Anthropos 92.1997
Contested Places
37
the South African regime never taxed Kaokoland-
ers, their government was very restrictive in other
ways. Trade contacts were reduced and by 1940 it
was barely possible for a Himba to sell livestock
outside Kaokoland due to strict regulations. The
fact that today most trade is still conducted as
barter trade may be traced back to these restrictive
South African regulations.
Nowadays the Himba mainly live off their
mixed herds of cattle and small stock. About
three quarters of all households practise some sup
plementary agriculture too. Livestock breeding in
Kaokoland has to cope with serious environmental
risks. A drought in 1980-81 killed some 80%-
90% of all Himba cattle. Minor droughts cause
losses about every third or fourth year. The Himba
try to minimize these risks with a maximum of
spatial mobility, by loaning parts of their herds to
other herders who live in other parts of the country
and by an intricate network of cattle loans. Live
stock are central to complex exchange networks
and at the same time produce part of the daily
subsistence. For parts of the year Himba families
live almost entirely off their cattle’s milk. Small
stock are regularly slaughtered for home consump
tion. Some livestock are bartered for maize, cheap
alcohol, medicine, and cloth.
The Himba descent system is organized in a
way that anthropologists label “double descent,”
each individual is a member of both a ma-
trilineal and a patrilineal descent group. Whilst
livestock is inherited mainly within the matrilin-
e al descent group, religious and political offices
are handed down the patriline. Decision making
°n communal issues is dominated by a group of
hereditary chiefs (sing, osoromana), their nomi
nated councillors and the wealthy men (ovahona)
of the community. The South African government
formed the political system to a certain extent by
creating more chieftaincies, by influencing the suc
cession of deceased chiefs and by paying salaries
to chiefs and councillors.
3 Physical Aspects of Graveyards and Graves
The literature on traditional Herero culture (Büttner
1884; Irle 1906; 129; Vedder 1928: 184 f.; Krüger
and Henrichsen 1996) stresses the relevance of
grave sites. The annual festivities at the graves
of deceased chiefs at Okahandja, Omaruru, and
Otjipauwe are an arena to display Herero ethnic
ity and politics. Year after year large numbers of
people of the wider Herero society - amongst them
Fig. 1: Himba grave (Photo A. Kuper and M. Bollig)
always some Himba - gather at the ancestral
graves, watch the colourful parades of Herero
cavalry and marching regiments and listen to the
speeches of Herero leaders. A visit to the grave of
an ancestral chief and the touching of the grave
stones are significant acts to enforce the image
of “being Herero.” Kruger and Henrichsen (1996)
convincingly show that the resurgence of Herero
ethnicity in the 1920s was closely connected with
the annual festivities at the grave of Samuel Ma-
harero in Okahandja after 1923. Death and funerals
are central to Herero and Himba culture and grave
yards and graves are the physical representations
of these cultural themes. Himba graves are at the
first sight puzzling and exotic-looking accumu
lations of stones ordered in various ways, oxen
skulls in different stages of decomposition and
strangely carved wooden poles (Fig. 1). Although
graveyards are central to the symbolic world of the
Himba, they are rarely central in a physical sense
and it is easy for an outsider to overlook them as
they are usually situated slightly apart from the
settled area.