Aonin to the continued use of the resources exist dating to annexation by the British in 1884.^[513]

1964-65

Farms are valued for the Odendaal Plan by an Evaluation Committee established on 17 August and purchased, the price minus monies owed in advances and loans etc., with a total of 70 cases considered, and an aggregate of 698,908ha. (60 farms) accepted, with 10 referred to Administrator^[514].

1964-70

Purchased farms are leased again for emergency grazing to ‘drought stricken white farmers from all over the country’ with one farm often be leased to a different farmer every month, although none of these farmers had actually sold any of their stock during the previous season, demonstrating their intent to accumulate livestock^[515].

Around this time the Land Board is taken over by a new body, State Settlement and Farmers Assistance, with farms falling under the Min. of Agriculture.

Kai Gaob Justus ||Garoëb is a member of the South African Parliament^[516].

1965

A Report of the Commission of Investigation into Nature Conservation Affairs in SWA asserts that the stricter application of game laws since 1951 ‘effectively ended the use of game as a food source’, leading in this year to urgent appeals ‘from people in Owambo, Kavango, Bushmenland, Kaokoland, Sesfontein, and Eastern and Western Caprivi to have the game ordinance rescinded in their reserves’^[517]. Complaints focus mainly on ‘the damage caused by wildlife’^[518].

Ethnographic research reports that ‘a hunter-gatherer Tjimba man, Kaupatana, normally living in the Baynes Mountains of Kaokoland, became the client of stock owners in the valley during a period of drought: “Kaupatana had brought his familydown to the Kunene on account of the extreme dearth of veldkos resulting from the latest drought. At Otjinungua, he was herding goats for one of the border guards in return for food”’ but would return to his ‘mountain way of life’ once conditions became favourable^[519]. In September [of??] the Okambambi group of OvaTjimba in the Baynes Mountains are reported to collect ‘numerous varieties of edible roots such as “uintjies” … and berries’^[520].

David Levin leaves Twyfelfontein and settles in Outjo where he works for general merchant Piet Grove who deals mainly with farmers, eventually moving with his new wife to Piketberg where he dies in 1983^[521].

1965-72

Walter Moritz works as a missionary in Walvisbaai and Swakopmund and ‘a lot of information from the Topnaar on Kuiseb’, while building a church with them in Rooibank / Scheppmannsdorf^[522].

1966-90

From 1966 to 1990 new parks were proclaimed: ‘Gross Barmen Hot Springs, Capri vi Game Park, Hardap, Daan Viljoen, Cape Cross Seal Reserve, Ais-Ais, the South West Nature Park, Skeleton Coast Park, Waterberg Plateau Park, Von Bach Resort, National West Coast Recreational Area, Huns Mountains, Naute Recreation Resort, Popa Game Park, Mahango Game Reserve, Khaudum Game Park, Mudumu and Mamili National Parks’^[523].

Late 1960s

The Kaokoveld’s Council of Headmen consisted of 25 Herero and Himba traditional leaders, the Topnaar Nama chief from Sesfontein and advisers^[524].

Garth Owen-Smith recalls his impressions of Kaokoveld,

‘The Ganumub River’ Jod said, passing me a 1:250 000 topographic map that he kept on the dashboard. In bold type across the area were the words KAOKOVELD RESERVE, as well as GAME RESERVE NO 2. To the south of the Hoanib River the area was designated ETOSHA GAME PARK. … the Kaokoveld was both a native reserve and a game reserve. In 1907, the German government had proclaimed most of their colony's north-west as Game Reserve No 2. It included what later, under the South African administration, became the Etosha Game Park, which extended for another 250 km south of the Hoanib to the Uchab River. Combined, Etosha and the Kaokoveld then formed the largest conservation area in the world.  

'How is poaching controlled in such a large area?' I asked.  

'The Bantu Affairs Commissioner is in charge of everything that happens in the Kaokoveld,' Jod replied. 'He decides what can be hunted. We resident officials take out a monthly pot licence that allows us to shoot one kudu or two springbok. The local people are also allowed to hunt for meat as well as  protect their livestock from predators.’  

Amazed by the fact that people, their livestock and big game were sharing the same drinking place, I hurried back to tell Jod, but he was unimpressed. Most of the springs in the Kaokoveld had plenty of game around them, including elephant, he told me. Didn't the people hunt, I asked, but Jod just said that the Himba had more than enough livestock, so they did not need to eat wild animals.        … I contemplated what he had just told me. It was certainly very different to the situation in South Africa, where the wildlife had long since been exterminated in areas of human habitation. On our forestry estates we overseers had spent a great deal of time protecting the few bushbuck, reedbuck and duiker on them from our Zulu labourers, who were inveterate hunters and snarers.  …^[525] 

1967

The Nature Conservation Ordinance (Ord. 31 of 1967) is proclaimed, defining the powers and duties of the Nature Conservation and Tourism Branch and containing ‘chapters on wild animals, game parks, indigenous plants, inland fisheries, protected and specially protected game, game birds and several other important subjects’^[526]. With the exception of certain species, the Ordinance gives ownership of game to freehold landowners, ‘provided the game was on the farm and the property adequately fenced’; allows freehold farmers to ‘lease his hunting rights to a competent person’ stimulating a trophy hunting industry; and, by changing the prior situation whereby ‘all game had belonged to the State’, creates a context for game to have a monetary value and farmers ‘a financial incentive to protect animals on their property’, causing many to start restocking their farms’ such that ‘game numbers on commercial farms increased dramatically’^[527].

Ken Tinley [see 1971] counts,

a gathering of more than 1 000 mountain zebra and 2 000 springbok over a distance of 15 miles where an isolated thunderstorm rain in the Unjab River basin had made the desert bloom [and] [o]n either side of this site the desert was bare of plants and ungulates.^[528]

Etosha Game Reserve is renamed Etosha National Park^[529].

1967-70

The ENP boundary extends west to the coast and south to between the !Uniab and Koigab Rivers^[530]. 

1968

From 1968, implementation of Odendaal Commission’s recommendations is enacted as the ‘Development of Self Government for Native Nations in South West Africa Act 1968’, by which time many pre-Odendaal settler farmers in the north-west had already vacated their farms, ‘partly due to their failure to make a decent living on the land’ [even with all the government support etc.]^[531].

Proclamation 19 of 1968, by then Administrator of SWA, WC du Plessis, permits boundary changes of existing areas and proclamation of new protected areas: Daan Viljoen Game Park, West Caprivi Game Reserve (now Bwabwata), Hardap Recreational Resort, Gross Barmen Hot Springs, Namib Desert Park and Naukluft Mountain Zebra Park^[532].

The Kaokoveld Native Reserve in this year is approx. 22 000 square miles and stretched in the east to the Etosha Game Reserve^[533]. The Dept. for Bantu Administration initiates a livestock-marketing programme to reduce livestock, deemed to be overgrazing, in Kaokoveld, leading to the establishment of quarantine camps to facilitate sale south of Red Line, e.g. at Omatambo Maue and Otjitjekua, at eastern boundary of Kaokoveld with Etosha^[534].

West Caprivi (today Bwabwata National Park) is declared a Game Park^[535], later becoming a military zone for SADF^[536] in the context of an escalating independence movement against SA administration which cause Khwe in Caprivi to become dependent on the SADF through employment as trackers, a military school for children and domestic work^[537].

By the end of this year about 178 PLAN members had been killed or captured^[538]. The United Nations accepts the name Namibia for the country^[539].

The Old Location in Windhoek officially ceases to exist^[540].

1969

The SWA Division of Nature Conservation and Tourism proclaims the area around the seal colony at Cape Cross the Cape Cross Seal Reserve (Proclamation 37 of 1969), covering 60km2 and intended to protect the seals especially during breeding season^[541].

The ‘Topnaar Voorman Jacobus Stevenson (“Argyll”)’ reports on the death of two “Hendrik brothers” at ¹Arexa!nanis (presumably ||Kharabes) [see 1884]^[542].

Physical anthropologist Knussman ‘finds it virtually impossible … to establish “true” Damaras … and calls Namibia the “most intensive melting pot of different peoples and races”^[543].

1970

Following recommendations of the Odendaal Commission of Inquiry into SWA Affairs, Game Reserve No. 2 is deproclaimed, leaving Etosha National Park with its current boundaries protected as a conservation area^[544]. Game Reserve No. 2 land in Kaoko becomes the ‘Kaokoland’ ‘homeland’ for around 13,000 cattle-rich Himba and Herero people^[545] as well as Tjimba-Herero (all being ‘of the same stock, and speak the same language’^[546]), but also becomes used as a de facto vast hunting ground including for high-ranking government officials^[547]. The 1958 western extension of Etosha Game Reserve is deproclaimed and allocated as part of the ‘Damaraland’ ‘homeland^[548]. The boundary between the two homelands is the Ombonde-Hoanib River, with the exception of the ten kilometre radius around Sesfontein, or ‘Sesfontein Circle’^[549] with the Sesfontein Reserve included in the ‘Damara Bantustan’^[550]. 

Of ‘Kaokoland’, Owen-Smith later writes,

part of the largest conservation area in the world: Game Reserve No. 2, proclaimed in 1907 by the German colonial government. But on the recommendation of the Odendaal Commission it was de-proclaimed in 1970, and together with over 200 previously white-owned farms had been divided into Kaokoland and Damaraland, tribal 'homelands' where the Damara and Herero-speaking residents could 'exercise their right of self-determination'. Prior to its de-proclamation the region had been inhabited by large populations of elephant and black rhino, as well as an exceptional variety of other big game animals, but little of this magnificent national heritage still survived. [Although prior to this elephant and rhino etc etc had been decimated/plundered due to European hunting and trade, in association with indigenous Africans, e.g. during the 1800s, cf. Eriksson documentation etc.] Elephant now numbered just a few hundred, while all other species had been decimated by the dual effects of illegal hunting and a devastating drought that ended the year before. Our greatest concern was for the black rhino. From the information we had so far gathered it was clear that the basalt ranges of western Damaraland contained the last viable population in Namibia, outside of the Etosha National Park - and that their numbers could be as low as 40!
[11] How could a handful of us effectively patrol so vast an area? Since the de-proclamation of Game Reserve No 2 the region had become a hunting ground for all and sundry: at best, we might still be able to save some of the more common species, but with black-market ivory and rhino horn prices so high, the Kaokoveld's desert-dwelling elephant and black rhino seemed doomed to extinction.  

When I had discussed the poaching situation in the Kaokoveld with South West Africa's then Director of Nature Conservation, Bernabe de la Bat, he had told me there was nothing he could do about it. Without actually saying so, he hinted that people very high up in the government were involved in the ivory and rhino horn trade, and as a civil servant his hands were tied. He saw his main responsibility to be keeping the country's national parks safe, and he had organised the translocation of black rhino and other endangered species in the homelands to Etosha National Park for safekeeping. …  ^[551] 

Claims are made that ‘[f]or the first ten years after its de-proclamation, most of the western Etosha Game Park (between the Ombonde-Hoanib river and the veterinary cordon) remained unsettled by local people’^[552] - but oral history contradicts this assertion. Much is also made by those concerned with conservation about this deproclamation and its role in causing ‘illegal hunting to become rife throughout the west’ and wiping out ‘the once magnificent wildlife of the Kaokoveld’^[553], even though the western extension of Game Reserve No. 2. was shortlived and concerned the northern reaches of the former Damaraland only).

Etosha National Park thus assumes its current boundaries protected as a conservation area^[554]. Then Director of Nature Conservation (Bernabe de la Bat) focuses on moving high-value animals, esp. black rhinos, to areas remaining under protection, e.g. Etosha National Park^[555].

Authority over nature conservation remains with the Dept. of Bantu Administration and Development (BAD) in Pretoria, with ‘local administrative authorities’ developed for the ‘homelands’^[556].  

Due to drought, the ‘already impoverished people’ of Sesfontein are granted emergency grazing in the neighbouring Etosha Game Reserve’^[557].

West Caprivi is declared a military zone around this time and conservation officials are denied access with ‘the SADF appointing their own “Nature Conservation” authorities’ in the area^[558].

Principles of commercial farming begin to be introduced in communal areas, e.g. in Hereroland the plan by this year ‘was to make 4,000-hectare land units available to persons with 400 cattle’^[559].

The RMS Karibib Sekondêre School [see 1963] moves to Okombahe ‘because of homeland laws’ and is renamed Martin Luther High School^[560].

1970-78

The Damara Raad is founded as ‘a statutory body to advise Jan De Wet, Commissioner General of Indigenous People (Commissioner of Bantu Affairs for South West Africa)’ including Chief Joseph Max Haraseb as a founding member and Kai-Gaob Justus ||Garoëb as Chairperson:

[i]t is on record how Justus ||Garoeb, upon the formation of the Damara Raad, outwitted De Wet to establish the Damara Raad as a people’s party to cater for the social, political and educational well-being of the Damara people, which until then used to be a marginalized people and did not have a voice^[561].

1970-83

The Tsumeb Corporation Limited (TCL) mines copper and sulphur at Matchless^[562].

1971

The first Director of Nature Conservation and Tourism Bernabe de la Bat tells game wardens of South African Air Force officers shooting wildlife from airplanes^[563].

Ken Tinley, in proposals for creation of Kaokoveld and Kunene National Parks, the former of which should connect with Etosha National Park, advocates that ‘[t]he Nama people at Sesfontein and in the adjacent country should be moved to the same homeland area as the Fransfontein people’^[564].

Ken Tinley publishes,

an alternative plan of land apportionment for man and wild life based on the intrinsic ecological potential and capabilities of the different land types, providing man with the better living sites and at the same time making provision for the preservation of the unique features of Etosha and Kaokoveld as a natural resource of national importance.^[565]

Writing in the context of ‘the tourist explosion already experienced in South West Africa’ [p. 11] and from the perspective that ‘South Africa is the scientific and technical leader in Africa’, Tinley notes that: parts of the ‘homeland’ areas advocated in the Odendaal Commission are in unproductive desert areas [also p.6]; pastoral mobilities are constrained by the settlement of land (Tinley depicts an uninhabited temporary ‘Himba Herero hut made of sticks and cow dung in the Namib Desert at Purros near the Hoarusib River’ stating that ‘[t]hese temporary huts are made by the pastoralists for the period during which their herds graze the ephemeral flush of desert grass before moving back inland to sites with perennial grasslands’^[566]); and little study has been made of the uniqueness of the Kaokoveld.^[567] He notes that,

the original Etosha Game Park (Game Reserve No. 2) contained the whole variety of endemics as well as sufficient area for the migrations of the large wild ungulates, but it also included a large area inhabited by the Himba Herero pastoralists of the north-east Kaokoveld.^[568] 

The new post-Odendaal Etosha boundaries: ‘ignore the ecology of the region entirely’; ‘effectively exclude almost all of the endemic flora and fauna from any national park space’; and cut ‘the annual and periodic migrations of certain large ungulates, such as elephant and gemsbok between the Kaokoveld and the Etosha saline area’.^[569] Kaokoveld is celebrated for its ‘awe-inspiring’ ‘wild scenery’ of rare magnitude, especially in three ‘scenic masterpieces’ occurring in the Desert Zone or the saline soil country of Etosha Pan and thus ‘outside the terrain suitable to man as a pastoralist or cultivator’[!] of:

1. ‘the region with Sesfontein at its centre [where Nama Hottentot people are noted as living], including the Hoarusib, Hoanib and Unjab River Basins’ – noted as ‘the area with the greatest variety of scenery and natural communities’[11];

2. ‘the Etosha Salt Pan area’, where ‘the Heiqum “Bushman” (Nama)’ are located;

and 3. ‘the Marienfluss – Kunene – Baynes Mountains (noted for ‘the recently discovered Tjimba stone-using “Bushman” who ‘[d]uring extreme drought periods … are forced out of the mountains and do menial services for the Himba Herero in exchange for food and other requirements’) region.^[570]

Tinley also remarks on ‘the recently extinct Strandlopers along the coast’ whose ‘distribution … was discontinuous as they were governed by the occurrence of freshwater in the mouths of the seasonal rivers crossing the Namib Desert’ along ‘they also extended up some of the rivers traversing the desert’ and [5]‘are extinct today except for one or two very old individuals living in Sesfontein’^[571]. Tinley affirms that,

the Nama people at Sesfontein and Warmquella, the extinct Strandlopers, and the Heiqum “Bushmen” are all of the Hottentot or Nama stock and share the same language. One homeland should suffice, as they are a single language group’ [no mention of Damara, even though largest group in Sesfontein in Van Warmelo’s 1951 report!].[8]^[572]

Regarding Kaokoveld specifically, Tinley notes that ‘[t]he Kaokoveld harbours the last concentration and largest population of black rhino in South West Africa’, ‘contains the largest population of mountain zebra in Southern Africa’, has ‘become the last stronghold of elephant in South West Africa’, and is home to the black-faced impala^[573]. He asserts that ‘[t]he Kaokoveld and adjoining Namib Desert are … of extreme international importance in the conservation of natural systems, as this is probably the last place in Africa where big game [13] (e.g. elephant, black rhino, giraffe, lion) occur on a desert coast by following the seasonal river courses which traverse the desert … [and ] are the last places where research can be made into the manner in which wild ungulates adapt themselves to the desert environment’^[574].

Regarding ‘the Namib, or Skeleton Coast’, ‘not waste land, but wilderness, and, apart from its considerable biological and scenic value, it is the frightening atmosphere with its history of shipwrecks which in itself is a major attraction’, and ‘[t]he establishment of a national park in this region will ensure the preservation of the unique endemic life of the northern desert region’^[575].        

He asserts that ‘[i]deally all permanent settlement should be confined to above the 200 mm rainfall line’, and that,

[a] large amount of farmland has long been overstocked, leading to a permanent state of man-induced drought, erosion and degraded vegetation (mainly the loss of perennial grasses) … [such that] [m]any of the ranchers are bankrupt or retain their ranches while working elsewhere, waiting for a year of good rain. But, as in the Western Transvaal, a good or normal rainfall year is still in effect a drought as the compacted bare ground sheds the rain like a tiled roof^[576].

He advocates that ‘[i]n order to rectify past mistakes in land allotment many farms in areas more suitable for homelands or for wild life and water catchment conservation need to be bought up’^[577].

Tinley’s recommendations include:

- migration routes associated with the Andoni Plains should be preserved as ‘a tribal wild life reserve’ [p11] through protecting a ‘narrow sliver of land’ north of the eastern part of the park boundary in 1971 [p7];

- exchanged with a triangle of land that should ‘be excised from western Etosha to provide salt pans [11] for the Ovambos despite the existence of similar salt pans within their own area, which now, however, is devoid of wildlife’;^[578]

[**summary to be completed]

Early 1970s

The Bantu Commission[?] makes farms available for communal use by ‘Damara people’ and all government involvement in farming activities on these farms ceases at this time, meaning that no government records are kept afterwards[?]^[579]:

[m]any Damara-speaking people from all over the country, either through forced removal or fleeing drought elsewhere, settled on these farms. With the exception of people forcefully removed from proclaimed nature reserves like Daan-Viljoen [Aukeigas / !Ao||aexas]], it would seem as if there was no co-ordination of who settled where^[580].... pastor Elias Eiseb who settled on one such farm, Engelbrecht in 1970, categorically maintained that they chose the farms for themselves and were not directed by any institution or government organ in their search… [and] that originally 70 people from Ovitoto came to Engelbrecht and had a free choice between settling at Engelbrecht, Vrye or Brambach.^[581] 

A Riemvasmaker community from Uppington in South Africa is moved to Bergsig area, now Torra Conservancy, under the ‘Homeland’ programme:

[w]ho will forget how the Riemvasmakers, simply because they were regarded as part of the Damara language group in the [v] early 1970’s, [were] brought with some of their belongings and dropped off in Damaraland? From there they were taken with busses or trucks and simply dropped off on land they had never seen before, between screaming elephants on the land in the area of Bergsig and Khorixas. Damara people of the areas received them and treat[ed] them like their own^[582].

The SADF occupies Caprivi, changing the livelihood dynamics of Khwe in West Caprivi there through providing paid employment and exploiting natural resources^[583].

1970s

The Grootberg Farmers Union operates in the Grootberg-Kamanjab from this time^[584].

From the beginning of this decade ‘many artificial water points were constructed throughout the Kaokoveld and local herders subsequently opted for a less mobile existence’^[585].

The law changes to permit ‘[c]ommercial [white] farmers who followed certain conditions – such as appropriate game fencing - … conditional ownership of so-called huntable game such as springbok, kudu, gemsbok and warthog on their land. No permits needed’; causing a culture change away from seeing,

wildlife as competition for their domestic stock and something to be poached, if you could get away with it. Most resented the fact you needed a permit to shoot game on your own property and few bothered to go through the cumbersome process of applying to government for permission to shoot a springbok or gemsbok.^[586]

1972

ANVO Hunting Safaris^[587] is registered and later plays a large role in the establishment of hunting concession areas in ‘Damaraland’.

The Dept. of Agriculture estimates that Kaokoveld cattle exceed 160,000^[588].

Garth Owen-Smith, ‘Agricultural Official for the Kaokoveld Territory 1968-1970’ publishes a paper in the South African J. Science stating that the ‘reaction [to Odendaal’s ‘recommendations for the partition of the Kaokoveld/Etosha Game Reserve complex’] from conservationists in South, and South West Africa has unfortunately revealed considerable contradiction and confusion as to the actual issues involved’; and sets out to present ‘the essential facts on which any informed discussion regarding desirable amendments to the Odendaal Plan should be based’^[589].

He asserts that at this time ‘[i]n the remote Baynes and Otjihipa mountains live a few stone using, hunter-gethering people, also known as OvaTjimba (Tjimba-Tjimba)’ and ‘[t]here is evidence to suggest that these people are not of Herero stock, and are still being assimilated into the neighbouring Himba clans’^[590].

He notes that ‘[t]raditionally the Kaokoveld natives have not resided west of the escarpment, although it appears that in periodic dry years, Himba from the western plateau regions migrated down the river valleys onto the semi-desert plains’; but that ‘the rapidly expanding herds of the plateau Himba have caused an overflow onto the semi-desert, where about twenty families have now taken up semi-permanent residence between Orupembe and the Hartmannberge’, where ‘continuous grazing and trampling … in the vicinity of watering points’ has led to ‘degeneration of the grass cover, and exposure of the soil to wind erosion’; [37] although they do not threaten the wild life ‘and need not immediately be moved’, but ‘could be persuaded to return to the more fertile highlands, by the provision of watering points in previously waterless areas on the western plateau’[6]. He affirms the need for ‘a sympathetic understanding’ towards the Herero and Himba people, who despite seldom in the past using the semi-desert region, ‘regard the whole Kaokoveld as belonging to them’ such that ‘it will only be with their [37]cooperation that the viability of any game reserve in the Kaokoveld can be ensured’^[591].

He also states that,

[i]t appears likely that in the distant past, both the Bushman and the more negroid Damara were widespread in the Kaokoveld, but within the last twenty years, the ‘Strandloper’ Bushman has passed from the scene, and only a few Damara remain, in the dusty Hoanib river valley between Warmquelle and Sesfontein^[592].

Contrary to Tinley above [1971], Owen-Smith states that ‘[d]uring two and a half year’s residence in the Kaokoveld, no signs were found of any large scale migration of game to and from the Etosha saline area [with instead] … a rather local seasonal cycle, with the water dependent animals, such as elephant, zebra and kudu, concentrating in the vicinity of permanent waterholes duringh the dry months’^[593]. Owen-Smith thus states that ‘there is insufficient evidence for a corridor across valuable ranchland to link these two regions’ [i.e. Etosha Game Park and the western Kaokoveld]^[594].

At the time of writing, Owen-Smith observes for the Kaokoveld that ‘large scale exploration has been commenced by two Rand based mining companies’, construction of the Ruacana HEP scheme has begun, and ‘[o]n the contiguous Kaokoveld and Ovamboland southern border, an extensive quarantine camp is being built that will enable livestock, previously prohibited from crossing the ‘red line’, to be exported to markets in the south’^[595]. He notes that future pressures on Kaoko wildlife will arise due to crop losses, the erection of fences to protect farmland ‘which will make the presence of elephant intolerable’, an increasing cattle-less and protein hungry ‘working class in the indigenous population’, and especially ‘the influx of European officials and workers and the consequent rise in poaching’^[596]. His summary is that ‘the gradual disappearance of most of the larger game animals in the Kaokoveld appears inevitable under proposals recommended by the Odendaal Commission’, but asks ‘is the destruction of wild life the unavoidable price of progress?’^[597] He advocates ‘rational land use planning’ urging that ‘in future ecological considerations must receive the highest priority in all rural development planning’^[598]. Owen-Smith notes of Sesfontein that ‘the present situation … should be taken as a warning. … Over the years sustained heavy grazing on the surrounding plain has reduced the whole valley into an enormous dustbowl’^[599].

Owen-Smith invokes the US Wilderness Act of 1964 and the foresight of SA President Paul Kruger who ‘against much opposition, proclaimed the Sabie Game Reserve in the Transvaal Lowveld, saying that ‘South Africa cannot afford to disregard the growing cultural heritage and as a recreational necessity’, and that ‘wild land will undoubtedly be a national resource of major importance’^[600]. Indeed, ‘what is preserved of this irreplaceable heritage now depends entirely on us – the present generation of South Africans, and our elected representatives [and [w]e must accept the final responsibility’^[601]. He thus advocates that,

[i]n the context of South West Africa’s rapidly expanding tourist industry, a game reserve in the western Kaokoveld [see map] has vast potential as a tourist attraction, and in time this potential can be turned into an economic asset to the country as a whole and particularly to the people of the neighbouring homelands^[602]]. … As the situation in the western areas of the new Damara Homeland is essentially similar to that in the Kaokoveld, it should be possible to extend a game reserve southward along the semi-desert to the Ugab river, thus linking it with the existing Brandberg Nature Reserve^[603].

Plan for land apportionment in N.W. South West Africa. Source: Owen-Smith 1972, p. 35.

The Waterberg Plateau Park is proclaimed (under Proc. 19 of 1968) and established as ‘a safe location for the introduction and breeding of rare species such as sable antelope, eland and disease-free buffalo’^[604].

The |Gaiodama Max !Gâgu Dax / !Auseb [see 1898] dies aged 105 and is buried at the Old Location, Rehoboth^[605].

1973

The Skeleton Coast Park is expanded from the Ugab-Hoanib Rivers to the Ugab-Kunene Rivers and equipment and buildings at Möwe Bay are given to Nature Conservation^[606].

Etosha National Park is enclosed ‘by a 2.6 metre game-proof fence along most of its 850-kilometre boundary’, supplemented by ‘130 kilometres of elephant-proof cable fencing and, later, electric fences at strategic sections’^[607].

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

1974

Exceptional rains^[608].
Following the coup in Angola ‘UNITA rebels begin a campaign to raise funds’ increasing pressure on elephant and rhino for ivory and horn in southern Angola which extends into northern Kaokoveld, and the governing party in Angola (MPLA) simultaneously begin to sponsor SWAPO: leading to an SADF response of ‘issuing between 2000 and 3000 rifles and 200,000 rounds of ammunition to selected [Kaokoveld] residents to protect themselves against SWAPO rebels’^[609]. The implication is that the distribution of rifles combined with SADF hunting significantly increased impacts on indigenous fauna in the area^[610].

1975

Through Nature Conservation Ordinance no. 4 the MWCT updates and replaces Nature Conservation Ordinance 31 of 1967^[611] and prohibits hunting and trapping in conservation areas, including Skeleton Coast National Park, reportedly causing cattle die-off for Himba pastoralists who had previously utilised the area as a grazing buffer during drought^[612]. Conversely, prohibitions on hunting on freehold land are relaxed, permitting private game reserves to be established in freehold settler farming areas^[613].

The Chief Professional Officer in the Division Nature Conservation and Tourism is Dr Eugene Joubert who in this year publishes an article about the development of conservation in SWA, dividing this into: 1. an active period of hunting laws and game reserve proclamation under German occupation; 2. A 40 year ‘period of stagnation’ when although Ordinances were proclaimed, enforcement was minimal; and 3. A ‘revival of the conservation concept’ associated with the 1947 appointment of Andries A. Pienaar as the first additional game warden (to the Secretary of State as the Game Warden for the territory)^[614].

1976

A Dama / ≠Nūkhoen man, Elias Xoagub, is granted permission by the Damara Traditional Authority to settle on land where Twyfelfontein Prehistoric Reserve is located – previously acquired in the 1940s as a farm by David Levin, who found a Dama living there^[615]. Reportedly 2-3 visitors a year would come to view the rock art so Elias Xoagub started charging an entrance fee and was able to retain rights to this revenue through a legal loophole regarding national monuments on communal land^[616].

1977

The Damara Gaob Festival is founded by Kai-Gaob Justus ||Garoëb ‘in honour of his mentor Kai-Gaob Dawid Goreseb^[617] and indeed in honour of all departed Damara Leaders who have previously served as Gaob of the Damara People and to celebrate’^[618]. The South West Africa Constitution Amendment Act (Act no. 95 of 1977), published 13 June, makes provision for the appointment of an ‘administrator-general’ and for the administration of Walvis Bay to be returned to the South African Government^[619].

late-1970s

Hunting concessions established – now Palmwag, Etendeka and Hobatere tourism concessions.

1978

Elections (described as ‘inconclusive’^[620]) in SWA/Namibia give ‘Second-Tier’ government status to established regional ethnic authorities, including the Damara Representative Authority based in Khorixas^[621], and open up ‘the ethnic homelands to private travel’^[622]. In international discussions regarding the independence of Namibia, Damara Chief Fritz |Hobahe Gariseb states unambiguously that the Damara People were/are against the Apartheid regime ‘and would not participate in elections unless the status of Walvisbay was fully discussed and clarified’^[623].

A 10-year trophy hunting concession of 15,000km2 is leased by the Dept. of Bantu Administration [or by the Damara Regional Authority, under the second-tier government system^[624]?] to German-Namibian Volker Grellman of ANVO Hunting Safaris, described in 2015 as ‘[o]ne of Namibia’s most famed hunters’ and listed as an advisor to Louisiana based pro-hunting organisation Conservation Force^[625]. Grellman was granted land described as ‘still game-rich and largely unoccupied’ south of the Hoanib River (that for a while had been the western Etosha Game Park)^[626], that at the time was under the Damara Regional Authority of the second-tier government system^[627]. Grellman/ANVO’s annual quota is for ‘two trophy elephants north of the “Red Line”’ plus ‘problem elephants as they occurred anywhere in Damaraland’ as well as ‘common game’^[628], and he creates a hunting camp at Palmwag from where his hunting safaris are land - now the site of Palmwag Lodge.

1978-81

A total of 18 bull elephants are shot by ANVO hunting safaris, mainly south of red line^[629].

1978-87

Theofilus ||Hawaxab takes over as Sesfontein leader after the death of his brother Simon Petrus ||Hawaxab^[630].

1979-82

Severe drought decimates wildlife and livestock in north-west Namibia and makes indigenous fauna ‘vulnerable to subsistence hunting by the now impoverished Herero and Damara inhabitants in the region’ (exacerbated due to ‘the army’s issue of .303 rifles to several thousand Kaokoland men’^[631] [see 1974]), as well as to ‘[h]unting by government officials, the SADF and other non-residents’^[632], whilst larger predators increased during this time^[633]. Garth Owen-Smith reports that ‘Herero from Sesfontein and Warmquelle sought grazing for their livestock as far south as the Aub and Barab Rivers in the Uniab catchment’, ‘[w]hen the drought broke in 1982’^[634] - although it is very clear that Dama / ≠Nūkhoen families were also involved in this movement, for example the |Awise and Ganuse families from Sesfontein to !Nao-dais. As an NWT employee Owen-Smith works with ‘the local Herero traditional leaders to support a plan to keep the area south of the Hoanib-Uniab watershed for the exclusive use of wildlife and tourism in the future’^[635], even though it was not only Herero who herded and lived here. In Kaokoland, Himba lose more than 130,000 head of cattle (80% of large stock), and the drought becomes known as ‘the time when the people had to eat their leather garments’, also a time when SWAPO opens a western front into Kaokoveld^[636]. In the final year of the drought, many Himba sought refuge at emergency feeding camps on the outskirts of Opuwo, leaving when the drought broke in 1982^[637].

1980

Conservation functions in the ‘traditional areas’, i.e. ‘homelands’, including areas in East Caprivi, Kavango, Bushmanland, Owambo, Damaraland, Kaokoland, Rehoboth, Namaland and Hereroland, are ‘placed under the jurisdiction of the Directorate Nature [Wildlife?] Conservation and Tourism^[638]. The second tier governments are established through the Representative Authority Proclamation with various subsequent proclamations establishing representative authorities for 11 population groups^[639].

By 1980 armed struggle ‘had spread to Kaokoveld’ thus limiting tourism travel with only one operator - Mr Magura of Bambatsi Guest farm near Khorixas, going through the western area as far as the Marienfluss^[640].

Archaeologist John Kinahan begins research on the Central Namib pastoral sequence^[641].

1981

Control over nature conservation transferred from Pretoria’s Dept. of BAD to the Directorate of Nature Conservation (DNC) in Windhoek, and Chris Eyre is appointed Senior Nature Conservation Officer (SNCO) for Damaraland [with responsibilities extending into Kaokoland?^[642]], located in Khorixas with one field assistant, Lucas Mbomboro^[643]. Eyre is supported by the Damara Representative Authority (DRA) to stop the granting of hunting permits for high-level government officials to hunt in the north-west ‘homelands’^[644], where ‘gangs of commercial hunters’ had moved into the ANVO hunting concession (i.e. Palmwag) where ‘the largest populations of big game still survived’^[645], and obtains a temporary moratorium on the shooting of problem elephants by ANVO^[646]. Local DNC officials at the time were Chris Eyre, Marcellus Loots and Rudi Loutit^[647], amidst a general attitude of unconcern in government regarding declining wildlife in Kaokoveld.

Garth Owen-Smith writes,

 [b]y 1981, when control over nature conservation was transferred to Windhoek, the armed liberation struggle of the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) had spread to Kaokoland, and the whole northwest was also in the grip of the worst drought in living memory. By then De la Bat had been promoted to a higher post within the country's administration and the new acting director, Polla Swart, did not appear to regard the declining wildlife numbers in the Kaokoveld as a priority. Stoffel Rocher, the Chief Nature Conservator, was even less concerned about what was happening there, and asked why I was so worried about the game in 'Kaffirland’, which to him was just 'dust and stones'.  

That might be the way he and his colleagues saw it, but I had known the Kaokoveld before the poaching and drought had decimated its wildlife - when humans and elephants shared the same waterholes and herds of springbok and zebra grazed side by side with cattle goats and sheep. At that time I believed the region's spectacular scenery and desert-adapted big game could in future make it one of Southern Africa's major tourist attractions. …^[648] 

1980-83

Research on elephants of Damaraland and Kaokoland by Philip (Slang) Viljoen finds three distinct sub-populations:

[t]hose living permanently in the west (the so-called desert elephants), those that migrated to and from the Etosha NP, and an intermediate group, which moved between the two areas^[649].

He finds ‘over 120 carcasses, 85% of which showed clear signs of having been poached’ and NWT staff find ‘a further 24 elephant carcasses, most of which had been shot’, with only one small elephant calf observed in the Palmwag concession area prior to 1984^[650].

Early 1980s

At the beginning of this decade ‘all wildlife in Namibia became state property, thereby transforming traditional hunting to the status of poaching overnight’ and causing widespread experiences of alienation from wildlife^[651].

An agreement is made [between whom?] with the traditional leaders in Sesfontein, Warmquelle and Khowarib that they would voluntarily give up the grazing areas in the Palmwag (550 000 ha) and Etendeka concession areas, and it is this that ‘has enabled these concessions to become the very valuable tourist attractions and national assets that they are today’^[652]. Local people receive nothing from this for the first 17 years of establishment of Palmwag as a premier tourism destination.

Arguing that the Nature Conservation Ordinance of 1967 applied to all SWA including Native Areas, the Dept. of Nature Conservation works hard ‘to secure game conservation agreements’ with resistant new homeland ‘Bantu Authorities’ in a context of increased poaching in Damaraland and reluctance by the Dept. of Bantu Administration ‘to implement conservation arrangements’^[653].

1982

Leader of the Damara Council, ‘veteran chief’ Justus ||Garoëb, becomes paramount chief’^[654].

With the support of the DRA and financial resources committed by the Endangered Wildlife Trust (South Africa) under the leadership of Clive Walker, the NGO Namibia Wildlife Trust is formed early in the year by Blythe Loutit, Ina Britz and concerned conservationists (incl. Pat Craven), to assist nature conservation authorities in reducing poaching in the north-west^[655]. Garth Owen-Smith resigns as a senior nature conservator in Etosha to direct the NWT’s field operations from NWT’s field base at the farm Wereldsend, a ‘former mining prospecting camp’^[656], south of the vet fence on the Torra Bay road, working between 1982-1984 with Peter Erb, Elias Hambo, Bennie Roman, Johan le Roux and Sakeus Kasaona^[657].

Owen-Smith reports the NWT’s objectives as:

1 . To create an awareness of the need for good conservation among all residents of Kaokoland and Damaraland.

2. To train suitable inhabitants of Kaokoland and Damaraland in conservation so that in the future they might play an active professional role in the conservation of the region.

3. To assist the local government conservation officers in controlling illegal hunting in the region.

4. To promote a better understanding of the ecology of this unique region.^[658]

Thus, Garth Owen-Smith returns to the north-west ‘on behalf of a local NGO called Namibia Wildlife Trust’ securing ‘the cooperation of headmen, who reportedly were also concerned about the situation [of wildlife decline], and established local wildlife protection schemes, notably a “community game [42] guard” system’ which ‘[t]he apartheid government and orthodox conservationists viewed … as eccentric and subversive at the time’^[659].

In this year, the issuing of all hunting permits is also banned in Damaraland and Kaokoland, and Eyre succeeds in introducing a moratorium on trophy hunting of elephants by ANVO^[660]. Predators that had increased during the 1980-82 drought began killing livestock, apparently due to dispersal of ungulates to desert areas following rains. A small child is tragically killed by a lion in Sesfontein^[661]: the lion enters the house of Nathan ≠Ûina Taurob, in the confusion his wife snatches away what she thinks is the child, realising only later that what she has in her hands is a bundle of bed clothes, and Nathan attempts to pull the lion off by grabbing its ears from behind, but is too late to save the child^[662].

A three-week air census in July establishes a total of about 300 elephants in the north-west region of which, fewer than 70 lived in the west^[663].

Owen-Smith records that ‘by the end of the year a total of 76 lion, 33 cheetah and 9 leopards were reported as having been killed in the region’^[664], with only one small pride surviving in the western concession area [that became Palmwag], a second group in the Skeleton Coast Park moving periodically up the Hoanib River, two prides in the eastern concession area [that became Etendeka] and lions often entering Hobatere from Etosha.

Late in the year the two later founders of IRDNC meet when Margie Jacobsohn is introduced to Garth Owen-Smith by ‘Blythe Loutit, who had just founded Save the Rhino Trust, [who] took me to his camp, Wereldsend’, [7] from where ‘he was about to start his ground-breaking community game guard network – the first practical implementation of community-based conservation in southern Africa’,

From our first meaningful conversation, I realised Garth had some of the answers I was seeking: conservation could be and should be relevant to Africans. If wildlife was valuable to people they would look after it. Instead, they were alienated from it by colonial conservation laws which gave ownership of wildlife to the state.

   Most African countries did not bother to change conservation legislation after independence and the low budgets and lack of interest developing African states afforded their conservation departments said it all. Conservation (back in the 1980s) was a white man's game, and wildlife, even though it was one of Africa's most valuable resources, was less important than people's domestic stock and crops.

   'But this can be changed,' Garth insisted. 'Here we've taken the first step - directly involving local people and their leadership in practising conservation. If you want people to be accountable, they must have real responsibility. The leaders chose their community game guards – not us – and these men are answerable to their leadership. We raise the money to pay them and work closely with the leaders and the game guards. It's changing local people's attitudes.' …

   [8] Garth's vision was for black farmers on the 40 per cent of Namibia which is communal land to get the same rights over their game – without fencing – but he was regarded as lunatic fringe by most white conservationists who were sure wildlife would be wiped out by meat-hungry communal area dwellers. They pointed to the widespread poaching of virtually all species, including black rhino and desert elephant, that was decimating the Kaokoveld’s once-abundant wildlife right there and then in the early 1980s. White government officials and some individuals from the South African Defence Force (SADF) were involved but there was no doubt most of the illegal hunting was now being done by local men. It was obvious black people just saw wild animals as meat.

   ‘That's just not my experience,’ Garth told me. ‘There are headmen and local people up north who care as much as I do about wild animals – they’re sorry to see the game is being killed but didn’t know how they could stop the killing. The game guard network has given them a role. And meant some small benefit to the headmen who can offer a few local jobs and to the men and their families who receive a small amount of cash and a more generous monthly food ration.’^[665]

1982-87

Owen-Smith writes of these years that,

the combined efforts of the DNC, traditional leaders and NGOs [plus CGGs] led to the conviction of over 80 people for illegal hunting in the northwest. More importantly, the great majority of the people living in and around the concession area were now very positive towards conservation and virtually no illegal hunting was taking place^[666].

1983

DNC appoints first black game rangers in Damaraland, including Nahor Howaseb and Augustinus Ochams^[667]. Eyre ‘drastically’ reduces ANVO’s overall trophy hunting quota^[668].

Garth Owen-Smith, in his role as Nature Conservation and Wildlife Officer, writes of the wildlife situation in Kaokoland that,

[t]oday, after a decade of uncontrolled slaughter and what was effectively the worst drought on record, the prognosis for big game in Kaokoland is not good. Nevertheless, the region's potential to be one of the game reserves and wilderness areas in Africa where the wildlife can be restored to its former splendour, makes it imperative that we try to save what is left. As the generation who allowed the destruction and degradation to take place, we owe it to future generations to accept the challenge.^[669] 

Due to the inadequacies of government patrols, he advocates the deployment as ‘game guards’ of local residents consulting headmen in ‘Warmquella’ and ‘Otcjhavara’ that resulted in instigating ‘a community-based conservation program with three components:

a pledge made by the local leaders to ban all hunting of wildlife in Kaokoland; a community game guard project that enables the community to take an active role in the conservation of wildlife; and finally a development project, started several years after the Community Game Guard project, which serves to channel some of the economic benefits associated with wildlife conservation back into the hands of local people.^[670] 

Discussions between the NWT and Herero headmen Keefas Muzuma, Joshua Kangombe, Goliat Kasaona and Vetamuna Tjambiru result in ‘the appointment of the first six community [auxiliary] game guards’ to assist with stopping illegal hunting, four of which ‘were resident in or near the concession area of Damaraland’ (i.e. the ANVO hunting concession area)^[671]. At this stage the CGGs deliver a copy of their monthly report to their community headmen and one to the MET and 18-24 CGGs are patrolling at any one time^[672]. Between 1982 and September 1984 14 poaching cases were suspected and 8 led to prosecutions through evidence provided by CGGs in connection with local communities, and cases of illegal poaching declined in subsequent years^[673].  

Jacobsohn writes that ‘[t]he auxiliary game guard network, set up by ‘freelance conservator’ Garth Owen-Smith in 1983, ‘pioneered a new approach to nature conservation in Namibia by involving local communities in the conservation of their wildlife resources’, at a moment when ‘the conservation priority was to stop the wide-scale illegal hunting of elephant, rhino, giraffe, gemsbok, zebra and other species, which was being done by Himba, Herero, Damara and Europeans’^[674]. To support local people against poachers at a time of drought, ‘a non-government organization, the Endangered Wildlife Trust [EWT], provided monthly rations … sufficient to provide a large extended family with its basic subsistence needs… and a small cash allowance for auxiliary game guards appointed by local community leaders’^[675]. The auxiliary game guard network ‘played a pivotal role in ending the poaching crisis in both Kaokoland and adjoining Damaraland’^[676].

The DNC starts negotiations with the Damara Executive Committee (DEC) of the DRA, led by Chief Justus ||Garoëb (and including Simpson Tjongarero (Education) and Johannes Hendriks (Agriculture), and Volker Grellman of ANVO Safaris, ‘with regard to the re-proclaiming of the trophy hunting concession area in northern Damaraland’ with ‘an income sharing and joint management plan for the area’ also worked out^[677].

Somewhat contrary to this, however, and due to low animal numbers and reduced hunting quotas, ‘Grellman also agreed to give up his concession if he was paid out for its remaining five years, as well as for his hunting camp at Palmwag’^[678]. The DNC does not have the R63k needed for this buy-out, and they approach the then Southern African Nature Foundation (SANF)^[679] for a grant which is agreed ‘on the condition that the DNC could guarantee that the area would be proclaimed’^[680] (as a protected area? as part of Etosha again?). Assuming agreement from the DRA would be a ‘formality’, rather than realising the DRA needed to be negotiated with as a legitimate and independent authority with powers of decision over territory in the ‘homeland’, the SANF pays ANVO in mid-1983 (constituting a significant accumulation of finance at the time) and Dr Anton Rupert (founder of the SANF) announces on South African television that ‘the old (pre-1970) Etosha would soon be re-proclaimed’, followed by a similar announcement by DNC officials on SWA television^[681]. The DEC are unimpressed at having this land pulled from underneath them, or at the promise by DNC of 25% of the gate revenues, which was a far cry from earlier promises of joint management of a concession area^[682].

1980s

Palmwag tourism concession established and local people ‘agree’ not to farm in 550 000 ha of land, but receive nothing from this for the first 17 years of establishment of Palmwag as a premier tourism destination.

Sesfontein is described as at this time having two ‘large and productive gardens’ with both complexes approx. 30 ha. and yields being one ton per ha. each of wheat and maize/corn, with both crops normally planted in a year^[683].

1984

Early in the year the Dept. of Nature Conservation announces that talks regarding the re-proclamation of ‘western Etosha’ had broken down and are asked by SANF to return the money paid to Grellman[?]^[684]. NWT’s field staff are ‘accused [by whom?] of “confusing the local people”, and its Board of Directors are ‘told to close the project down and leave conservation in Damaraland and Kaokoland to the DNC’^[685]. NWT donors, the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) are also ‘threatened that if they continue to fund NGO activities in the northwest, they would be prohibited from working in parks in both SWA and SA’^[686]. [= conflicts and power struggles between authoritarian government and liberal NGOs]. This period is described as a time when ‘this type of [community-based] conservation was regarded as lunatic fringe’^[687].

Duncan Gilchrist is appointed as a game ranger stationed in Sesfontein, and Arno van Niekerk is appointed as nature conservation officer for Kaokoland^[688].

Former Administrator-General W. van Niekerk proposes to the Damara Authority ‘that a section of northern Damaraland, totaling about 1,2 million hectares, be proclaimed as a nature conservation area’ but that ‘the area would remain the property of the Damara people’ albeit ‘managed as a nature conservation area’^[689]. The area in question had previously been part of Etosha and the idea was to reconnect it with Etosha. No ‘prior consultation with the affected inhabitants of the region had been undertaken’, however, and Justus ||Garoëb as Chairman of the Executive Committee pointed out that ‘“the people would turn against them”’ [188] since the land was considered traditional land, and the proposal was abandoned^[690].

Later summarised in the following terms:

[a]fter the creation of homelands, the Directorate of nature conservation, proposes the forming of the National park by extending the western boundaries of Etosha national park to Skeleton Coast Park, to Damara Representative Authority.
    [5] The Damara representative Authority expressed the fear of losing control over a renewable natural resource that would in the future benefit the inhabitants of the area.
    Consequently they ask the central Government to either provide replacement land, or agree to joint venture whereby they would share the revenue as equal partners.
    The negotiations could not produce desire[d] results for the Directorate of nature conservation, therefore they have requested the office of the Administrator General to mediate the negotiations, but in February 1984 the office of the Administrator General issue a press release stating that the Executive committee of the Damara Authority has turned down an offer by the Administrator General to develop 950 000ha of Damaraland as conservation area.
    After their request was turned down, the regime stated with false accusations and elderly people were arrested apparently they were conducting illegal hunt in the area where they were residing and sentence to imprisonment and other people were scared of this practice.^[691] 

At the end of the year NWT staff are given notice although the CGGs continue to be supplied with rations, purchased with EWT funds^[692]. Chris Eyre, restationed in Keetmanshoop, is replaced by Marcellus Loot who seeks to maintain cooperation with headmen and the CGGs, but Hilmar van Alphen, his counterpart in Opuwo, undermines this approach and poaching increases with van Alphen himself is charged^[693].

Tour operator Mr Magura drives over a landmine near the Kunene River with no one injured, ‘virtually stopping tourism north of Purros’ until cease-fire in 1989^[694].

1984/85

Margie Jacobsohn, later co-founder of Namibian NGO IRDNC focuses her postgraduate archaeology / anthropology research with Himba / Herero in north-western Namibia / Kaokoveld meeting ‘the Tjipomba’s, my first Ovahimba family’ and exploring,

north-western Namibia, skirting the war zones, with Blythe Loutit, founder of the Save the Rhino Trust, and later with Garth Owen-Smith who had lost his funding and therefore his job at the Namibia Wildlife Trust [see 1985]^[695].

Mid-1980s

This period is later described as follows:

During the mid-1980s, Owen-Smith began working with a white South African anthropologist, Margaret Jacobsohn, to establish a pilot community-based tourism project. This project aimed to counteract the negative effects or tourism experienced by Himba and Herero pastoralists (Jones 2005) and remove tensions over, and competition for, tourism benefits. Jones (2005: 99) writes that "The link that people made between the cash income from tourism and the wild animals of the area affected people's attitude towards wildlife, particularly dangerous species such as lions and elephants". The apparent success of these projects in involving rural people in conservation and in aiding the recovery of game numbers led Owen-Smith and Jacobsohn to create the NGO Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC).^[696]

1985

The DRA reportedly wished to keep the former ANVO Hunting Safaris concession ‘free of permanent human settlement’, considering ‘future tourism in the region as being an important vehicle for rural development’^[697]. The DRA’s DEC, with agricultural officials Johan Oosthuizen and Marthinus Boshoff, ‘drew up plans to develop the area of Damaraland that had previously been part of Etosha’ [for how many years? 12??], as well as the five, fenced-off farms in the homeland’s northeastern corner [= Hobatere], as tourist attractions under their authority’, but this is blocked by the DNC on the grounds that tourism development is ‘a central government responsibility’^[698]. The DRA thus decide ‘to lease out the area to tourism operators, which they were legally entitled to do’, and to ‘build a tourist lodge on the site of the old ANVO hunting camp at Palmwag, which was done by using materials and labor "borrowed" from other line ministries within the second-tier authority’^[699]. Through these leases, which only give the lessees ‘the right to restrict other commercial tourism activities within them’ and not to restrict local people or livestock movements within the concessions, the DRA is able to both ‘support wildlife conservation and benefit from it through tourism activities’^[700].

The DNC takes over the auxiliary game guard network with continued support by EWT^[701]

after Garth Owen-Smith in March loses his funded and thus his job with the Namibia Wildlife Trust,

because the colonial authorities claimed he was “a [xv] dangerous Swapo supporter who was confusing the communities”^[702].

Few cases of elephant poaching are reported after this year, attributed to law enforcement by Chris Eyre and later SNCO Tommy Hall^[703].

The Namibian trophy hunting market is estimated at 12% of the African market^[704].

1986

The former ANVO hunting concession is split along the Palmwag-Sesfontein road [becoming Palmwag and Etendeka concessions to the west and east respectively], with the ‘uninhabited desert’ [?? habitation/human presence consistently minimised] between the ‘Uchab' River [=Ugab/!U≠gab?] and the vet fence as a third concession area. The ‘area around Palmwag Lodge (between the Grootberg Range in the northeast [??], the Aub River in the west and the Achab River in the south) was kept as an “open area” for Palmwag guests and anyone wishing to visit it’^[705].

Karl-Heiz Grutemeyer, who then ‘ran occasional 4x4 safaris [Desert Adventure Safari Tours - DAS] through the west of Damaraland’ is leased the western concession of 582,622ha of communal land by the DRA, and Palmwag Lodge opens in July, while Louw Schoeman who ran Skeleton Coast Fly-in Safaris took on the southern concession^[706]. From Palmwag, the DRA derive an annual lease fee and small levy charged to people going into the ‘open area’, collected by the Lodge on their behalf and encouraged through signs at entry points quoting a 1928 law ‘requiring persons driving off proclaimed roads on State Land to obtain a permit from the “Secretary for South West Africa”’, although ‘the validity of this old law was never tested in court’^[707].

Six further CGGs are appointed in Damaraland ‘by the traditional leaders [Joshua] Kangombe and [Goliat] Kasaona of Warmquelle, as well as Otto Ganuseb^[708] (Sesfontein) and Gabriel Taniseb (Khovarib)’^[709].

Supported by a grant from the New York Zoological Society, Garth Owen-Smith with Sakeus Kasaona and assisted by Duncan and Ruth Gilchrist, John Paterson and Des and Jen Bartlett, carry ‘out the first rhino census by individual identification’, ‘refining the tracking method now widely used for monitoring’, and later handing over the records to Blythe Loutit of Save the Rhino Trust who worked with Simson !Uri-≠Khob and local trained community trackers to maintain regular monitoring, as is still carried out today^[710].

The Damara Community and Regional Authorities and Paramount Chief and Headman Ordinance 2 governs the administration of traditional justice of the Damara^[711].

Margie Jacobsohn conducts research in the Purros area and observes that,

the local community had an undignified [27] relationship with tourists. Tourists often took photos without asking permission and sometimes without even extending any form of greeting. She comments that the people were angry with the tourists but had no mechanism to regulate tourist activities in their area.^[712]

1987

Following an approach by Margie Jacobsohn, then conducting archaeological research in Purros, Dr John Ledger, EWT Director from 1985, visited the northwest to evaluate circumstances there, after which he ‘re-instated EWT financial support for NGO activities in the region’. A ‘small pilot eco-tourism project is set up at Purros’ requiring ‘all tourists on Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) tours to pay a fee to the local community as caretakers of their natural resources, including land and wildlife’, an initiative that Schoeman’s Skeleton Coast Fly-In Safaris later joins^[713].

The Purros project has three components:

- A tourist levy: The levy is paid to the Purros community by tour operators. The levy is charged on a per head basis, and it is paid directly to the community for their role as caretakers of wildlife.

- A craft market. Local materials such as palm fronds are used, and the impact of palm frond harvesting is monitored by local women.

- The Purros Conservation Committee: The Committee has been established to represent the interests of the community. This local institution works in consultation with the local community to solve problems related to the distribution of the tourist levy. The committee also discusses problems related to tourists with tour operators.

[it also creates] … an incentive for the local community to become involved in the CGG Program. It channels the benefits that accrue from wildlife conservation (increased tourism) back into the hands of the Purros community. The project has used conservation and tourism to broaden the Purros community's economic base and thereby change their attitudes towards wildlife.^[714]

Owen-Smith and Jacobsohn summarise the achievements of the Purros Project as follows:

Local residents now link wildlife to tourism and to the benefits they receive, and are positive towards nature conservation. In recognition of this, Purros was chosen by the Ministry of Wildlife, Conservation and Tourism as one of the areas for a wildlife restocking program in 1990 and again in 1991, with 29 gemsbok and 20 giraffe being translocated there from Etosha.

The communities’ economic base has broadened beyond subsistence farming, with more than 35,000 rand (US$6130) being earned from the tourists since 1987.

The semi-nomadic settlement pattern, whereby stock is moved away from permanent water as soon as rain comes has been restored. This has occurred because the tourist levy - unlike random handouts to pose for tourist’s cameras - is distributed to all members of the community regardless of whether they meet tourists or not.^[715]

The DRA’s DEC offers ‘the “Five Farms” in the northeast of Damaraland (now Hobatere) as a trophy hunting concession to Jan Oelofse of Mount Etjo Game Ranch’^[716], on a 50/50 basis although given investment in infrastructure the lesses claimed to have made no profits in the first three years of operation.

The last of the Skeleton Coast Park lions is killed by Herero stockowners from Sesfontein^[717].

Drought causes the Warmquelle headmen Joshua Kangombe and Goliat Kasaona to initiate discussion with GOS/NWT regarding moving their livestock across the Hoanib/Uniab watershed, which he deflects because Palmwag Lodge opened the previous here and tourists had started to visit and asks them to look for alternative grazing such that ‘no Herero livestock were taken into the western tourism concession area until after Namibia’s independence’^[718]. Meanwhile, ‘two Damara stockowners from Sesfontein [Moses & Petrus Ganuseb? Jan |Awiseb] moved their cattle across the watershed and down the main road to the Otjorute [= Otjerate / !Nao-dâis] spring (about 20kms north of Palmwag)’ and “Rudi Loutit, the new Principle NCO for Damaraland, and Mr Simpson Tjongarero (MEC of the DRA) visited these farmers and gave them permission to stay until the first good rains fell. However, when the drought broke, this agreement was not enforced and these stockowners have remained south of the watershed’^[719]. Additionally, the DRA gave Headman Josef Japuhwa of Omuramba in SE Kaokoland permission ‘to take cattle into the Palmfontein area of the eastern tourist concession’ which had not been allocated and no tourism was taking place there, and these ‘Herero stockowners’ have remained despite its inclusion in the Etendeka concession leased by Denis Liebenberg in 1990^[720].

SNCO Marcellus Loots and Garth Owen-Smith propose ‘a limited amount of common game species be harvested’ for consumption by ‘the local community’ and following agreement by the DNC and DRA ‘120 springbok, gemsbok and zebra, were cropped by second-tier government officials and the meat distributed through the traditional leaders at Warmquelle and Sesfontein’^[721].

Chief Jeremia Gaobaeb takes over the Sesfontein leadership from Theofilus ||Hawaxab due to the latter’s ill-health, ‘[t]herefore according to the tradition inherited from Late Captain Simon Petrus ||Hawaxab all the ethnic groups were under the leadership of Chief Jeremia Gaobaeb’^[722].

1987-91

Owen-Smith starts guiding safaris to South Africans and some international tourists (approx. 250 in total), arranged by the EWT in Johannesburg and backed up logistically by DAS, through the then unallocated eastern concession (now Etendeka) to Sesfontein then Purros and back to Palmwag Lodge through the western concession^[723].

1987-95

Kaokoland inhabitants are the only communal area community in Namibia to benefit directly from a local culling program^[724].

1988

A similar ‘game harvest’ to that enacted in 1987 is carried out with the hunting done by DNC officers under Tommy Hall^[725]. Rossing Uranium Mine contributes funds for rations and cash allowances to support the auxiliary game guard network^[726].

1989

Cease-fire in war for independence^[727] leading to the first universal election held under UN supervision^[728]. Justus ||Garoëb becomes leader of UDF, winning vote three times with especially Damara votes in Khorixas and Sesfontein constituencies^[729]. The SADF withdraws from areas that were the focus for conflict, for example Caprivi, an effect being a reduction of income for those employed as trackers by the SADF^[730] (for example Khwe in West Caprivi and some Damara / ≠Nūkhoen in Battalion 10^[731]). Khaudum National Park is proclaimed in the north-east of the country^[732].

A Rehoboth resident shoots five rhinos in Damaraland (two in the Palmwag concession) and SNCO Rudi Loutit plus DNC vet Pete Morkel undertake ‘the first ever de-horning of wild rhino in vulnerable areas south of the cordon [vet] fence’, and ten rhino are also translocated to Waterberg Plateau Park^[733].

1990

Namibia gains independence, becoming the Republic of Namibia. The ethnically-based second-tier authorities are dismantled through repeal of the 1980 Representative Authority Proclamation and subsequent proclamations, creating unclarity regarding who the north-west concessionaires should pay their leasing fees to^[734]. The southern concession[?] is not renewed, and the open area around Palmwag falls away so that the western and eastern concession boundaries move to along the Palmwag-Sesfontein road^[735]. Denis Liebenberg, takes on the eastern concession in Damaraland, in partnership with Wilderness Safaris. Hobatere is converted into a tourism concession and granted to Andries Ferreira and Steve Braine^[736]. Around six mobile four operators are visiting Damaraland and Kaokoland at this time^[737].

The Grootberg Farmers Union is formally founded having operated in the area since the 1970s^[738].

The Purros community-based project, support by EWT, is renamed Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC), ‘a Namibian NGO … later registered as a Trust’^[739]. The coffee table books Himba: Nomads of Namibia^[740] and Kaokoveld: The Last Wilderness are published^[741].  

Shortly after independence, the glossonym (language name) ‘Khoekhoegowab’ is ‘officially reintroduced for the language that had become known as ‘Nama’ or ‘Nama/Damara’, ‘a dialect continuum with Nama as southernmost and Damara, Hai||om and ≠Aakhoe as northernmost dialect clusters’^[742].

Mamili National Park is proclaimed in north-east Namibia^[743].

Post-1990

Technically speaking, the name ‘Kaokoland’ is no longer in use, given that the ‘Homelands’ were dissolved at Namibia’s independence in 1990. The area formerly designated as Kaokoland is now constituted by the Epupa and Opuwo Constituencies of Kunene Region.

Early 1990s

Five ‘wandering rhino’ are moved to Hardap Recreational Area and Etosha NP^[744].

Elias Xoagub, the farmer allocated land at Twyfelfontein / |Ui-||aes in 1976, uses revenue from tourist visits to the rock art to create the Aba-Huab Campsite^[745].

1990-1995

The government initiates a village resettlement programme for Khwe San in Caprivi following SADF withdrawal, implemented by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (ELCIN) and providing 4ha plots per Khwe family, distributing cattle and providing solar-powered boreholes, health posts and training – simultaneously conservation in Caprivi Game Park is reinvigorated and a ‘socioecological survey’ is conducted here recommending CBNRM ‘as a conservation strategy for the area^[746]. IRDNC starts working here, employing Khwe CGGs and community resource monitors although the Game Park status means that Khwe are ‘prohibited from hunting wild animals or defending themselves, their crops, and bushfood from elephants’^[747].

1991

Following a gap since 1988, six animals of five species are, at high cost, ‘cropped by MET officers from Damaraland and Etosha and distributed to all the communities bordering the concession areas’^[748].

The MET conducts the first black rhino census in north-west Namibia, in conjunction with the Save the Rhino Trust, other NGOs and private people that volunteered to help^[749].

No Herero households registered in Kowareb in 1991 census (and largest head of cattle numbers 25, pers. obs. in 1992)^[750].

1992

First state of emergency declared in Namibia due to severe agricultural drought^[751]. The then Ministry of Wildlife, Conservation and Tourism (MWCT – now MET) ‘develops first draft of new policy providing for rights over wildlife and tourism to be given to communities that form a common property resource management institution called a "conservancy"’^[752], but  does not make provision for NGOs as stakeholders per se^[753].

First socio-ecological survey conducted in March by the MET involving Topnaar in the Namib-Naukluft Park in which a delegation of MET representatives, government and NGO representatives and Topnaar leaders visit 10 of 13 Topnaar settlements ‘to discuss natural resource use, conservation and future development’ within the Park^[754]. The aim is to produce ‘management proposals ... which integrates the needs and aspirations of the Topnaar people with the needs and objectives of conservation within the Namib-Naukluft Park’^[755]. Requests made by the ≠Aonin during this survey included: the removal of at least some problem animals (jackal and hyaena); the distribution of benefits from conserving wildlife to local people through receiving meat from culled wildlife and a percentage of Park visitor’s fees, and through the involvement of ≠Aonin people as tourism guides; and the recognition of land rights allowing development within the ≠Aonin settlements in the Park, and preventing detrimental effects from external sources on the !nara fields^[756]. It is agreed that the Topnaar are ‘to become equal partners with the MET in the co-management of the Park’ and that they will benefit from living in the Park^[757].

Ferreira withdraws from partnership at Hobatere tourism concession^[758].

Regional Councillors are elected to Regional Government offices for the first time^[759].

1993

The new Government of the Republic of Namibia (GRN) decides that the tourism concessions of the northwest should fall under the Directorate of Tourism in the MET, with Palmwag Lodge, the western and estern concessions and Hobatere renewed annually until 1995^[760].

A five-year Living in a Finite Environment (LIFE) project, based on bilateral agreement between the Namibian government and USAID^[761], brings major donor funding (WWF and USAID) to the CBNRM project in Namibia, permitting the emergence of a ‘national programme’ ‘involving partnerships between government, NGOs and rural communities’ – extended in 1999^[762]. WWF is awarded a ‘leader with associate’, a ‘cooperative agreement’ for the NGO to provide technical assistance to Namibian counterparts^[763].

Chief Control Warden, Danie Grobelaar, approves ‘the cropping of 900 animals (of six species), that would be carried out by the local hunters appointed by their traditional leaders’, with monitoring at hunting camps by MET officers and support from IRDNC for ammunition and transport to enable distribution of meat^[764]. Thus by this year,

the trust between the MET and the Kaokoland community improved so greatly that the Kaokoland community was permitted to conduct its own annual cull in the form of species-regulated hunting during a stipulated hunting season … [a] conservative estimate of the value of meat distributed to communities after the 1993 hunt was 147868 Namibian dollars (US$25900).^[765]

Topnaar representatives from Walvis Bay and Windhoek establish a fishing company and secure a fishing quota^[766].

A prominent Gobabis rancher in the Omaheke is ‘caught in a police sting operation in South Africa with forty-two elephant tusks and six rhino horns’ and one of the three farms he sells so as to pay his fine is Skoonheid which becomes a resettlement farm for Ju|’hoansi^[767].

1994

Justus ||Garoëb becomes ‘King of the Damara’^[768]. The People’s Land Conference is held in Windhoek in September^[769]. Namibia’s second democratic election is held in November. Walvis Bay is re-integrated into Namibia through Transfer of Walvis Bay to Namibia Act, 1993 [No. 203 of 1993]^[770], meaning that Topnaar of the Lower !Khuiseb have to change their national identity from South Africa to Namibian, causing a loss of income because of lower pensions in Namibia^[771]. In January Seth Kooitjie and some of his Councillors invite private company Olympia Reisen to the lower !Khuiseb ‘to investigate the potential for a joint tourist venture in the area’^[772], through securing ‘a concession which will allow Namib Naukluft Holiday Resorts (Pty) Ltd to act as sole tourist operator in the Namib Naukluft Park’^[773].

By this year, community-based conservation approaches in Kaokoveld contexts are vulnerable to lack of promised reciprocity by state depts. (e.g. MWCT not fulfilling understood commitments to drill boreholes in return for Etunga community’s protection of wildlife) and [33] the community in southern Kaokoveld that implemented a culling program in 1993 does not consider it has the capacity to do so again^[774].

1995

Traditional Authorities Act no. 17 passed in parliament placing TAs under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Regional and Local Government and Housing (MRLGH) and reducing their former status as political leaders by disallowing the simultaneous holding of political and traditional offices, thereby emphasising their judicial and cultural roles^[775]. Nonetheless, each TA is entitled to two seats in the Council of Traditional Leaders which advises the President^[776].

Exceptional rain year in west Namibia.

MET position paper is produced on ‘Wildlife Management, utilisation and tourism on communal land: using conservancies and wildlife councils to enable communal area residents to use and benefit from wildlife on their land’, describing conservancies on freehold land as:

A group of farms on which neighbouring landowners have pooled their resources for the purpose of conserving and utilising wildlife on their combined properties. The conservancy concept does not have to be restricted to the commercial farming areas, but can be extended to communal land as well.^[777]

Cabinet passes the Wildlife Management, Utilisation and Tourism Policy of 1995^[778] in Namibia makes it possible to implement suitable institutional conditions that allow the implementation of conservancies on communal land^[779]. The aim of this policy in Namibia is to promote the development of rural communities that live close to the wildlife, along with the legal and sustainable use of that wildlife, and other natural resources outside unsettled protected areas. The objective is to demonstrate the positive role that wildlife, and its habitat, can have in land-use planning for socio-economic development at local, regional and national levels.^[780] The Act proclaims that:

·           the right to utilise and benefit from wildlife on communal land should be devolved to a rural community that forms a conservancy in terms of the Ministry’s policy on conservancies;

·           each conservancy should have the rights to utilise wildlife within the bounds of the conservancy to the benefit of the community. Once a quota for each available species has been set, the conservancy members may decide how these animals may be utilised. They may decide to allow hunting by members of the conservancy, culling of game for meat, the sale of animals for trophy hunting, or the live sale of game;

·           the conservancy should be able to enter into a business arrangement with private companies to carry some or all of these activities;

·           the conservancy would also have the right to establish tourism facilities within its boundaries or engage in a commercial agreement with a registered tourism operator to act on its behalf.^[781] 

Conservancies on communal land are thereby defined as,

a community or group of communities within a defined geographic area who jointly manage, conserve and utilise the wildlife and other natural resources within the defined area.^[782]

The policy states that,

residents should have clearly defined physical boundaries (e.g., a physical description of geographic boundaries or a map sketch must be appended to the conservancy application), a representative management body elected from the community, and a constitution in order for the conservancy to be registered. … [and] requires that the neighbouring communities and conservancies must have accepted the conservancy boundaries before it can be registered. Thus establishing conservancy boundaries is a complex social process that requires consensus and negotiation among rural residents. … [although often] described as aligning with pre-existing community territories.^[783]

Policy on the Promotion of Community-Based Tourism is also published,

[t]his policy provides a framework for ensuring that local communities have access to opportunities in tourism development and are able to share in the benefits of tourism activities that take place on their land. The policy recognises that where tourism is linked to wildlife and landscapes, the benefits to local communities can provide important incentives for conservation of these resources. The policy document states that MET will give recognised communal area conservancies concessionary rights to tourist lodge development within conservancy boundaries.^[784] 

The lesses to the northwest tourism concessions are given 5-year concessions, ‘with the option of a five-year renewal’^[785]. The Palmwag / western concession ‘excluded the area north of the Uniab watershed and east of the lower Hoanib gorge, but was extended to the river’s north bank (previously the middle of the river) in the gorge’^[786].

The Etendeka [eastern] concession lease is renewed with the Palmfontein area excluded (i.e. ‘to include only the area from the Grootberg southwards to the Vet. Cordon Fence’^[787]) (Palmfontein - a former Afrikaans settler farm** - now inhabited by Headman Josef Japuhwa of Omuramba in SE Kaokoland, see above) and ‘[s]ubsequently, many more cattle-owners from Omuramba, Otjikovares and Warmquelle’ move into this ‘original eastern concession area’^[788].

A second ‘community game harvesting operation’ is carried out^[789].

Elias Xoagub acquires a PTO to the land of the Aba-Huab campsite and surrounding areas he has established in the preceding years, thereby strengthening his land use rights and becoming attractive to family and friends who become his employees at the campsite and Twyfelfontein rock art, including a Peter Ukongo(?) who leaves following disagreement over the distribution of tourism revenue^[790]. Ukongo gains permission from the TA (which?) to settle on a nearby farm (which?) and becomes regional councillor for Uibasen following the conservancy legislation.

It is observed that ‘nothing has changed’ regarding the outcomes promised in the Topnaar-Namib-Naukluft socio-ecological (1992)^[791]. Here, Kooitjie and community are increasingly wary of commercial company Olympia Reisen taking control and ownership of tourism developments in the Namib Naukluft Park and turn down the proposal made in 1993^[792]. Topnaar leaders instead establish ≠Aonin Fishing and secure a fishing concession potentially worth millions of dollars with a Board of Directors ‘comprised of three Topnaar representatives and an unknown number of non-Topnaar businessmen’; with a trust in Kooitjie’s name to be created through which a 10% share of the profits would be directed to heads of households in Topnaar settlements, who would ‘be expected to distribute their share equally among families in their settlement’, although research indicates limited awareness of the company, or of the Olympia Reisen proposals above^[793].

mid-1990s

‘[S]ome Herero cattle owners also crossed the Hoanib/Uniab watershed’^[794].

1996

The Nature Conservation Amendment Act no. 5 of 1996 (the ‘communal area conservancy legislation’) is passed , amending the 1975 Nature Conservation Ordinance, stopping subsistence hunting under the control of traditional leaders in favour of annual quotas for trophy and ‘own-use’ hunting being applied for by ‘registered conservancies that had wildlife management plans approved by the MET’^[795]. Thereby extends to communal area residents the state’s authority over ‘(conditional) ownership rights over wildlife, previously only granted to private landowners’^[796], allowing for the formation of Communal Area Conservancies that gives consumptive and non-consumptive utilisation rights to wildlife to communities in rural areas. The legislation recognises ‘the tourism concession areas as leases that could not be included within the boundaries of a conservancy’^[797]. Thus,

[i]nstead of using fencing and the size of farms as conditions for gaining ownership over huntable game and the right to use other species, the Nature Conservation Amendment Act sets conservancy formation as the condition upon which ownership and use rights over game are granted to communal area residents. The act uses conservancies as the means by which limited rights to manage and benefit from wildlife and tourism are given to a specified group of people living in communal areas.^[798] 

The Act also extends possibilities for wildlife us by freehold land owners^[799].

Combined with Amendment of Regulations Relating to Nature Conservation ‘to clarify certain issues relating to the formation of conservancies and Wildlife Councils’, and requiring ‘a conservancy committee to provide a register containing the names, identification numbers and addresses of the members of the [207] community to be represented by the committee’ and specifying ‘certain issues which must be covered by the conservancy constitution’^[800].

So-called ‘traditional authorities’ have to re-register themselves^[801].

Grootberg Farmers’ Union (≠Khoadi||hoas) adopts a Forum for Integrated Management (FIRM) approach, to integrate donor activities in the area, particularly connected with NAPCOD, SARDEP (Sustainable Animal and Rural Development Programme), Communal Area Water Supply (CAWS) and LIFE^[802].

The new Government of the Republic of Namibia (GRN) decides that the tourism concessions of the northwest should fall under the Directorate of Tourism in the MET, with Palmwag Lodge, the western and eastern concessions and Hobatere renewed annually until 1995^[803].

1997

Traditional Authorities Act no. 13 registers the Damara as one community - the Royal Damara House under a supreme leader (gaob) or ‘Paramount Chief’, Justus ||Garoëb, even though this office is not recognised under original TAs Act (no. 17 of 1995), nor the later Act (no. 25 of 2000), with several Chiefs as Senior Traditional Councillors under this leader^[804].

An evaluation of the Namibian CBNRM programme concludes that the conservancy legislation has caused a shift in emphasis for Kaokoveld communities ‘from protection of the wildlife resource linked to the receipt of a few financial benefits to sustainable use and management of the resource in order to realise substantial benefits’^[805], the implications being that:

The CGGs will continue to carry out similar functions and they will continue to be an expression of communities' commitment to wildlife conservation. However, the information they gather will increasingly be geared towards assisting the conservancies in the sustainable management of wildlife and tourism.

The CGGs will be the professional wildlife managers of the conservancy, and will be required, for example, to use their knowledge of game numbers and distribution to advise the conservancy committee on setting quotas for utilization.

Another implication of the conservancy formation is that where headman once played a prominent role in the appointment of CGGs, and the game guards reported to the headmen, the CGGs will in the future be responsible to conservancy members as represented by the conservancy committee.^[806]

1997-98

Rhino census finds that numbers have doubled since 1982, ‘calculated from animals identified in 1986/7’ (see above)^[807]. The lions resident in the eastern concession area survive ‘until the mid-nineties’^[808].

1998

Administrative boundaries are revised so as to break up the former ‘Homeland’ geography, and to combine freehold and communal land into the same regions. Kunene Region is divided into six constituencies (Epupa, Opuwo, Sesfontein, Kamanjab, Outjo), and its Regional Council is seated in Opuwo. This is not without ethnic implications, since Opuwo in the northern part of the Region is strongly associated with Himba/Herero territory and culture, as well as connected historically and culturally with Owambo constituencies in the east. The removal of administrative power from Khorixas, the seat of the Damaraland second-tier authority under the post-Odendaal South African administration, undermines Damara authority and perspectives in the Region.^[809]

In June, Reg. Torra Conservancy; 352,200ha; 1,200 residents; 9 conservancy staff, 1 office, 4 vehicles; income earned from: trophy hunting, Damaraland Camp, Palmwag Concession^[810]. Torra Conservancy is the first conservancy in black rhino range, and rapidly became financially self-sufficient due to a lucrative tourism joint venture with Wilderness Safaris^[811].

≠Khoadi||hoas also registered in June^[812]. ≠Khoadi-||Hoas i.e. “elephant’s corner”, conservancy, is registered in the Sesfontein constituency in the southern half of Kunene Region, sharing boundaries with commercial/freehold farms to the east, Torra and Ehirovipuka Conservancies to the west and north respectively, and Hobatere Tourism Concession to the northeast. The veterinary fence is the northern boundary. The conservancy covers 3,364 km² and Anker and Erwee are two major settlements in the conservancy with schools, clinics and the Directorate of Agriculture and Water Affairs administration offices. The area is densely populated with 3,463 people and 641 households, equivalent to one person per square kilometre. The conservancy and Ministry of Environment and Tourism headquarters are situated in what used to be the old Breeding Station. Damaras are the dominant ethnic group in the conservancy although there are a several number of Herero, Owambo and Nama ethnic groups also represented.^[813]

A hunting agreement with one operator is drawn up poorly (due to lack of external expertise) with ≠Khoadi||hôas based on exclusive rights and no advance payment for quote and contractor didn’t undertake any hunting activities so no income arising^[814].

Towards the end of the year, Namibia’s communal area conservancy programme is officially launched by President Sam Nujoma^[815], legislation that is later described as responsible for heading off

what has happened in many other independent African countries: a black elite mimic the previous white economic dominance and capture tourism concessions and other valuable natural resource income streams, widening the gap between the poor and the wealthy^[816].

This ‘[g]round-breaking legislation’ ‘subsequently entrenched legal ownership of wild animals to conservancies and their members: if you own something, you are motivated to look after it’^[817].

1999

During drought in this year Herero that in the mid-1990s had moved with their livestock across the Hoanib/Uniab watershed ‘moved right down the main road to Palmwag, where their cattle drank straight from the spring in front of the lodge’, causing ‘consternation’ to the lessee (Jockel Grutemeyer) who had no rights to keep livestock out of the concession^[818]. At this point no income had been received to date from Palmwag by local residents^[819]. Grutemeyer provided piping for water to be brought from a farm to the east, through the vet. fence and after the rains fell the livestock left the concession^[820].

Then Director of the MET, Maria Kapere, at a meeting at Palmwag Lodge, advises concessionaires ‘to negotiate benefit-sharing contracts with their neighbouring conservancies before expiry of their leases’, and ≠Khoadi-||hoas (gazetted - nb. ‘gazetting’ is from the language of gazetting national parks) and Omatendeka (submitting registration application at the time) are ‘negotiating contracts with Hobatere and Etendeka concessionaires respectively’^[821].

Elias Xoagub reportedly uses his influence with MET officials to keep Twyfelfontein Farm [where he had settled in 1976] and exclude it from the emerging Doro !Nawas Conservancy giving rise to two conservancies in this location, i.e. Uibasen/Twyfelfontein and Doro!Nawas, with Xoagub elected first Chairperson of Uibasen/Twyfelfontein Conservancy Committee^[822]. At 286 km2 and around 286 people (mostly Khoekhoegowab speakers), it is the smallest conservancy in this region^[823].

Initiated by the local farmers’ union – Versteendewould Farmers Union (VFU, after the Afrikaans name for the petrified forest in the area) – after acquiring in 1996 a copy of the CBNRM Tool Box from the Regional Council office (then in Khorixas?) and consulting the area’s Damara Traditional Authority and local MET officers, Doro !Nawas Conservancy in southern Kunene is registered in December, covering 4,073 km2 and including 1,500 people, mostly with Khoekhoegowab as their first language^[824]. Local ethnic affiliation is considered to be the primary factor determining conservancy boundaries with the process of consulting community members and proposing boundaries – based on the boundaries of Ward 7 – led by a subcommittee of the VFU^[825]. Members of Bethanie and surrounding farms decline to become members of either Doro !Nawas or Torra Conservancies for financial reasons, deciding that they stand to gain more by remaining independent from entrepreneurial activities linked with tourism access to attractions in the area such as the petrified forest, the burner mountain and dolomite organ pipes, as well as the tourism route to Etosha NP^[826]. Various disputes ensue and the promise of economic gain is thwarted in part due to a lack of NGO support because the Bethanie community remains independent of a conservancy [see 2008]^[827].

The LIFE project [started 1995] is extended for a further five years^[828].

The Namibian cabinet approves a new management plan for Caprivi Game Park to elevate its conservation status and separate core biodiversity areas from those settled by people, and eventually resulting in the gazetting of Bwabwata National Park in 2007^[829].

2000

The Namibian Association of CBNRM Support Organisations (NACSO) is established.

The Namibian Traditional Authorities Act no. 25 recognises ethnic difference and cultural heritage, as well as the legitimacy of previous so-called ‘traditional’ leadership structures despite their relationship with the previous apartheid state^[830], defining ‘a traditional community’ as:

an indigenous, homogeneous, endogamous social grouping of persons comprising of families deriving from clans which share a common ancestry, language, cultural heritage, customs and traditions, recognizes a common traditional authority and inhabits a common communal area.^[831]

The Act affirms ascertainment of customary law ‘as any kind of authoritative transfer of orally transmitted customary law into a written form’ and states this as a task of the Traditional Authorities^[832]. The Act uses the terminology of traditional and senior traditional councillors, although the terms headmen and senior headman remain commonly used^[833]. It affirms the role of TAs ‘both in ensuring sustainable resource use, and in administering communal land’^[834].   

Following accusations of fraud by the then treasurer of the Sesfontein conservancy [??** check this. when was conservancy formed], the Sesfontein conservancy office was closed and armed Herero guards from Warmquelle were stationed there, following which a protest march took place, organised  Sesfontein by various people disaffected by the facilitation of the conservancy registration process^[835].

Registration of Purros conservancy in May^[836].

An American tourist is killed by elephants in the Aba-Huab River, following which on 4th November the Cabinet authorises the MET to control the movement of tourists in the region, restrict tourist guides to those registered by the MET, and to investigate proclamation of conservation areas in the region to be jointly managed by the MET and conservancies^[837].

A workshop is held in Windhoek on ‘Promotion of Indigenous Fruits of Namibia’, leading to the formation of the Indigenous Fruit Task Team (IFFT), and identifying six Namibian fruits as high priority for development^[838], namely: !nara (Acanthosicyos horridus), Devil’s Claw (Harpagophytum procumbens), marula and ximenia oils (from the fruit kernels of Sclerocarya birrea and Ximenia mucronata respectively), essential oils from Commiphora spp. and mopane seeds (Colophospermum mopane), and the morama bean **^[839].

!Khuiseb floods to the sea, washing away !nara plants^[840].

2001

Parks and Wildlife Management Bill,

provides for the declaration of protected areas and the necessary procedures before declaration. It further provides for the establishment of conservancies, wildlife farms and game fenced areas. It outlines the provisions under which wildlife may be utilised by land owners, lessees, conservancies, game farms and within communal areas outside of registered conservancies.^[841]

The Forest Act implements legislation regarding ‘community forests’^[842] enabling,

the registration of various types of classified forest areas, including 'community forests'. Community forests will be registered with the consent of the relevant Traditional Authority. Management authorities for community forests would be established under similar procedures as for conservancies. For example, a forest management plan is required. The MET advised against the creation of separate conservancy and community forest committees within one community, and promoted the integration of the two approaches.^[843] 

Forestry Development Policy (2001) aims to,

reconcile rural development with the conservation of biological diversity. It recognises the need to involve “local communities” in forest management. The policy views resource ownership as critical for preventing forest degradation. It envisages giving resource tenure over forests to communities in conjunction with the possibility of groups gaining leasehold tenure over land in accordance with the National Land Policy. The policy provides for government to support forest users in their management of forests, through technical and extension services. The policy provides for links to conservancies through enabling forest product harvest quotas and providing for fire control in the management plans of conservancies.^[844]

Event Book Monitoring System implemented by ≠Khoadi||hôas^[845].

2002

The Communal Land Reform Act 5 of this year ‘provides for the establishment of Communal Land Boards to exercise control over the allocation of customary land rights by Traditional Authorities’ and to include ‘representatives from farming communities, regional councils, women, the public service and conservancies, in addition to Traditional Authorities’^[846], stating that:

(4) Before granting a right to leasehold, subsection (1) in respect of land which is wholly or partly situated in an area which has been declared a conservancy in terms of section 24A of the Nature Conservation Ordinance, 1975 (Ordinance No.4 of 1975), a board must have due regard to any management and utilization plans framed by the conservancy committee concerned in relation to that conservancy, and such board may not grant the right of leasehold if the purpose for which the land in question is proposed to be used under such right would defeat the objectives of such management and utilization plan.^[847]

The Act precipitates controversy:

[e]arly drafts of the Bill made provision for secure group tenure over land. Politicians reportedly objected to this, however, because they feared it could consolidate ethnic enclaves based on the former apartheid homelands. Further, Traditional Authorities reportedly believed that [208] such provisions would diminish their own authority over land allocation. Although reference to secure group tenure was removed, the new Act does not specifically preclude group tenure rights. When read together with relevant sections of the National Land Policy that provide for legally constituted bodies and institutions to exercise joint ownership rights as a category of land holder, the Act could be used by conservancies, for example, to try to obtain group tenure. The Act provides for the establishment of Land Boards, their composition and functions. A Land Board may be established for a whole region, a part of a region or across parts of two or more regions. The function of these Boards will be to exercise control over the allocation of customary land rights by chiefs or Traditional Authorities. They will administer the entire system of granting, recording and cancelling of these rights to various applicants, upon consultation with Traditional Authorities. Provision is made for residents to have access to common grazing lands subject to conditions made by a chief or Traditional Authority, including limits on stock numbers or where grazing may take place. The chief or Traditional Authority may also grant grazing rights to non-residents for a specified or indefinite period. These rights may be withdrawn.

     The Land Boards will control the allocation of leases for land and the Act makes provision for certain prescribed maximum sizes of land for particular forms of land use. Land Boards are required to take into account any management or utilisation plans developed by conservancies, and may not grant a lease for a purpose that would defeat the purpose of such plans. Conservancies will also be represented on land boards. The status of other forms of community institution for natural resource management and land use planning, for example, Community Forest management bodies, is less clear. The Act makes it an offence for anyone to use or occupy communal land for any purpose other than under a right acquired in accordance with the provisions of the Act. Legal action can be instituted for the eviction of illegal occupiers of land.^[848] 

Justus ||Garoëb, Paramount Chief and designated King of the Damaras, and a delegation of the Damara King’s Council, meet with delegates of the German United Evangelical Mission (headquarters in Wuppertal) to discuss ‘the truth about the history of Namibia [and] more specifically in relation to the Damara’ - especially regarding classified information held by the Bundestag relating to land of the Damara^[849]. Specific concerns expressed include:

1. the lack of land legally held in post-Independence Namibia by ‘we the Damaras’; 2. the subservience of authority by Traditional Leaders to new Local and Regional Authorities and to ‘Committees with explicit legal standing, like Land Boards, Conservancies, Development Committees etc.’; 3. the indigeneity of the Damara, who are considered first inhabitants, next to the San; 4. a history whereby no Damaras ‘sold’ any land in Namibia to colonial powers, as was done by ‘other groups’; and 5. historical experiences of land grabbing from Damara without FPIC or compensation^[850] - including that the ‘Church’ [**the UEM as contemporary incarnation of Rhenish mission] recently sold the farms ||Gaub (9,000 ha) and ||Kanaxa-ams which had been obtained in 1895 by the Rhenish mission ‘for the Damaras and a handful of San’, and thus should return this land, with legal title, to the Damaras as ‘rightful owners’^[851].

Of particular concern is a situation whereby:

Currently, while the Government is pursuing a policy to undo the former demarcated tribal homelands the irony is that Kaokoland, Ovambo, Kavango and Caprivi, in all fairness, retain their statuses while Damaraland is generally referred to as ‘former Damaraland’ and is because of its centrality systematic assuming a national status without Damaras being given a replacement land for own communal use. This leaves the Damaras at the tender mercy of the have’s [sic].^[852]

The Royal Damara House is deregistered and various Damara communities are registered under their own independent leaders (Proclamation no. 3)^[853].

Lions in the eastern concession [Etendeka] are ‘only occasional migrants from Etosha’, and ‘the western concession pride [i.e. Palmwag] has now broken up dispersed between the Achab and Hoarusib rivers’, with the total number of lions resident in the northwest now about fifty^[854]. Nonetheless, in this year Garth Owen-Smith writes that ‘[o]ver the past two decades the populations of all species have made remarkable recoveries and have now reached levels that, if not stabilized or reduced, will undoubtedly crash when the next severe drought occurs in the region’^[855].

The Ehirovipuka and emerging Omatendeka conservancies decide ‘to keep the ecologically critical area along the Ombonde river (in the old eastern concession) livestock-free for the development of tourism enterprises’ and people are prohibited to settle at Otjiyapa spring in the eastern concession because of dry season use by wildlife^[856].

At this point the concessionaires are Palmwag - Grutemeyer/Wilderness, Etendeka - Liebenberg, and Hobatere - Braine, with only Liebenberg/Etendeka collecting and paying a small bed-night levy to neighbouring communities, despite the lodges in these concessions generating ‘many millions of dollars annually’^[857]. Hobatere is fenced and is also protected by movement from livestock southwards, due to the position of the vet fence, although southern and northern neighbours regularly experience losses due to lions coming from this concession^[858].

Regarding the DRA and Damara claims to the concessions, Owen-Smith writes:

Although the Damara Representative Authority (under Chief Justus Garoeb) can rightly claim to have played a major role in the conservation of wildlife in Damaraland, as well as having created the present tourist concession areas, this institution no longer exists. Consequently, although some of the traditional leaders in the present Damara Royal House were previously Damara Executive Committee members, their claim to benefit from the concession areas in the future should be treated with caution. Namibia's new constitution no longer recognizes land-rights based on ethnicity and the local Herero traditional authorities - who have steadfastly supported conservation and kept livestock out of the concession areas - could make equal claims to benefit economically from them.^[859]

The 2002 black rhino census in north-west Namibia estimates the total population to be 136 for the west Kunene population^[860].

2003

July = Registration of Anabeb Conservancy, of around 500 members, predominantly Herero families formerly located in the Kaokoland ‘homeland’ (associated with Warmquelle) - namely Kasaona, Kangombe and Mbomboro, settled in Warmquelle^[861], and Uakazapi - plus Damara families formerly located in the Damaraland ‘homeland’ (in Khowarib), namely Uises, Taniseb, and Ganaseb^[862].

157,000ha; 2k residents 17 conservancy staff [why so many?], 1 office, 2 vehicles

Income earned from: hunting, Palmwag Concession, Ongongo tented camp, Khowareb campsite [and Lodge?]^[863].

MET Black Rhino Conservation Strategy for Namibia^[864].

July =  Registration of Sesfontein Conservancy.

259,100ha

2,500 residents

15 conservancy staff, 1 office, 1 vehicle

Income earned from: trophy hunting; Palmwag concession; [community campsites? Etc. – incgly marginalized/tourism revenues captured by more formal/wealthy operators..]^[865].

Omatendeka Conservancy is registered, comprising 1,619 km² with a population of 7000, of which 374 are registered conservancy members (MET/CSD, 2003). The conservancy is bordered by three other conservancies, Anabeb, Ozondundu and Ehirovipuka, and The Etendeka Tourism Concession to the west. The conservancy headquarters, along with a police station, is situated in Omuramba, which is the main settlement in the area. The nearest school and clinic is 7 km away from Omuramba. The majority of the inhabitants are Herero, with a few other ethnic groups. Most of the people in the area are livestock farmers and they prefer to farm with cattle and limited cropping.^[866]

Peter Ukongo (?) is elected Chairperson of Uibasen/Twyfelfontein Conservancy Committee, succeeding Elias Xoagub, his former employee at Aba-Huab campsite^[867].

A new gate to the north of Etosha National Park is opened – King Nehale Gate – complementing Andersson Gate (to Okaukeujo) in the South and Lindequist Gate (to Namutoni) in the east^[868].

The Polytechnic of Namibia incorporates teaching of CBNRM^[869].

MET Black Rhino Conservation Strategy for Namibia is established^[870].

2004

The World Bank begins funding of Integrated Community-Based Ecosystem Management Project (ICEMA), USD7.1million until 2011, to support activities within the CBNRM programme^[871].

Preparatory phase begins of the Strengthening the Protected Areas Network (SPAN), USD9million joint project between MET, UNDP, GEF, KfW and others^[872].

Country Pilot Partnership for Sustainable Land Management (GEF, UNDP and MET) supports ‘locally driven “ecosystem management” to be institutionalised at the national level in a partnership between MET, MAWRD, MLRR, MRLGH and NPC’^[873].

National Heritage Act 27 of 2004 ‘makes provision for archaeological assessment, implemented either in the form of an independent investigation or as part of multi-disciplinary environmental assessment reports’^[874]. The National Heritage Council of Namibia (NHCN) assumes management of the Twyfelfontein Prehistoric Reserve and begins collecting the revenue from tourists (i.e. removes this from Elias Xoagub, the farmer who was allocated this land in 1976)^[875].

The Heritage Act 27/2004 protects sites such as the world famous ‘White Lady’ rock art frieze in the Tsiseb Ravine, Dâures / Brandberg. Photo: Sian Sullivan 18 March 2014.

2005

The Traditional Authorities Act of 2005 clarifies the roles and responsibilities of traditional authorities^[876].

Complementing major contributions through LIFE / USAID programme for CBNRM (around 70%) CBNRM donors in this year included European Commission USD3million, USD3.2million German Development Bank, USD1.7million French Global Environment Facility and USD1.1 from Finland’s Foreign Affairs Ministry^[877]. Rate of return on CBNRM programme investments reported to be 5%^[878].

Grootberg Lodge (as five-year joint venture partnership with EcoLodgistix, developed as part of EU-funded Namibia Tourism Development Programme and including advice from a Deloitte Emerging Markets group consultant^[879]) and Hoada Campsite open in ≠Khoadi||hoas^[880]. Original Grootberg Lodge agreement = EcoLodgistix would receive 15% gross turn-over as management fee, and 15% would also go into conservancy account, with remainder for lodge maintenance and infrastructure development, but little clarity on who would pay for assets, causing tensions^[881].

A ’Parliamentary Committee visits conservancies in the north west and strongly endorses conservancies and tourism for their contributions to national development^[882].

Around this time a lengthy email correspondence regarding CBNRM takes place between Art Hoole and BTB Jones^[883].

2006

Draft Policy on Tourism and Wildlife Concessions on State Land by the MET,

presents the first uniform policy framework for concessions on state land, including tourism development and trophy hunting concessions. It recognises the opportunities therein for the economic empowerment of formerly disadvantaged Namibians, especially those residing in or adjacent to national parks. It outlines different types of concessions, general principles applying to them, and the process of establishing, awarding and managing concessions.^[884] 

By this year 50 conservancies have been established and 22 formal ‘joint venture’ agreements established between conservancies and private sector partners^[885]. Namibian  launches first Tourism Satellite Accounts, a report showing ‘current and future significance of tourism for the Namibian economy’^[886].

In October Round River Studies begins data compilation and information sharing stages for a Kunene Regional Ecological Analysis (KREA) intended to support a Kunene People’s Park Technical Committee established to guide a proposed ‘contractual park’ connecting Etosha and Skeleton Coast National Parks, yielding spatial information for the 3 concessions under the People’s Park proposal and the 10 surrounding conservancies (**)^[887].

In February the Namibian government grants ‘conditional rights over wildlife to an officially recognised CBNRM institution inside the [Bwabwata] Park’, i.e. the Kyaramacan Association, West Caprivi, [7] precipitating ‘unprecedented trophy agreements’^[888]. In March the MET grants Kyaramacan two ‘big game concessions’, Kwando and Buffalo, permitting hunting revenue of approximately USD 175k in that year plus over 30 tonnes of game meat, a similar amount of income going to the government controlled Game Products Trust Fund^[889]. Late this year, the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement announces ‘plans to re-settle one hundred small-scale Herero and Owambo farmers in the same area’ as the !Kung San-established N¹a Jaqna Conservancy^[890]. At the end of the year Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe sign an agreement to implement the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA)^[891].

2007

The Environmental Management Act 7 of 2007 makes provision for  EIAs and EMPs.

The WWF LIFE project comes to an end and IRDNC is evaluated^[892].

Black rhino, eland and black-faced impala re-introduced into ≠Khoadi||hôas by MET^[893].

The one room Museum at Namutoni Fort, east of Etosha Pan - which contains a model of the 1904 battle of Namutoni ‘with miniature figures representing Ovambo warriors trying to attack or escape’ German Schutztruppe station at the fort, ‘as well as old weapons and historical photos from the German period’ is closed, replaced by a different permanent exhibition at a different location^[894].  

Elias Xoagub is again elected Chairperson of Uibasen/Twyfelfontein Conservancy Committee to at least 2014 with Ukongo on the committee who, as the appointed TA representative for Uibasen/Twyfelfontein under the Communal Land Reform Act 2002 with powers to allocate and cancel customary land and grazing rights, cannot be removed via elections^[895]. He permits people to build in the area and controls over giving permission to people to live in the area who are not conservancy members, amassing considerable wealth through entrepreneurial activity at Uibasen, including from in-migrants who are non-conservancy members, and also has a private share in the rival nearby Aabadi Camp^[896]. Twyfelfontein rock art site is awarded UNESCO World Heritage Status^[897].

Several people are killed by elephant in Caprivi^[898]. Bwabwata National Park (BNP) is gazette from the former Caprivi Game Park [see 1999], including the entire area between the Okavango and Kwando Rivers and incorporating the previous Mahango National Park:

MET created two zone types within the bounds of the Park, each with defined levels of access and user rights. The core areas (Mahango, Buffalo and Kwando) are designated for strict nature conservation, meaning no human settlement or foraging activities are allowed therein. These areas comprise a core habitat for wildlife. The larger multiple-use area is designated for the existing human settlements, small-scale agriculture, veld-food collection, and community-based tourism. Trophy hunting activities can take place in both zones, but is strictly controlled by state managed concessions and quotas.^[899]

Namibia votes in favour of the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)^[900].

2008

Land and CBNRM institutional relationships around 2008. Source: Taylor 2012, p. 205, Fig. 7.

Round River Conservation Studies publishes its Kunene Regional Ecological Assessment (KREA)^[901] for the Kunene People’s Park Technical Committee, established to create a ‘contractual park’ aligning the interests of multiple actors in the Etosha-Kunene landscapes with the area’s ecological integrity. The report identifies that,

[t]he purposes of the proposed park address both conservation as well as socio-economical goals. The conservation objectives of the proposed park are to conserve this vast wilderness and its wildlife, while also serving to link the Skeleton Coast and Etosha National Park, thereby facilitating wildlife migrations and creating one of the largest conservation area complexes in the world.’

The KREA is ‘situated within a conservation planning conceptual framework’, including ‘stakeholder engagement and a collaboration strategy, to ensure the assessment results were linked to implementation activities’. Intended ‘[t]o provide an ecological basis to inform future planning’, the analysis comprised of ‘a suite of individual analytical components aimed at specific conservation objectives endorsed by the Kunene People’s Park Technical Committee’:

[t]his approach identified conservation priority areas across the region. The synthesis also integrated social values into the assessment to identify areas where conservation goals could be met with minimal conflict with existing competing traditional land use values, such as seasonal livestock grazing. This approach conducted through the use of a decision-support tool, enables users to assess trade-offs across the landscape to help reconcile ecological values with socio-political realities and implementation practicalities.

Although other regional assessments and plans have been developed for the Kunene, this is the first ecological assessment of its kind for the region that employs a systematic, scientific approach to identify priority areas for conservation actions. Utilizing the compiled database, each analytical component (focal species habitat, ecological land units, connectivity and [8] livestock grazing) identifies each components’ key driver variables and depicts their spatial values across the planning region. Thus, key areas were identified in a regional perspective across political boundaries.^[902] 

Thus,

[i]n 2006, the Ministry Environment and Tourism (MET) initiated a series of discussions with regional stakeholders through the Kunene People’s Park Technical Committee [KPPTC]. The purpose of these multi-stakeholder discussions was to complete a ‘Contractual Agreement’ to further the formal proclamation of the new park. It was also at this time that the MET under the Strengthening Protected Areas Network (SPAN) project invited Round River Conservation Studies, in partnership with Save the Rhino Trust, to conduct a Regional Ecological Assessment to contribute science-based products to inform discussions regarding park management and specifically to support the following endorsed KPPTC objectives:

Conservation objectives

1. Maintain biodiversity and natural beauty

2. Conserve rare and endangered species

3. Provide a link between the Etosha National Park and Skeleton Coast Park and with neighbouring conservancies

4. Protection of core wildlife habitat

5. Research to inform park management

6. Monitoring of key wildlife species, and habitat condition^[903].^[904]

MET awards Hobatere Tourism Concession to ≠Khoadi||hôas^[905].

The Namibian Chapter of the Game Rangers Association of Africa is established^[906].

Controlled Wildlife Products and Trade Act, Number 9 of 2008 implements the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, 1973.

2010

According to the Namibia Household Income & Expenditure Survey 2009/2010, 11.8% (244,769 of 2,066,389) speak ‘Nama/Damara’, the most speakers after Oshiwambo (48.3%), although perhaps an underestimate for Khoekhoegowab ‘as most Hai||om and ≠Aakhoe speakers presumably are included under the meaningless language category ‘Khoisan’’ (1.3%, 27,764 speakers)^[907].

19th August, Powerpoint entitled Palmwag Concession - An application by Anabeb, Sesfontein & Torra Conservancies: The “Big 3”.

Conservancy committee election meeting (held around every three years) held in Anabeb Conservancy breaks down in August, when one group associated with headman Kangombe and including Mbomboro, Uakazapi, Taniseband Ganaseb families refused to take part on the grounds that the elections was being rushed through in the name of efficiency by the competing and prominently SWAPO Kasaona alliance (including the Damara |Uises family), with support from MET and IRDNC facilitator-observers, prior to discussion of the previous year’s performance report^[908]. In the vacuum left by the absence of registered members, three Kasaona members are elected to fill the three available seats^[909]. Uakazapi and Taniseb families (associated with UDF), complain to the MET on grounds of unconstitutional proceedings and argue that the constitution had never been agreed by all local clan leaders, thus making any claims by the Kasaona void^[910]. Despite the complex and competing Herero and Damara alliances, Damara views tend to be that ‘only the Herero are benefitting [from the conservancy]. They are the ones who come to hunt; they receive the fat meat …’^[911].

The subtext here is that SWAPO is the dominant political party and is seen as a modernising force, whereas UDF has been associated particularly with Damara support and is seen as relatively conservative in terms of allegiance to traditional authorities and past leadership structures^[912]. There is an additional subtext here which is that since the Damara Regional Authority was dismantled following independence, Damara decision-making powers in the region, and especially their powers to prevent access to land and resources by incoming pastoralists of different ethnic and language groups, have been progressively undermined, engendering significant frustration that finds expression in conservancy negotiations^[913].

The MET frames Bwabata National Park as a “People’s Park”, with both large wildlife and large human populations^[914]:  

MET created two types of zones inside the Park with different levels of access and user rights. The core areas are designated for nature conservation: no human settlement or foraging activities are allowed therein. These areas are rich in natural resources and present a core habitat for wildlife. The larger multiple-use area is designated for human settlements and small-scale agriculture, veld-food collection, and community-based tourism. Trophy hunting activities can take place in both zones, but are strictly controlled by concessions and quotas and remain inaccessible to local communities. MET emphasises an integrated management approach, meaning that the residents of the Park are supposedly actively involved in park management. To meet that end, the Ministry works closely with the official residents' organisation for the Park, namely the Kyaramacan Association ('KA').^[915]

2011

20th July, SIGNED: Head Concession Agreement for the Palmwag Concession, Kunene Region, between the Government of Namibia acting through the MET, represented by Minister Hon Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah (the Concessor) and Sesfontein Conservancy, represented by Chairperson Benny Ganuseb, Anabeb Conservancy represented by Chairperson Kapoi Kasaona [manager of Palmwag Lodge, Oct2014], and Torra Conservancy represented by Chairperson Benny Roman (the Concessionaire).

Palmwag Concession Area = approx.. 582,622ha, p46.

5th September, Operator’s Proposal (WS) submitted, amended 17th Jan 2012, plus correspondence between Parties 4th Feb 2012, 6th Feb 2012 and 10th Feb 2012^[916] 

2012

IRDNC retrenches 12 staff members due to scaling back of donor funds^[917].

9th August, SIGNED: Concession Operator Contract for the Palmwag Concession, between Anabeb Conservancy, represented by Chairperson Kapoi Kasaona [manager of Palmwag Lodge, Oct2014], Sesfontein Conservancy, represented by Chairperson Usiel |Nuab [interviewed Oct2014], Torra Conservancy, represented by Chairperson Bennie Roman (= the Concessionaire, who has received the Concession Rights from the MET – the Concessor – to manage the Concession Rights and share benefits from tourism in the Concession Area, p4)), and Wilderness Safaris Namibia (Pty) Ltd, regn no. 87/085), represented by CEO Mike Wassung (= the Operator)

15th October Operator’s Proposal (Antigua Investments/Palmwag Lodge) submitted, including clarification provided in 23rd Oct 2012, additional information supplied on 16th December 2012, plus minutes of correspondence between parties dated 26th Oct 2012^[918].

4th December, SIGNED: Trust certificate - The Big Three Conservancies Development Trust (stamped by the Deputy Master of the High Court on 25th February 2013)

≠Khoadi||hoas signs revised hotel management agreement (HMA) with Journeys Namibia (two of the original partners of EcoLodgistix)^[919] for Grootberg Lodge Pty Ltd for a period of 9 years and 11 months with option to renew^[920], with explanations of contract by WWF wherein conservancy is 100% shareholder with full ownership of assets and operations and HMA outsourcing hotel management, marketing and reservations to operator who earns a set monthly fee and performance bonus if agreed targets are exceeded^[921]. The conservancy is also effectively the landlord providing the operator with PTO the area for a monthly fee (rent) of N$30k plus 1% annual increase.

2013

New National Policy on Community Based Natural Resources Management is published by the MET and emphasises NGOs as partners in Section 5 on ‘institutional framework’, i.e. ‘Non-governmental organisations are recognised by this policy as key partners in supporting CBNRM processes, especially in helping to create or strengthen community based structures and building management capacities and linking communities to funding sources. The government will continue to collaborate with NGOs to deliver services to communities and where appropriate, and support the formation of local NGOs to outsource certain functions to them’.^[922]

Rate of return on CBNRM programme investments reported to be 23%, ‘based on an economic net value of N$669[**?]’^[923].  

22nd April, SIGNED: Concession Operator Contract for the Palmwag Lodge and Campsite between Anabeb Conservancy, represented by Chairperson Kapoi B. Kasaona [manager of Palmwag Lodge, Oct2014], Sesfontein Conservancy, represented by Chairperson Usiel |Nuab [interviewed Oct2014], Torra Conservancy, represented by Chairperson Bennie Roman (= the Concessionaire, who has received the Concession Rights from the MET – the Concessor – to manage the Concession Rights and share benefits from tourism in the Concession Area, p4)), and Antigua Island Investments (Pty) Ltd, trading as Palmwag Lodge, regn no. 20120924), (= the Operator)

Board of Directors for Grootberg Lodge established^[924] consisting of three Conservancy Management Committee members (chairman, vice-chair and treasurer), two operator representatives, two independent advisors (newly appointed as advised by WWF), a lawyer and a Namibia tourism expert^[925]].

2014

MET guidelines are published clarifying that TAs ‘play an important role in land allocation and development planning’, thus ‘conservancies have to be endorsed by the local TAs and the conservancy must share the financial benefits with the TAs’^[926].

Early in the year the son of Joshua Kangombe, current chairperson of Anabeb Conservancy, visits !Naodais when Suro was not there to tell Emma Ganuses she must move. Emma said - ‘I have been here since before the concession - you cannot tell me to move!’^[927]

A tender is put out by ≠Khoadi||hoas for a private-sector partner for a new Hobatere Concession joint-venture^[928].

2015

The UN Sustainable Development Goals 2015-30 are negotiated and published, and include SDG15 which aims to ‘ensure the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems’ (SDG15.1), in part through protecting globally agreed ‘key biodiversity areas (KBAs)’ (www.keybiodiversityareas.org), including Etosha National Park and Hobatere in Namibia’s Kunene Region.  

Sesfontein constituency boundaries are moved. The constituency now includes Purros and Otjidawarongo (Orupembe side) which used to be in Opuwo constituency. This shifts the balance of power from UDF [Nama-Dama] under Councillor Hendrik to SWAPO, and sure enough in November it is SWAPO that wins. Anker, Erwee, Terrace Bay are in Sesfontein constituency. Bergsig is in Khorixas. Otjikowares is with Sesfontein.

The Big 3 Trust conservancies are split between Sesfontein and Khorixas constituencies.

2016

A spokesperson for Chancellor Merkel’s government states that ‘Germany is to recognise as genocide the massacre of 110,000 of the Herero and Nama people of Namibia by German troops between 1904 and 1908 in a landmark admission of historical guilt’^[929].

Conservancy Safaris Namibia (CSN) pays just over N$150,000 to 201 Himba households in the company’s five owner conservancies (from north to south, Marienfluss, Orupembe, Sanitatas, Okondjombo, Puros), ‘over and above the half-a-million Namibian dollars in camp-site fees, daily allowances, salaries, bed-night fees, etc. that had been paid directly to the conservancies during the year’^[930].

25 September – Khorixas restcamp restaurant burns down after a chip pan catches fire^[931].

In December, and with no local consultation, the Namibian government deploys the Namibian Defence Force inside BNP in response to increases in wildlife poaching, advising local villagers not to move more than 3kms from their villages^[932]. In this year the Kyaramacan Association receives NAD 3.8million, its sole source of income^[933].

2017

Kunene region experiences a number of human-lion incidents:
- March: concerning poor compensation for farmers in Torra experiencing H-W conflict,

‘[t]his was one of the reasons why the concession created a trust fund to top up government's compensatory payments. But according to [Tommy] Adams, government needs to seriously consider increasing livestock compensation amounts.’^[934]

- October: lions kill livestock in Torra^[935] 

- November: compensation too low^[936], and lions translocated^[937]. The conservationist and IRDNC co-founder Garth Owen-Smith writes in The Namibian that there are too many lions in Kunene, plus social media misunderstandings propagated by for example ‘Facebook conservationists’,

‘has caused many local farmers to rethink whether conserving wildlife is a benefit or liability to their livelihoods’

He also makes the following points:

‘In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a similar drought situation prevailed. But then, professional hunter Volker Grellman, senior nature conservator, the late Chris Eyre, and staff of the Namibia Wildlife Trust (where I worked at the time) assisted in reducing the lion population.’

‘In a recent survey, Anabeb Conservancy farmers reported that over 80% of their cattle and 50% of their small stock died in the drought which ended this year. Since then, 71 cattle and 130 small stock have been killed by lions (with many more by other predators).

‘In spite of most of them having less than 10 cattle left, and some none at all, 34 out of 40 Anabeb farmers still said it was important to have lions in their conservancies for tourists and their children to see, but that in livestock areas, the people's livelihoods must come first.’

‘There is also the threat to human lives. At the end of the drought in 1982, an emaciated lion went into a hut at Sesfontein, and killed and ate a small child. Twice this year, rhino monitors have been attacked by lions. In Torra Conservancy, two male lions shot on the carcass of a cow they had killed were found to be extremely thin.’^[938]

- Lions kill another 171 head of livestock in Torra^[939], and more on relocation of lions^[940].

The Etosha Hai||om, represented by the Legal Assistance Centre, take an ancestral land claim to Namibia’s High Court, with eight members of the Hai||om community asking to be allowed to pursue a lawsuit as representatives of their community against the Namibian government and other parties with interests in Etosha National Park and the Mangetti West area north of Tsumeb^[941]. Their requests are:

• ‘to declare that the Hai||om are entitled to the ownership of Etosha, comprising an area of 23 150 square kilometres, and of an area of 107 000 hectares at Mangetti West, or that they should be compensated for the loss of their ancestral land by being allocated other land, or being given N$3,9 billion in financial compensation’;
• ‘to declare that the Hai||om community has rights to the natural resources of Etosha, should be financially compensated for their loss of access to Etosha, should be paid royalties in respect of the future use of the national park, and is entitled to have access to Etosha’;
• ‘to ask the court to declare that Namibia’s government and Namibia Wildlife Resorts, which operates tourism facilities in Etosha, have breached their legal obligations to redress the alleged racially discriminatory dispossession of the Hai||om people's ancestral lands, the eviction of the Hai||om community from their ancestral land and in particular from Etosha National Park, and the marginalisation of the Hai||om and continuing alleged discrimination against them’;
• ‘to ask the court in future proceedings to order the government to allocate an area of 23 000 square kilometres, or of a size determined by the court, in lieu of their ancestral land to the Hai||om’.^[942]

From early in the year multiple shootings occur inside Bwabata NP, ‘involving locals who had left their villages to gather wild plants’^[943]. In June in Bwabata NP, all permits for harvesting Devil’s Claw (Harpagophytum procumbens) are withdrawn and CGGs and Community Resource Monitors are ordered to stay in their villages, causing loss of income^[944].

GEF funding is granted to Namibia for conservation^[945].

The South African San Institute (SASI) publishes the San Code of Research Ethics (SCRE)^[946].

2018

The Wildlife and Protected Areas Management Bill is announced. It will repeal the Nature Conservation Ordinance, No. 4 of 1975 ‘that has been on the Statute Book for far too long and has been amended multiple times, though still, operational and implementable, but not readily available in the law books since there is no reprint of those books to make all the old laws readily available’. The Bill will also repeal the Controlled Wildlife Products and Trade Act, Number 9 of 2008 that implemented the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, 1973, which almost provides for the same matters as provided in the Nature Conservation Ordinance. The intention is to ‘do away with potential conflict, repetition and overlaps between the two laws, and to streamline the implementation process’, and ‘to bring wildlife and protected areas management on par with new developments in wildlife and land management in order to contribute to sustainable development, poverty reduction and eradication’ (Deputy Minister of Environment and Tourism, Bernadette Jagger). The Bill is expected to be enacted in 2019.^[947]

The distribution of National Parks is as follows:

Source: scanned from Bridgeford 2018, p. 11.

Settlements and entrance gates for Etosha National Park are as follows:

Source: scanned from Bridgeford 2018, p. 19.

Proposals for a Kunene People’s Park (KPP) are reignited with international support by conservation donors and the British royal family^[948], although it is unclear how exactly plans for a KPP will unfold over the next few years, or how they will represent and integrate a variety of institutions which evolved in different historical contexts (e.g. commercial tourism concessions, locally-run conservancies and both Etosha and Skeleton Coast National Parks). In September a meeting takes place at the new Obias Lodge including Prince William (UK) Margie Jacobsohn, Garth Owen-Smith, John Kasaona (IRDNC), Simson !Uri≠khob (SRT).

The Etosha Hai||om’s application for redress [see 2017] is opposed by the government and the Hai||om Traditional Authority, although ‘[a]lmost half of the community – 2 476 people [of around 6,200 Hai||om] – have registered their support for the legal action being taken by [Jan] Tsumib and his co-applicants’^[949].

A new map for the distribution of Khoekhoegowab-speakers is published by linguist Wilfred Haacke:

Source: Haacke 2018, Fig. 9.5, p. 143.

By this year ‘community-based conservation’ contributes ‘around N$1 billion annually to Namibia’s net annual income’^[950].

Kyaramacan Association (KA), the Community-Based Organization (CBO) representing all the residents (mostly Khwe) in BNP employs 40 Khwe ecological monitors, including 25 CGGs and 15 Community Resource Monitors, ‘who foot-patrol across the National Park on a daily basis’^[951].

The government establishes an Ancestral Land Commission**.

2019

“The IREMA project was officially launched on 14 June 2019 by Minister of Environment and Tourism at Warmquelle in Kunene Region to assist smallholder farmers under conditions of climate change in Fransfontein, Sesfontein, and Warmquelle areas in Kunene region. The project is aimed to address measures to mitigate climate change through crop productions for food security, improve livelihood of the people, fodder production and building resilience of the communities to adapt to the negative impact of … climate drought.
“Speaking at the Inception workshop, Executive Director of the Ministry of Agriculture Water and forestry, Percy Misika said that the government efforts in coming up with IREMA Kunene project shows that the government is serious with building the resilience to climate change among farmers in Namibia. He further said that the project is expected to transform the livelihood of the people of the Kunene Region with Fransfontein, Sesfontein, and Warmquelle as the main targeted areas of implementation.
“The project further aims at implementing climate proofed mechanism that will support at least a combined; 50 hectares of drip irrigation systems in the Region, rehabilitation of at least 80 000 hectares of rangeland through supporting appropriate ecosystem management plans at local levels that will improve grazing areas added Misika.
“Misika noted that more than 40 000 direct and indirect beneficiaries are expected to benefit from the project, which is 57 percent of the total population of Kunene region and 50 percent of which will be women.
“The IREMA National Project manager, Mirjam Ndahafa Kaholongo, added that the Steering committee will meet with the regional Councillors and traditional authorities later this month to identify the 660 farmers per constituency to receive seeds and other 330 who will be provided with drip irrigation systems.
“A total amount of N Dollar 1.3 billion was injected into the project by the Global Climate Fund through the Environment Investment Fund and all the money is expected to be spend before 03 March 2019 [2020?].”^[952]