Burying E.S.: Educated elites, subjectivity and distinction in Rundu, Namibia

Journal of Southern African Studies

Volumn 33, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 469-483

  Fumanti, Mattia ^a  

^a KEELE UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

APARTHEID; BIOGRAPHY; EDUCATION;

AFRICA; NAMIBIA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA;

EID: 34548191771     PISSN: 03057070     EISSN: 14653893     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03057070701475252     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. See M. Fumanti, 'Il Paradosso della Rivoluzione Incompiuta: Il Dominio Economico del Sud Africa ed il Processo di Riaffermazione di una Elite Bianca in una Citta' della Namibia Settentrionale', Afriche e Orienti, 8, 3-4 (2006), pp. 136-51.
2. For a comparative analysis of elites and funerals in postcolonial Africa see D. Cohen and E.S. Athieno Odhiambo, Burying SM: The Politics of Knowledge and the Sociology of Power (Oxford, James Currey, 1992).
3. C. Tapscott, 'Class Formation and Civil Society in Namibia', in I. Diener and O. Graefe (eds), Contemporary Namibia: The First Landmarks of a Post-Apartheid Society (Windhoek, Gamsberg Macmillan, 2001), pp. 307-25.
4. For Chris Tapscott's early analysis see his 'National Reconciliation, Social Equity and Class Formation in Independent Namibia', Journal of Southern African Studies (hereafter JSAS), Special Issue on Namibia: Africa's Youngest Nation, 19, 1 (March 1993), pp. 29-39
5. and 'War, Peace and Social Classes', in C. Leys and J. Saul (eds), Namibia's Liberation Struggle: The Two-Edged Sword (Athens, OH and London, Ohio University Press and James Currey, 1995), pp. 153-70.
6. A. Du Pisani, 'State and Society under South African Rule', in C. Keulder (ed.), State, Society and Democracy: A Reader in Namibian Politics (Windhoek, Gamsberg Macmillan, 2000), pp. 49-76
7. H. Melber, 'Limits to Liberation. An Introduction to Namibia's Postcolonial Political Culture', in H. Melber, (ed.), Re-Examining Liberation in Namibia: Political Culture Since Independence (Uppsala, Nordic African Institute, 2003), pp. 9-24
8. C. Tapscott, 'Class Formation', pp. 307-325.
9. For an alternative approach see J. Friedman, 'Making Politics, Making History: Chiefship and the Post-Apartheid State in Namibia', JSAS, 31, 1 (March 2005), pp. 23-51.
10. Kavango's participation in the SWAPO political structure in exile was very limited as the movement was largely dominated by the Owambo majority of Sam Nujoma.
11. M. Fumanti, 'Nation-Building and the Battle for Consciousness: State Ceremonialism and Contested Discourses on Education in Post-apartheid Namibia', Social Analysis, 50, 3 (Winter 2006), pp. 84-108.
12. See M. Fumanti, 'Youth, Elites and Distinction in a Northern Namibian Town' (PhD Thesis, University of Manchester, 2003).
13. V. Pareto, 'Un Applicazione di Teorie Sociologiche', Revista Italiana di Sociologia (1901), pp. 402-456
14. R. Simon, Gramsci's Political Thought: An Introduction (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1991).
15. I deliberately use the Italian term to capture its special resonance.
16. A. Gramsci, 'Selections from Prison Notebooks', cited in R. Simon, Gramsci's Political Thought, p. 97.
17. Ibid., p. 97.
18. Ibid., p. 98.
19. Pareto, 'Un applicazione di teorie sociologiche'.
20. Fumanti, 'Nation-Building and the Battle for Consciousness'.
21. Interview with F. 001, 30 January 2000.
22. National Archive of South Africa, hereafter (NASA) Microfilm 8, File KGO: Volumes 22-25 (K) N1/27/3/(2). In a letter to the General Native Commissioner in Oshakati, Owamboland, Dr Romanus Kampungu draws attention to the prominent role in the community of a youthful educated elite. Composed primarily of school teachers, these young men and women were, according to Kampungu, a group to be co-opted into any future political structure. Their political sympathy for SWAPO and their education were becoming the cause of intergenerational friction and possible political unrest: 'Such a division [between old people and young people], is forming and if the new developments exclude them, this would only accelerate its stability and cause political anarchy in which the young people would organise themselves into a group to fight against the new developments sponsored by the old people'.
23. P. Bourdieu, The State Nobility (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1998), p. 102.
24. P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (New York and London, Routledge, 2006).
25. Interview with Mur 001, 28 March 2001.
26. Fumanti, 'Youth, Elites and Distinction in a Northern Namibia Town'.
27. For the use of photography and the making of youthful subjectivities in Africa see: H. Behrend, "'I am like a movie star in my street": Photographic Self-Creation in Postcolonial Kenya', in R. Werbner (ed.), Postcolonial Subjectivities in Africa (London, Zed Books, 2002), pp. 44-62
28. M. Lamunière, You Look Beautiful Like That: The Portrait Photographs of Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibé (Cambridge, NH, Yale University Press, 2001).
29. In a series of letters directed to the Bantu Affairs Commissioner, Dr Romanus Kampungu stressed the dangers posed by the politicised student population in Rundu to the successful implementation of the process of selfgovernment. Urging the government to persuade and co-opt them into the new political structure, he claimed that this would be a successful strategy since it was the one that he himself had adopted to change their minds: 'When I first came to Rundu, the students were full of anti-government ideas under the influence of Swapo and communistic propaganda'. See National Archives of Namibia (hereafter NAN), N 13/2/7/ 4. See for a comparative study of generational tensions in Owamboland, M. McKittrick, To Dwell Secure: Generation, Christianity and Colonialism in Owamboland (Portsmouth, NH, Oxford, Heinemann, James Currey, 2002).
30. I know of eight students who went to Fort Hare who now occupy high positions in government, both in Namibia and abroad. Among them are the Rundu Regional Councillor, the Minister of Youth, the Deputy Minister of Information, the Charge d'Affaires at the Namibian Embassy in Belgium, the Regional Director of Education for the Kavango region, the Deputy Regional Governor of the Kavango region, the Cultural Attaché at the Namibian Embassy in Moscow and the late Director of the Rundu College of Education.
31. See, for an account of the role of the Church in Namibia's liberation struggle, P. Katjavivi, Church and Liberation in Namibia (London, Pluto Press, 1989)
32. P. Steenkamp, 'The Churches', in Leys and Saul, Namibia's Liberation Struggle, pp. 94-114.
33. According to the annual report of the Rundu Native Commissioner the total population in Kavango in 1974 numbered 60,010. See NASA KGO 2/3/3 N 1/15/6.
34. The Namibian school system in 2007 is equivalent to the South African one.
35. Interview with Kanj 009, 29 May 2000.
36. In Botswana the limits on commerce were legal - see R. Werbner, 'Cosmopolitan Ethnicity, Entrepreneurship and the Nation: Minority Elites in Botswana', JSAS, 28, 4 (December 2002), pp. 731-55.
37. In a meeting of the Kavango Legislative Council, Mr Rudolph Ngondo, the Minister of Agriculture, openly condemned the malfunctioning of the institution and denounced the practices of its white officials: 'Those sitting in the offices, those are the people who suck out the blood of the poor'. (See National Library of South Africa, Minutes of the Meeting of the Kavango Legislative Council, in 'Debates of the Fifth Session of the First Legislative Council of the Kavango', 14 May 1977, p. 181.) This comment was confirmed by Mr Ngondo in the course of an interview. RN interview 13 May, 2001.
38. I. Brinkman, 'Violence, Exile and Ethnicity: Nyemba Refugees in Kaisosi and Kehemu (Rundu, Namibia)', JSAS, 25, 3 (September 1999), pp. 417-39.
39. R. Archer, 'An Exceptional Case: Politics and Sport in South Africa's Townships', in W. Baker and J. Mangan, 'Sport in Africa: Essays in Social History' (New York, London, Holmes and Meier, 1987), pp. 229-49
40. P. Martin, Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995).
41. A.G. Cobley, The Rules of the Game: Struggles in Black Recreation and Social Welfare Policy in South Africa (Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1992)
42. T. Couzens, 'An Introduction to the History of Football in South Africa', in B. Bozzoli (ed.), Town and Countryside in the Transvaal: Capitalist Penetration and Popular Response (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1983)
43. H. Powdermaker, Copper town: Changing Africa, the Human Situation on the Rhodesian Copperbelt (New York, Harper, 1962).
44. L. Fair, "'Kickin" it: Leisure, Politics and Football in Colonial Zanzibar, 1900s-1950s', Africa, 67, 2 (1997), pp. 224-47.
45. Interview with S. 002, 30 March 2006.
46. Ibid.
47. Interview with Mur 001, 28 March 2001.
48. Interview with S. 002, 30 March 2006.
49. The Mururani Gate, located approximately 130 km South of Rundu on what is known as the Red Line, was set up in colonial time as a veterinary check control post to divide the southern regions from the Kavango and Caprivi regions and prevent the spread of livestock diseases. Still existing today, it became an instrument to limit population movement inside the country.
50. Interview with Mur 001, 28 March 2001.
51. Ibid.
52. L. Auala, 'Open Letter to the Prime Minister of South Africa', in B. Wood (ed.), Namibia 1884-1984: Readings on Namibia's History and Society (London, Namibia Support Committee, 1988).
53. Katjiavivi, 'Church and Liberation'; Steenkamp, 'The Churches'.
54. Interview with K 003, 6 March 2000.
55. See also, S. Maseko, 'The Namibian Student Movement. Its Role and Effects', in Saul and Leys, Namibia's Liberation Struggle, pp. 115-32.
56. Interview with F 003, 5 February 2006.
57. Braais are the equivalent of barbecues.
58. Interview with Mur 001, 28 March 2001.
59. Interview with Mur 002, 29 March 2001.
60. 'Rundu Residents and Students Held', The Namibian, 24 June 1988
61. 'School Problems in Kavango', The Namibian, 22 July 1988.
62. 'Rundu residents allege assaults after demonstration', The Namibian 20 November 1987
63. 'Riots in Rundu', The Namibian, 17 June 1988
64. 'Swapo Wins the Day. Attempts to Disrupt Rundu Rally Fails Dismally', The Namibian, 7 October 1988
65. 'Death in Rundu. Residents up in Arms at Shooting of Swapo Supporter', The Namibian, 6 December 1989.
66. 'Try Us, Warn Students. Accuse Govt of Colonial Tactics', The Namibian, 16 March 2000
67. 'Govt Ready to Open College if Students Drop Threats', The Namibian 17 March 2000
68. 'Reopen Rundu College. Demand Student Bodies', New Era, 17-19 March 2000.
69. 'Rundu College to Re-Open', New Era, 2 April 2000
70. 'Rundu Rector Transferred', The Namibian, 4 July 2000.
71. Here I follow a recent trend in ethnographic writings known as 'the anthropology of the senses'. For a similar use of evocative style in ethnographic writings, see: P. Stoller, Embodying Colonial Memories: Spirit Possession, Power and the Hauka in West Africa (Routledge, London, 1995)
72. P. Stoller, Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York City (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2005).
73. N. Machiavelli, The Prince (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988).
74. Ru-Kwangali is the language spoken by the Va-Kwangali. It is the most spoken language in the region.
75. For a discussion of Rundu's white settler elite, see Fumanti, 'Nation-Building and the Battle for Consciousness', and Fumanti, 'Youth, Elites and Distinction'.
76. Fumanti, 'Youth, Elites and Distinction'.
77. As part of an emergent strand of research, this article intends to carry forward the recent shifts towards subjectivity and agency in elite studies. For a comparative analysis, see C. Lentz, 'Home, Death and Leadership: Discourses of an Educated Elite from North-Western Ghana', Social Anthropology, 2, 2 (June 1994), pp. 149-69
78. R. Werbner, Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana: The Public Anthropology of Kalanga Elites (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2004)
79. M.O. West, The Rise of an African Middle Class: Colonial Zimbabwe, 1898-1965 (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2002).
80. For comparison to the civic formality in an elite funeral in Botswana, see R. Werbner, 'Responding to Cosmopolitanism: Patriots, Ethnics and the Public Good in Botswana', paper presented to the ASA conference, Anthropology and Cosmopolitanism, Keele University, April 2006.
81. J. and J. Comaroff, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination (Boulder, CO and Oxford, Westview Press, 1992), p. 26.
82. Gramsci, in Simon, Gramsci's Political Thoughts.
83. Pareto, 'Un Applicazione'.
84. Fumanti, 'Youth, Elites and Distinction', p. 171.