Land, and Livestock: Examining the Colonial Disruption of Herero Environmental Connections in Namibia

Introduction

To understand the human-nature connections (HNCs) of contemporary Namibia, it is imperative to examine how European colonialism disrupted indigenous environmental relationships through land dispossession. Indigenous Namibians, particularly the Herero people, preserved a direct connection to their land through practicing centuries-old herding and settlement traditions which were adapted to the region’s arid climate. These practices fostered material, emotional, and experiential HNCs, ensuring both environmental health and maintained food security. However, systemic land dispossession and the enforcement of monocultural agricultural policies by European settlers dismantled indigenous land tenure systems and the sustainable livestock management strategies they promoted.

 

The study of HNCs is derived from investigating how individuals form and experience a sense of identification with the natural world (Hayes Hursh et al., 2024). The colonization of Namibia during the 20th century by German and later South African colonizers disrupted millennia of established indigenous HNCs, reshaping physical and mental dynamics between locals and the environment (Gewald, 1999). Through their analysis of established HNC literature, Ives et al. identify five classes of ways people experience nature, ranging from material (physical resources), experiential (hunting, grazing), cognitive (knowledge & values), emotional (reverence, loss), and philosophical connections (ontological frameworks) with the environment (2017). These classifications offer a broad and integrative framework for understanding the diverse ways people relate to nature. Within the context of this study, these five dimensions will be used to assess how traditional Namibian relationships with the land were altered by colonial impositions and how remnants of both indigenous and colonial worldviews continue to shape present-day HNCs in Namibia.

 

Research Question

How did systemic land dispossession during Namibia’s colonial era in the 19th and 20th centuries disrupt the Herero people’s HNCs, and how does the legacy of colonization continue to shape their modern relationship with the environment?

 

Core arguments and analysis

Indigenous populations in central Namibia, like the Herero tribe, were traditionally seminomadic herders who depended on small stock for subsistence.  Native communities typically maintained 9 head of small stock for each unit of cattle, a livestock management policy in accordance with the Namibian environment’s sporadic rainfall dynamics.  Namibia’s irregular annual rainfall rates would starve large cattle herds during periods of extended droughts, but the indigenous small stock of sheep and goats proved resilient to dry spells (Dedering, 1997). These livestock practices demonstrate that native Namibians adapted to the environmental challenges of the arid landscape and sustained a diverse herd to ensure a stable food source despite unpredictable rainfall conditions. Through maintaining sustainable livestock management practices defined by the material constraints of the environment, the Herero experienced a constant connection to nature as their herd’s survival was intrinsically tied to the precipitation cycles of the arid landscape.

 

Herero communities did not create permanent dwellings, instead each tribe practiced pastoral nomadism. The organization of temporary Herero settlements created a communal land tenure system characterized by some individual households, but which did not allocate private land tracts for familial use. Notably, while the Herero regarded land and grazing fields as communal goods, individual families maintained private livestock herds (Horst, 1980). Cattle, rather than land, served as the primary form of value for indigenous Namibian communities, leading the Herero prioritize using the material aspects of the natural environment like grazing lands and natural watering holes to bolster their herds. The resilience of the Herero was built upon the resources provided by the environment, a relationship which fostered experiential connections to nature through daily grazing of the herd.

 

Early Christian missionaries such as Hendrick Vedder witnessed the HNCs of Namibian communities firsthand, and recorded one Herero informant’s explanation of indigenous livelihoods: “As a cattle-breeder, does not one always live in the selfsame way? One treks with the herd wherever water and grazing are to be found… That is the life of a Herero; that was the life my great-grandfather lived, that was the life my grandfather lived, and my father lived it, too” (Bollig et. al., 2013, p. 1). The nomadic pastoral lifestyle practiced by the Herero lifestyle cultivated an intimate relationship with the natural environment which exceeded mere subsistence, it embodied a lifelong pattern of resettlement, observation, and adaptation to nature’s cycles. The continuation of established Human-nature relationships also served as a connection between the modern generation of Herero and the practices of their venerated ancestors, thereby it was the Herero’s experiential relationship with Namibian nature as migratory pastoralists which provided them an emotional link with their history and loved ones.

 

All livestock require access to grazing fields to develop into adulthood and become food sources, a fact well-known by the Herero but also the encroaching German colonial forces. Since the Germans proclaimed their protectorate over South West Africa (Namibia) in 1884, colonial forces had increasingly intruded into the Nambian interior, with a pivotal moment being the capture of the Nama tribe’s capital- Windhoek (Horst, 1980; Simon, 1995) The city situated in the center of the Namibian rangelands acted as an extremely valuable expansion point for the German colonial regime, and the subsequent rapid rate of indigenous land dispossession alarmed the Herero communities. A letter written by a headman from the White Nosob river expressed the plight of the Herero people to German missionaries, as the headman questioned, “where are we to live when our entire river and all our land is taken away from us?” (Bryce, 1918, p. 51). The Herero’s connection to the natural environment is what has sustained their people, their herds, and their culture for generations, but the colonists’ land revocations threatened to completely disconnect the natives from their homelands and local environments. These dispossessions were subsequently justified under the European’s enforcement of property rights across the protectorate. Property rights include both use and control rights over the designated land parcel (Meinzen-Dick et al. 2004), providing legal defense for the settlers to bar the Herero from their property should the dispossessed people return. The process of indigenous land alienation culminated in the German-Herero war and genocide lasting from 1904-1907 (Gewald, 1999). The decimation that the conflict wrought on the Herero eradicated established communities and their relationships to the natural environment; under colonial rule the Herero were stripped of not just their lands and possessions but also basic access to nature.

 

Sikor et al. identify three types of rights with respect to natural resources: use, control, and authoritative (2017). While Herero community leaders previously held the authoritative privilege to allocate use and control rights within their tribes, the establishment of colonial governance and elimination of Herero community structures reallocated the administrative authority for natural resource management to the German administration. The German colonial government solidified this control on August 18th, 1907, when they published their "Measures for control of the Natives.” The mandate explicitly banned any form of indigenous landownership, and forbid natives from owning cattle. The directive even labeled any indigenous Namibians “without visible means of subsistence" as vagrants subject to criminal prosecution (Bryce, 1918, p. 1). The German colonial administration’s ban on indigenous land and cattle ownership severed the Herero’s material connections to the environment, as it also revoked access to the grazing lands used by the tribes for generations. Instead of being masters of how they interacted with the environment within their own communal territories, they were reduced to laborers made to work the land following the commands of the colonialist settlers (Frayne, 2004). The loss of authoritative land rights revoked the Herero’s ability to govern their own relationships with nature, leading to a disconnection with all aspects of their human-nature dynamics in favor of adopting the environmental relationships imposed by the colonial forces.

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Conclusion

European colonization significantly disrupted the Herero’s human-nature connections (HNCs) across material, experiential, cognitive, emotional, and philosophical dimensions. The material connection, previously defined by communal land use and diverse herds, was severed due to land dispossession and the monocultural agriculture policies imposed by settlers. These imposed material relationships with the environment degraded the landscape and undermined the Herero’s traditional means of subsistence. The Herero’s traditional nomadic lifestyle, which promoted a direct experiential relationship with the environment through seasonal migrations and adaptation to precipitation cycles, was replaced by permanent colonial settlements which alienated the Herero from their ancestral rangelands. The colonial administration also reshaped cognitive connections by revoking indigenous authority over the land, disconnecting Herero leaders and communities from their role as stewards of local environments. Emotionally, the loss of land, cattle, and entire communities severed Herero ties with traditional environments and their ancestors. While the independent state of Namibia has made efforts toward reform, the Herero’s near complete disconnection from their natural environment persists, highlighting the enduring legacy of colonization on indigenous human-nature relationships.

 

 

Partial Reference List

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