“Beggars on our own land …” Tsumib v Government of the Republic of Namibia and its Implications for Ancestral Land Claims in Namibia

“Beggars on our own land …” Tsumib v Government of the Republic of Namibia and its Implications for Ancestral Land Claims in Namibia
Author: Willem Odendaal
Publisher: BASLER AFRIKA BIBLIOGRAPHIEN
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2024-04-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3906927601

In 1954, the Hai||om people were evicted from Etosha by the South African-controlled South West African Administration. In 2015, the Hai||om filed the case of Tsumib v Government of the Republic of Namibia in the High Court of Namibia. “Beggars on our own land …” unravels the historical and contemporary socio-legal complexities that led to the Tsumib case. At the core of the case lies the legal question, how can the Hai||om people approach the Namibian Courts in order to claim compensation for the loss of their ancestral lands?Odendaal goes into detail how the Tsumib case materialised under the post-independence Namibian constitutional discourse. He assesses the Namibian land reform programme and its oversight in dealing with historical land dispossessions. He inspects Hai||om “identity” and how it was used to strengthen their case. He concludes with an examination of Namibia’s outdated and restrictive legal framework, which ultimately denied the Hai||om people their constitutional right to be heard in the Namibian Court. While the future of ancestral land claims in Namibia depends on the political will of the Namibian government, Odendaal argues that the Namibian courts have a duty to comply with the rights giving nature of the Namibian Constitution that lays the foundation for the Hai||om people’s ancestral claims.

Thinking Blue / Writing Red

Thinking Blue / Writing Red
Author: Stephen Tumino
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2024-08-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1800648804

Thinking Blue/Writing Red interrogates contemporary culture across a range of texts, from the pandemic (‘Covid’ and ‘Trump Speak’) to high theory (Melville's narratives) and popular culture (Beyoncé's ‘Formation’ and Super Bowl performance, Twin Peaks , metamodern ‘cli-fi’ films). Inspired by Derrida’s idea of the secret, Tumino examines the significance of social movements (Black Lives Matter, Occupy, alter-globalization) and naïve art (Darger, Ryden) to argue that these texts speak of the secrets that capitalism cannot speak. Contending that the cultural surfaces narrate only the ‘nonsecret,’ that to see the social logic of the culture one must dig into what Bruno Latour questions as the ‘deep dark below,’ Thinking Blue/Writing Red reads these texts to tease out the underlying narratives of the culture of capital. This book will be of interest to students in several disciplines, including philosophy, literary and cultural studies, film studies, women's studies, critical race studies, history, LGBTQ+ studies and environmental studies.

“Beggars on our own land ...”

“Beggars on our own land ...”
Author: Willem Odendaal
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2024-03-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 390692761X

In 1954, the Haillom people were evicted from Etosha by the South African-con-trolled South West African Administration. In 2015, the Haillom filed the case of Tsumib v Government of the Republic of Namibia in the High Court of Namibia. "Beggars on our own land ..." unravels the historical and contemporary socio-legal complexities that led to the Tsumib case. At the core of the case lies the legal question, how can the Haillom people approach the Namibian Courts in order to claim compensation for the loss of their ancestral lands? Odendaal goes into detail how the Tsumib case materialised under the post-inde-pendence Namibian constitutional discourse. He assesses the Namibian land re form programme and its oversight in dealing with historical land dispossessions. He inspects Haillom "identity" and how it was used to strengthen their case. He concludes with an examination of Namibia's outdated and restrictive legal frame-work, which ultimately denied the Haillom people their constitutional right to be heard in the Namibian Court. While the future of ancestral land claims in Namibia depends on the political will of the Namibian government, Odendaal argues that the Namibian courts have a duty to comply with the rights giving nature of the Namibian Constitution that lays the foundation for the Haillom people's ancestral claims.

Minorities in Independent Namibia

Minorities in Independent Namibia
Author: James Suzman
Publisher: Minority Rights Group
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2002-12-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1897693893

Namibia is one of the youngest African states, having gained its independence in 1990 from South Africa. Since then, the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO)-led government has attempted to heal the divisions of a 25-year liberation war, overcome inequalities, and govern to meet the needs of all of Namibia’s peoples. Despite its small population of just over 1.8 million, Namibia is home to at least 11 distinct language groups, comprised of numerous self-identifying communities. Roughly half the population are Owambo-speakers, who are closely linked to SWAPO. Herein lie some of the difficulties that are covered in this report. Minorities in Independent Namibia by James Suzman considers the extent to which SWAPO’s attempts at nation-building have favoured some communities over others. In a balanced study, the author documents the constitutional and legal safeguards for minorities in Namibia and discusses the government’s human rights record. The report covers many of Namibia’s ethnic minority communities and topical concerns, including the crackdown on secessionists in Caprivi, the potential impact on the Himba of a proposed dam on the Kunene River, the extreme marginality of the San, the role of traditional authorities and leaders, and women’s equality.

Sites of Contestation

Sites of Contestation
Author: Julia Rensing
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2021-05-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 3906927326

This book is a collection of essays written by emerging scholars at the University of Basel on the basis of their subjective encounters with a specific archival collection housed in the Basler Afrika Bibliographien in Basel. The Ernst and Ruth Dammann collection consists of around 8100 images, 750 audio recordings and numerous manuscripts, diaries and notes. The German couple conducted research on Namibian oral literatures and languages as they were spoken and performed across the country in the early 1950s. Based on in-depth engagement with the textual, visual and audio records assembled in this intricate collection, the authors of this book critically interrogated the implications of opening a colonial archive, exploring alternative ways of reading and understanding the historical material. As unique examples of close reading and listening, the essays propose creative ways of attending to the politics of race, gender, famine, ethnography, biography and fiction in colonial knowledge production.

Learning Empire

Learning Empire
Author: Erik Grimmer-Solem
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 669
Release: 2019-09-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108483828

The First World War marked the end point of a process of German globalization that began in the 1870s. Learning Empire looks at German worldwide entanglements to recast how we interpret German imperialism, the origins of the First World War, and the rise of Nazism.

The Decline of Marriage in Namibia

The Decline of Marriage in Namibia
Author: Julia Pauli
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2019-02-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3839443032

In Southern Africa, marriage used to be widespread and common. However, over the past decades marriage rates have declined significantly. Julia Pauli explores the meaning of marriage when only few marry. Although marriage rates have dropped sharply, the value of weddings and marriages has not. To marry has become an indicator of upper-class status that less affluent people aspire to. Using the appropriation of marriage by a rural Namibian elite as a case study, the book tells the entwined stories of class formation and marriage decline in post-apartheid Namibia.

Scraping the Pot

Scraping the Pot
Author: Legal Assistance Centre (Namibia). Land, Environment, and Development Project
Publisher:
Total Pages: 650
Release: 2014
Genre: San (African people)
ISBN: 9789994561520

Fictioning Namibia as a Space of Desire

Fictioning Namibia as a Space of Desire
Author: Renzo Baas
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2019-02-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3906927091

Modern-day Namibian history has largely been shaped by three major eras: German colonial rule, South African apartheid occupation, and the Liberation Struggle. It was, however, not only military conquest that laid the cornerstone for the colony, but also how the colony was imagined, the dream of this colony. As a tool of discursive worldmaking, literature has played a major role in providing a framework in which to dream Namibia, first from outside its borders, and then from within. In Fictioning Namibia as a Space of Desire, Renzo Baas employs Henri Lefebvres city-countryside dialectic and reworks it in order to uncover how fictional texts played an integral part in the violent acquisition of a foreign territory. Through the production of myths around whiteness, German and South African authors designed a literary space in which control, destruction, and the dehumanisation of African peoples are understood as a natural order, one that is dictated by history and its linear continuation. These European texts are offset by Namibias first novel by an African, offering a counter-narrative to the colonial invention that was (German) South West Africa.