Similar but Different? Assessing the Reserve Economy Legacy of Namibia¶
Donna Pankhurst (1996). Similar but Different? Assessing the Reserve Economy Legacy of Namibia. Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 22, No. 3. Taylor & Francis.
| Type | journal article |
| Scope | Wider apartheid literature |
| Method | synthesis review |
| Period studied | 1915–1990s |
| Regions | Namibia, South Africa, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe |
| Themes | agriculture land, bantustans removals influx, comparative theory, mining migrant labour, origins segregation |
| Citation key | pankhurst1996 |
Argument¶
Pankhurst argues that policy thinking in independent Namibia draws on a distorted 'land dispossession - settler colonialism' template taken from the wider southern African labour-reserve model, which Namibianist 'resistance historiography' reinforced. Using Beinart's 1984 analysis of soil erosion, conservationism and development ideas as a framework, she compares Rhodesia, South Africa and Namibia. Namibia's colonial state differed sharply: conservation and rural modernisation barely figure, and there was no equivalent of Betterment or Land Husbandry. Indirect rule and neglect in the populous north contrast with the dispossession of the Centre/South. She concludes that Namibia is an exception to a regional pattern, that its absent state restraint allowed extreme rural differentiation, and that these differences call for comparative research.
Evidence and method¶
Secondary literature (Beinart, Alexander, Phimister, Hayes, Werner, Silvester, Fuller, Moorsom and others), theses, conference papers and policy documents such as the Tomlinson, Godlonton and Odendaal Commission reports; no original archival or survey data presented.
Place in the debates¶
- Radical political economy / labour-reserve 'resistance historiography' vs second-wave Namibian historiography (see Historiographical approaches). Criticises the structural, deductive reserve-army model for ignoring agency and local variation; holds that state neglect or containment cannot alone explain northern impoverishment or migrant labour.
- Aims of Rhodesia's Land Husbandry: promoting an African middle class vs restraining accumulation by reserve entrepreneurs. Favours the view that restraint of accumulation was the real purpose, while noting the evidence is contested and incomplete.
- Whether Community Development in Rhodesia was a shift towards South African apartheid (Bratton) or a return to neo-tradition. Sees CD as a continuation of neo-tradition policy, though closely associated with Separate Development and closer to South Africa's 1950s experience than LH was.
- Commonality of the colonial conservation and rural development experience across southern Africa (Beinart thesis) (see Agricultural policy, productivity, farm size and land reform). Namibia is an exception: conservation discourse is barely present before the 1980s and did not produce state intervention in African production.
Findings¶
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Namibian policy discourse wrongly equates the national land problem with colonial dispossession, neglecting the northern population that was not dispossessed. (p. 406)
Identification of the need for more land resources with some historic loss has minimised the possibilities of access to new land for most of the population in need
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Namibia lacked the development and conservation ideas and planning that characterised South African and Rhodesian policy in the 1950s. (p. 407)
'ideas about development' and conservation just do not appear in Namibia's land discourses in anything like the same way that they did in South Africa or Rhodesia
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South Africa rejected Tomlinson's proposals on land consolidation, town development and freehold tenure but retained its betterment and conservation elements. (p. 413)
The government did accept those parts of the TC which were based on a continuation of previous betterment policies, relating to conservation, stocking levels and sound agricultural practice
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Settler land alienation in the north was limited, and the state never needed Natives Land Act-type legislation against Black land purchase; its main aim there was migrant labour. (p. 414)
settler land alienation was not significant in most of the north and over the whole country the state never had to legislate against the purchase of farm land by Black people
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The state's labour procurement in the north was never fully successful and migrant labour was ambivalent for chiefs and contested by young men. (p. 415)
The state certainly never procured enough labour at the desired price for white farmers, and the labour procurement strategy should not be regarded as a straightforward 'success'
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Resistance histories elide the causes of migration by attributing impoverishment wholly to state policy, though policy neglect cannot explain impoverishment. (p. 416)
A policy of neglect cannot explain processes of impoverishment, although in comparative terms this is a useful perspective
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In the north the state saw no need to intervene because labour reproduction seemed secure and accumulation was not generating landlessness or political tension. (p. 416)
the state saw no need to intervene because the physical reproduction of most of the northern population (i.e. its reserve of labour) seemed sufficiently secure without its intervention
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The Odendaal Commission (1964) was a political rather than agricultural-production blueprint, echoing Verwoerd's rejection of much of Tomlinson. (p. 418)
the OC is much more an intervention into politics than land and agricultural production per se; about how to manage problems, rather than how to solve them.
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By the 1980s, Namibia's rural policies mainly aided large herders and promoted individual tenure, and the absence of state restraint produced extreme differentiation. (p. 419)
they were mainly to help large herders, and promote individual tenure. Many households did not have any animals at all
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Northern Namibia shifted from a backward region to one exceptional in socio-economic differentiation and enclosure of the communal range. (p. 420)
Northern Namibia has shifted from a place seen as backward in terms of capitalist development compared with other colonies, to one which is exceptional in the degree of socio-economic differentiation
Evidence ledger¶
Sources used¶
| Source | Kind | Period | How used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tomlinson Commission Report (South Africa, 1955) | commission or official report | 1955 | Compared with Rhodesia's Godlonton Commission and Namibia's Odendaal Report as a state blueprint for African rural development, and for what the government accepted or rejected. |
| Godlonton Commission Report (Rhodesia) | commission or official report | 1950s | Used as the Rhodesian counterpart to the Tomlinson Report; its recommendations underpinned Land Husbandry policy. |
| Odendaal Commission Report (1964) | commission or official report | 1964 | Shows the Namibian state's rural policy priorities in the 1960s: ethnic homelands, extended reserves and communal tenure, with little development or conservation content. |
| Native Land Husbandry Act 1951, Land Apportionment Act 1930 and Tribal Trust Land Act 1967 (Rhodesia) | legislation gazette | 1930-1969 | Legislation is used, via secondary accounts, to describe changes in Rhodesian land tenure and rural policy. |
| Adams, Werner and Vale, 'The Land Issue in Namibia: An Inquiry' (NISER, 1990) | secondary literature compilation | 1990 | Supports the claims that Namibia had no equivalent of the Natives Land Act and that homeland administrations were assisted in planning economic units. |
| NEPRU unpublished Briefing Papers for National Land Reform Conference, 1991 (Ovambo; Kavango; Kaokoland, Damaraland, Namaland, Hereroland and Bushmanland) | other | 1991 | Evidence that communal land was fenced off for individual ranches in Ovambo, Kavango and Hereroland. |
| Government of Namibia, Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Rural Development, 'The Current Land Tenure System in the Commercial Districts of Namibia' (paper for NEPRU, 1991) | commission or official report | 1991 | Cited for larger herders securing individual land access in Hereroland, Ovambo and Kavango. |
| National Development Strategy for SWA (mid-1980s) | commission or official report | mid-1980s | Shows official concern about environmental degradation and a policy of helping large herders and promoting individual tenure. |
| Windhoek Advertiser, Editorial, 9 December 1993 | newspapers periodicals | 1993 | Illustrates policy discourse framing land redistribution as righting apartheid 'land theft', as in the attack on the Prime Minister's letter. |
| FAO WCARRD mission conference, December 1993 (author's observation) | author survey or fieldwork | December 1993 | Used as anecdotal evidence that official discourse ignored the need for new land in the north. |
| Hayes, 'A History of the Ovambo in Namibia, ca. 1880-1935' (PhD thesis, Cambridge, 1992) | secondary literature compilation | 1880-1935 | Supports the claims about the northern labour procurement system, merchant capital and the absence of commercialisation. |
| Silvester, 'Black Pastoralists, White Farmers' (PhD thesis, London, 1993) | secondary literature compilation | 1915-1955 | Shows that pastoralists' access to land in the centre/south was restricted by settler action rather than legislation. |
| Alexander, 'The State, Agrarian Policy and Rural Politics in Zimbabwe' (DPhil thesis, Oxford, 1993), Insiza and Chimanimani case studies | secondary literature compilation | 1940-1990 | Main basis for the account of Rhodesian centralisation, Land Husbandry and Community Development. |
| Werner, 'Struggles in the Namibian Countryside, 1915-50' and Herero thesis (Cape Town, 1989) | secondary literature compilation | 1915-1950 | Shows that the administration aimed for self-reproducing reserves and extended commodity production within controls in Hereroland. |
| Survey in the 1970s of attitudes to communal land tenure in Ovambo (via Emmett thesis) | secondary literature compilation | 1970s | Evidence that communal tenure costs charged by chiefs and headmen provoked opposition. |
| Post-independence surveys by official agencies and academics on rural household differentiation in Namibia | household or labour survey microdata | post-1990 | Referenced to show extreme household differentiation in the contemporary countryside; not named or analysed. |
| Papers from 'Trees Never Meet: Mobility and Containment, 1915-1945' conference, University of Namibia, August 1994 | secondary literature compilation | 1915-1945 | Unpublished research cited for the 'second wave' revision of labour procurement and migration in the north. |
Inference¶
Quantification: None.
Qualitative comparative historiographical synthesis: the author reads secondary literature and official commission reports for Rhodesia, South Africa and Namibia against Beinart's conservation/development framework, and argues from comparison and absence of evidence. She also uses deductive reasoning and poses research questions, with no original archival or quantitative work.
Key claims¶
| Claim | Basis | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| Policy thinking in independent Namibia draws on a distorted 'land dispossession - settler colonialism' model of the countryside that over-identifies Namibia with South Africa. (p. 406) | The author's observation of government and agency documents, the FAO/WCARRD conference and a newspaper editorial, plus historiographical critique of Clarence-Smith/Moorsom, Chambers/Green and Werner. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| Conservation and 'ideas about development' were largely absent from Namibian land policy before the 1960s, unlike in South Africa and Rhodesia. (p. 413) | Comparison of the Tomlinson and Godlonton reports with the Odendaal Report, and the theses of Emmett and Fuller. | Partial data |
| In northern Namibia settler land alienation was minimal and state policy was indirect rule aimed at cheap migrant labour, with no intervention in African agriculture. (p. 414) | Secondary work by Clarence-Smith and Moorsom, Hayes and Moorsom, with Adams et al. on the lack of land legislation. | Partial data |
| The Namibian reserve economy is not explained by 'resistance historiography' claims that state policy directly caused impoverishment, because those claims rest on deduction rather than empirical research and ignore pre-colonial stress. (p. 415) | Critical reading of the secondary literature and second-wave research (Kreike, Siiskonen, Hayes) on drought, famine and pre-colonial migration. | Partial data |
| In the Centre/South, early colonial dispossession was violent and classic, and state strategy in reserves resembled the South African/Rhodesian dual policy of promoting commoditisation while restricting the peasant option. (p. 417) | Werner, Silvester and Fuller, drawing on their theses and papers. | Partial data |
| The Odendaal Report was mainly a political intervention on homelands and decentralisation, not an agricultural development blueprint, and few of its proposals were implemented before the 1970s. (p. 418) | Reading of the Odendaal Report in comparison with the Tomlinson Report, supported by Adams et al. and Thomas. | Partial data |
| The absence of state restraints and the promotion of inequality produced extreme rural differentiation in Namibia, notably larger herders in Hereroland, Ovambo and Kavango who fenced communal land and resembled a rural bourgeoisie. (p. 419) | Werner on Hereroland, NEPRU briefing papers and the Ministry paper, and post-independence surveys, none of them presented as data. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
The author's caveats¶
The author concedes that research is thin. She says the paper makes only a 'modest contribution' and begins a comparison, that why South Africa's objectives in Namibia differed is 'beyond the reach of this paper', that historic changes behind differentiation are 'largely uninvestigated', and that much second-wave research is unpublished. She notes that landlessness in northern Namibia 'has not been documented'.
Gaps in the evidence¶
The argument depends on secondary literature and commission reports and offers no archival evidence on what South African or SWA officials knew of Rhodesian or South African conservation policy. Testing it would need SWA Administration files, Native Affairs correspondence and Hansard debates, which existed then and are held in the National Archives of Namibia and Pretoria. Quantitative evidence on stocking rates, landholding, cattle ownership and migration, from censuses and the 1960s carrying-capacity surveys, would be needed to establish northern differentiation and the lack of commercialisation.
Replicability: Not applicable.