Browsing by Author "Shiweda, Napandulwe"

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    Defining landscape: Resolving contradictions at postcolonial Omhedi, the Oukwanyama royal palace, Namibia
    (David Publishing Company, 2017) Shiweda, Napandulwe
    The history of Omhedi in north-central Namibia is not simply about the place but is a site that internalizes conflictual and contradictory social forces which are inscribed in place. While Omhedi was a contested site of conflict during the war of liberation and served as a stage for ethnographic tours and photography, it has in the post-colonial period come to represent a segment of important local power as it is currently the seat of the new Oukwanyama kingship. The central aim of this paper is to explain the transformation of Omhedi as a site of “spectacles” of culture during the colonial period and as the seat of Oukwanyama monarchy in post-colonial Namibia. It centrally asks how the colonial politics of the time influenced the way Omhedi was organized and accessed and the ways in which people attach meaning to and organize a sense of space and place in the postcolonial era. This paper is significant as it explores how political legitimacy can be reactivated at such a contradictory site of “traditional” power like Omhedi and what meanings these hold in terms of access in postcolonial Namibia. I conclude by raising issues of the past with the restoration of the Oukwanyama monarchy and its installation at Omhedi after independence, posing key questions about shifts in political legitimacy in both the colony and the post-colony. My analysis utilizes theories on the important use of landscape as a physical “space” for living, but also as a “place” with its meanings and contributions to societal identity. Consequently, the place identity is a particular element contributing to a sense of place. I argue that there exists a sense of nostalgia that many Ovakwanyama people have for a pre-colonial past, and the Omhedi landscape serves that purpose. In analyzing these sentiments against the construction of Omhedi as a space and place, this highlights a sense of identity and belonging that many Ovakwanyama people have towards Omhedi in default of any site with deeper legitimation or authenticity.
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    Native recruiters’ activities along the Kavango river boundary in north-east Namibia, 1925-1943
    (2018) Likuwa, Kletus M.; Shiweda, Napandulwe
    The article examines the activities of native recruiters along the Kavango River boundary. Native recruiters (NRs) were local people appointed by an Assistant Native Commissioner (ANC) of Rundu on behalf of the Northern Labour Organization (NLO) to recruit contract labourers from the Kavango area and Angola for farms and mines in Namibia. The article looks specifically at their collaboration with individuals and institutions in the recruiting process. It further highlights NRs difficulties of establishing networks in distant villages, the unpredictable population movements and settlement patterns across the Kavango River, conditions of wealth and food selfreliance of local communities and the Bushmen attacks as impediments to their recruiting activities.
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    The Owambo campaign memorial in context: Who is being commemorated
    (Journal of Namibian Studies, 2020) Shiweda, Napandulwe
    This paper focuses on the Owambo Campaign Memorial in Windhoek which was erected to commemorate the British South Africa troops who died during the campaign against King Mandume at Oihole on the 6th of February 1917. It explores the origin of the Owambo Campaign memorial project and interprets the memorial’s significance to Owambo people. Upon its erection in 1919, the monument was appropriated as a memorial to King Mandume because many Owambo people, particularly the Kwanyama, believed, and still believe, that the king was decapitated and that his head was later taken to Windhoek where it was buried under the monument. This paper examines the significance of the monument’s location, the events surrounding its unveiling, and the subsequent activities amid the political turbulence in the capital city. Windhoek served as an intersection point between the north, the south and the coast, with labour coming from the north to mines, harbours and farms in the south. Thus, during colonial rule many Owambo came to Windhoek as migrant labourers where they lived in compounds. The end of colonial rule, however, created a space in the city’s symbolic landscape for a new layer of postcolonial narratives to overwrite the inscribed colonial identities, memories and meanings. This paper argues that the Owambo Campaign Memorial is an important site for understanding the change of meaning process attached to monuments dedicated to colonial heroes.