¹ National Archives of Namibia, Windhoek (hereafter, NAN) SWAA 2069 – A/454/171, Native Commissioner Ovamboland to the Secretary of SWA, extract from minute re Thomas Mutate case, 14 Dec. 1934.

² Thomas Mutate is the name used by the South African administration. In the region Thomas Mutate was known as Katjitoha Thomas Humu. Humu is the surname used in northwestern Namibia, while Mutate is the corresponding surname in central Namibia. Thomas Aishama was a resident of Kaoko Otavi and loosely referred to as one of chief Vita Tom's sons. Vita Tom is locally referred to as Harunga. He is also known by his Afrikaans name Oorlog. The preliminary examination is found in NAN LOU 1/2/2 – No. 23 preparatory examination Thomas Mutate 1935 and No. 24 preparatory examination chief Oorlog 1935.

³ NAN LOU 1/2/2 – No. 23 preparatory examination Thomas Mutate 1935, statement given by C. H. L. Hahn, magistrate Outjo, 1 Feb. 1935.

⁴ NAN LOU 1/2/2 – No. 24 preparatory examination chief Oorlog, 15 May 1935. All men were eventually sentenced by the Circuit Court for the northern Districts, held at Otjiwarongo, in 1935. See NAN SCW 1/1/78, 23/1935 Circuit Court for the Northern Circuit District, Rex versus Thomas Mutate and Thomas Aishama charged with crime of murder and accessory after the fact, Otjiwarongo, 1 and 2 Feb. 1935, and 24/1935, Circuit Court for the Northern Circuit District, Rex versus Chief Oorlog charged with the crime of attempted subornation of perjury, Otjiwarongo, 2 May 1935.

⁵ For a bibliographical discussion see C. Dickerman, ‘Court records in Africana research’, History in Africa, 17 (1990), 305–18. Pioneering examples have been Margaret Jean Hay and Marcia Wright (eds.), African Women and the Law (Boston, 1982); Richard Roberts and Kristin Mann (eds.), Law in Colonial Africa (Portsmouth, 1991); and Nigel Penn, Rogues, Rebels and Runaways: Eighteenth-century Cape Characters (Cape Town, 1999). Martin Chanock's Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Portsmouth, 1998) and his The Making of South African Legal Culture 1902–1936. Fear, Favour and Prejudice (Cambridge, 2001) have a stronger focus on legal history. Historical and anthropological scholarship on customary law has been much more extensive.

⁶ Roberts, Richard, ‘Text and testimony in the Tribunal de Première Instance, Dakar, during the early twentieth century’, Journal of African History, 31 (1990), 450CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Natalie Zemon Davis makes this point beyond the colonial context. See Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in 16th-Century France (Stanford, 1987), 18.

⁸ See, for example, Rathbone, Richard, ‘A murder in the colonial Gold Coast: law and politics in the 1940s’, Journal of African History, 30 (1989), 445–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ Richard Roberts, Litigants and Households: African Disputes and Colonial Courts in the French Soudan, 1895–1912 (Portsmouth, 2005).

¹⁰ Ibid. 8.

¹¹ Ibid. 14.

¹² Zemon Davis, Fiction, and Carlo Ginzburg, The Judge and the Historian: Marginal Notes on a Late-Twentieth-Century Miscarriage of Justice (London, New York, 2002). In this article I use the German translation Der Richter und der Historiker. Überlegungen zum Fall Sofri (Berlin, 1991).

¹³ They were usually in Otjiherero and less frequently in Afrikaans. Some of the letters have been translated into English or Afrikaans by the colonial officers involved in the cases, while others have been summarized.

¹⁴ My point here is to suggest a direction other than the one taken by Nigel Penn, for example. While remaining cautious, Penn insists: ‘Despite certain problems the court records of the VOC constitute an invaluable body of evidence. Nowhere else are the voices of the oppressed and vanquished – distorted though they might be – heard so clearly’. Penn, Rogues, 5–6.

¹⁵ Roberts, ‘Text and testimony’, 461.

¹⁶ Rathbone, ‘Murder’, 457; Roberts and Mann (eds.), Law in Colonial Africa, 32; Roberts, Litigants and Households, 2.

¹⁷ For a much more elaborated discussion of shifting concepts of agency in African historiography, see Premesh Lalu, ‘The grammar of domination and the subjection of agency: colonial texts and modes of evidence’, History & Theory (theme issue 39: ‘Not Telling: Secrecy, Lies, and History’), 39, 4 (2000), 48.

¹⁸ I am not reconstructing events in order to answer the question of what happened in terms of a criminal investigation, i.e. to establish if there had been a murder and who the culprit was. I agree with Richard Rathbone's scepticism about the historian's competence to make post hoc judgements on guilt and innocence. See Rathbone, ‘Murder’. This focus limits the historiographical scope of the article, which renounces a general introduction to Kaoko's history. On the whole, the historiography on the northwestern region is limited. For a discussion of the literature see Rizzo, Lorena, ‘A glance into the camera: gendered visions of historical photographs in Kaoko’, Gender & History, 17 (2005), 683CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ My argument departs from the interpretation in N. J. van Warmelo, Notes on the Kaokoveld (South West Africa) and its People (Pretoria, 1951), and in E. L. P. Stals and Antje Otto-Reiner, Oorlog en Vrede aan die Kunene (Windhoek, 1999). A point similar to my argument is made by Friedman, John, ‘Making politics, making history: chiefship and the post-apartheid state in Namibia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 31 (2005), 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a more general discussion of legal processes as elements of colonial state formation see Linzi Manicom, ‘Ruling relations: rethinking state and gender in South African history’, Journal of African History, 33 (1992), 460.

²⁰ Interviews were conducted by Lorena Rizzo and Giorgio Miescher. My particular thanks go to Salatiel Muharukua who translated the interviews in Kaoko Otavi and surroundings, and to Sylvia Katjepunda who transcribed the interviews in Windhoek.

²¹ Interview with Mbatambauka Rutjindo Tjavara, 10 Jan. 2002, Onjette / Kaoko Otavi, interview with Uetjipuraije Hiatjivi, 9 Jan. 2002, Onjette / Kaoko Otavi.

²² The growth in documentation mirrored an increased administrative activity and state consolidation in the northern areas from the late 1920s onwards. See Jeremy Silvester, Marion Wallace and Patricia Hayes, ‘“Trees never meet”. Mobility and containment: an overview 1915–46’, in Patricia Hayes, Jeremy Silvester, Marion Wallace and Wolfram Hartmann (eds.), Namibia under South African Rule. Mobility and Containment 1915–46 (Oxford, 1998), 22ff.; Tony Emmett, Popular Resistance and the Roots of Nationalism in Namibia, 1915–1966 (Basel, 1999), 95ff.

²³ NAN LOU 1/2/1 – No. 23, statement by police officer G. A. Schoombee.

²⁴ Stoler, Ann Laura, ‘In cold blood: hierarchies of credibility and the politics of colonial narratives’, Representations (special issue: ‘Imperial Fantasies and Postcolonial Histories’) 37 (1992), 151–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁵ See the discussion in Lalu, ‘Grammar of domination’, 52. There are various debates on the modes of knowledge production of colonial archives, among them most prominently the discussions inspired by the Subaltern Studies; see, for example, Gyan Prakash, ‘Subaltern Studies and postcolonial criticism’, American Historical Review (1995), 1475–90; Carolyn Hamilton, Verne Harris, Jane Taylor, Michele Pickover, Graeme Reid and Razia Saleh (eds.), Refiguring the Archive (Cape Town, 2002). I owe special thanks to my colleagues in the history department at the University of the Western Cape, particularly to Premesh Lalu, Ciraj Rassool and Leslie Witz, who have raised these issues on many occasions.

²⁶ The various and sometimes contradicting versions of what happened are not to be seen in terms of true and false, but rather as mirroring the context in which they emerged. For a broader discussion of this argument, see the introduction to Luise White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumour and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley, 2000).

²⁷ Generally, the administration's consideration of violence in the reserves was biased, depending among other things on whether it was seen as a threat to the colonial state. For a general discussion, see Killingray, David, ‘The maintenance of law and order in British colonial Africa’, African Affairs, 85 (1985), 411–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁸ Upani (Oupani) Hiamauva is the name used in the written archival documents. Interviewees too used this name while sometimes calling him Tjitjapia (interview with Mbatambauka Rutjindo Tjavara, 10 Jan. 2002, Onjette). Upani was an important character in local politics and went on to make his political career in the colonial administration in the late 1930s and early 1940s. NAN NAO 028 – 24/1/1, recorded statement of Upani, interrogated by C. H. L. Hahn, Kaoko Otavi, 3 Sept. 1930.

²⁹ See NAN NAO 028 – 24/1/1, recorded statement of Jakob Kakwatauhora, taken by Sgt. du Buisson, Kaoko Otavi, 22 May 1930; recorded statement of Lumingo Kamahoto, taken by C. H. L. Hahn, Kaoko Otavi, 3 Sept. 1930.

³⁰ Recorded statement of Lumingo Kamahoto, 3 Sept. 1930; recorded statement of Upani, 3 Sept. 1930.

³¹ Recorded statement of Lumingo Kamahoto, 3 Sept. 1930; recorded statement of Upani, 3 Sept. 1930.

³² Recorded statement of Upani, 3 Sept. 1930.

³³ NAN NAO 028 – 24/1/1, recorded statement of Tshinjinda, taken by C. H. L. Hahn, Kaoko Otavi, 3 Sept. 1930; NAN NAO 20 – 24/1/4, recorded statement of Thomas Mutate, taken by C. H. L. Hahn (probably at Ondangua), n.d., NAN NAO 28 – 24/1/4 – statement of Karukururume, taken by C. H. L. Hahn, 3 Sept. 1930.

³⁴ NAN NAO 028 – 24/1/1, C. H. L. Hahn to the Secretary for SWA, re Thomas Mutate case against, 23 Nov. 1935.

³⁵ NAN NAO 028 – 24/1/1, C. H. L. Hahn to police station Tshimhaka, re Thomas Mutate case against, 7 Nov. 1934.

³⁶ NAN NAO 028 – 24/1/1, statement of Willem Hartley, recorded by Sgt. Cogill, Ondangwa, 21st November, 1934.

³⁷ NAN LOU 1/2/2 – No. 23, statement of Ventuura Nejanena, n.d., and statement of Japapo Jacob, n.d.

³⁸ NAN LOU 1/2/2 – No. 23, statement of Willem Hartley, n.d.

³⁹ This version also dominates in oral accounts on the disappearance of Petrus Kakuyu.

⁴⁰ NAN NAO 28 – 24/1/1, statement of Josephine, recorded by C. H. L. Hahn at Kaoko Otavi, 3 Sept. 1930. Later, in front of the magistrate, Josephine Mavere would revise her statement and accuse Thomas Mutate. She would then be supported by a number of other women. Ironically, du Buisson himself confirmed that he had at least menaced Kakuyu, see NAN LOU 1/2/2/ – No. 23, statement of P. G. du Buisson.

⁴¹ NAN NAO 28 – 24/1/1, translation of a letter by Oorlog to C. H. L. Hahn, 14 June 1930; recorded statement of Thomas Mutate, recorded by C. H. L. Hahn, n.d.. Use of violence during the investigation by policemen and the native commissioner was confirmed in interviews with Uetjipuraije Hiatjivi, Onjette, 7 May 2002, and David Humu, Kaoko Otavi, 12 Jan. 2002.

⁴² While the chronologies of the documents suggest Hahn's temporary movement to Kaoko Otavi, there is no particular document in the archive which dates his decision precisely. Interviewees liked to make jokes about Hahn building a temporary hut in a tree, where the native commissioner used to spend the night. Interview with David Humu, Kaoko Otavi, 12 Jan. 2002.

⁴³ The archival documents are rather short with regard to the alleged burning of the human remains (NAN LOU 1/2/1, M. van Niekerk, district surgeon, in front of the magistrate Outjo, no date). In contrast, some interviewees told extensive bloody stories about it; interviews with Uetjipuraije Hiatjivi, Onjette, 7 May 2002, and with Mbatambauka Rutjindo Tjavara, Onjette, 7 May 2002.

⁴⁴ NAN LOU 1/2/2 – No. 23, preparatory examination Thomas Mutate and Thomas Aishama (case against), 13 Mar. 1935.

⁴⁵ NAN LOU 1/2/2 – No. 24, preparatory examination on Chief Oorlog (case against), 15 May 1935.

⁴⁶ On the claim to jurisdiction by colonial authorities with regard to murder cases, see Marcia Wright, ‘Justice, women and the social order in Abercorn, north-eastern Rhodesia, 1897–1903’, in Hay and Wright, Women and the Law, 39.

⁴⁷ The hierarchies of legal institutions and competence were thoroughly assessed by C. H. L. Hahn, who considered himself to be the only one entitled to investigate the cases in Kaoko Otavi. See NAN NAO 28 – 24/1/1, Hahn to the Post Commander SWA Police, Ondangua, 11 July 1930. For a general discussion of legal institutions and procedures in colonial Namibia see Harald Sippel, ‘Rechtsrezeption in Namibia. Prozesse direkter und indirekter Rezeption deutschen und südafrikanischen Rechts’, Recht in Afrika (2003), 69–89.

⁴⁸ Meredith McKittrick states that in colonial northern Namibia, then Owamboland, most murder cases were dealt with under customary law. See McKittrick, Meredith, ‘Faithful daughter, murdering mother: transgression and social control in colonial Namibia’, Journal of African History, 40 (1999), 266CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. On the tensions between ideology and practice in the application of colonial law, see Roberts and Mann (eds.), Law in Colonial Africa, 35. This assessment is based on my general knowledge of the archival material on colonial Kaoko. I have not done a quantitative analysis of all cases concerning Kaoko and their handling by customary and colonial courts.

⁴⁹ There were two policemen, du Buisson and Cogill, and up to three native constables. See NAN PJT 1 4/R, monthly reports police post Tshimhaka to the Native Commissioner of Ovamboland. Besides Tshimhaka, which had been opened in 1926 on the northern Kunene river, there was a temporary police post in southern Kaoko at Otjitundua, which was closed down in 1934. The lack of sufficient administrative personnel in Kaoko was one of the tropes in Hahn´s reporting on the area. The native commissioner, who was based in Ondangua in then Owamboland, only rarely went on trips to the northwestern area.

⁵⁰ This has been confirmed with respect to archival documentation on a criminal case in Owambo in the late 1930s discussed in McKittrick, ‘Faithful daughter’, 276.

⁵¹ NAN NAO 28 – 24/1/1, recorded statement of Willem Hartley, taken by C. H. L. Hahn, Kaoko Otavi, n.d. (1934). The spelling is as in the original.

⁵² Zemon Davis, Fiction, 15ff. In contrast to Zemon Davis's claim that the petitioner in sixteenth-century France asking for the king's pardon was the main author, the colonial documents I am concerned with here do not allow for a hierarchy of influences on the text. In fact, I am more interested in the text and in issues raised than in the question of who exactly was speaking/writing. Translators were hardly ever mentioned. The main one we know was Willem Hartley who resided close to Kaoko Otavi at Oruwandjai and was involved in both cases as witness.

⁵³ For example, ‘Oorlog’ instead of ‘Vita Tom’ or ‘Harunga’, the name he was known by locally, or ‘Thomas Mutate’ instead of ‘Katjitoha’.

⁵⁴ See, on this point, Ginzburg, Judge and Historian, 28ff., and Roberts and Mann (eds.), Law in Colonial Africa, 42.

⁵⁵ I do not know if there were any schedules or forms on which the questioning of witnesses was based, or if methods of criminal investigation had been part of the professional training of policemen stationed in Kaoko in this period. Due to the conformity of language of most statements in the cases dealt with, I suspect C. H. L. Hahn to have been the final editor. Both policemen, Sgt. Cogill and Sgt. du Buisson, were limited in their writing of English.

⁵⁶ Men were always labelled ‘native’ and women as ‘native woman’. On the use of gendered categories in ‘native policies’, see Manicom, ‘Ruling relations’, 456.

⁵⁷ I am referring here to the necessity of translating every-day experience into the categories of legal discourses. See, on this point, Mertz, Elizabeth, ‘Legal language. Pragmatics, poetics, and social power’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 23 (1994), 435–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁸ The concept of the mixed genre is again based on Zemon Davis's discussion of letters of redemption.

⁵⁹ Unless the hand-written notes are kept in the archive, with the original signatures or marks, most transcriptions of the statements lack the original signature.

⁶⁰ See Zemon Davis, Fiction, 101; Mertz, ‘Legal language’, 443; and Roberts, Litigants and Households, 24.

⁶¹ Zemon Davis hints at the compression of legal narratives, confining witnesses to what they had seen or heard about a crime only. Zemon Davis, Fiction, 5.

⁶² See Roberts and Mann (eds.), Law in Colonial Africa, 45, and Roberts, Litigants and Households, 8.

⁶³ On colonial and local narratives mutually constituting each other see Henrietta L. Moore and Megan Vaughan, Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition, and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890–1990 (Portsmouth, 1994), xxi.

⁶⁴ Roberts, ‘Text and testimony’, 461.

⁶⁵ Recorded statement of Upani, 3 Sept. 1930.

⁶⁶ Michael Bollig, ‘Power and trade in precolonial and early colonial northern Kaokoland 1860s–1940s’, in Hayes et al., Namibia, 184.

⁶⁷ NAN J XII b5, Vedder to von Zastrow (1914), E. Dütmann, ‘Kurze Reiseerinnerungen as dem Nordwesten Deutsch-Südwestafrikas und dem südlichen Angola’, Beiträge zur Kolonialpolitik und Kolonialwirtschaft (1900/1), 613; Bollig, ‘Power and trade’, 176 and 185; G. Hartmann, ‘Meine Expedition 1900 ins nördliche Kaokofeld und 1901 durch das Amboland’, Beiträge zur Kolonialpolitik und Kolonialwirtschaft, 4 (1902–3); interview with Ngakurupe Koviti, Kaoko Otavi, 2002.

⁶⁸ NAN NAO 31 – 24/13 – Officer in Charge Opuwo to Chief Native Commissioner Windhoek, 25 June 1941; Lawrence Green, Lords of the Last Frontier (Parow, 1952), 50; interview with David Humu, Kaoko Otavi, 12 Jan. 2002. David Humu dated his father's coming to Kaoko Otavi around 1917/18, yet he settled there permanently a little later. In the archive the earliest reports of the administration mention Thomas Mutate as one of Vita Tom's headmen but they do not indicate his place of residence; see NAN NAO 18, monthly and annual reports of the native commissioner Ondangua, 1924 and 1925. In 1926 Colonel Denys Reitz apparently met Mutate in Kaoko Otavi, see Green, Lords, 50.

⁶⁹ In oral information Thomas Mutate was said to have been given a place to stay at Kaoko Otavi by Tjongoha, the local headman and a maternal uncle to Mutate. A serious power play soon developed between them, which led to Tjongoha's, and his followers', expulsion from the place. Interviews with Uetjipuraije Hiatjivi, Onjette, 7 May 2002, and with Mbatambauka Rutjindo Tjavara, Onjette, 10 Jan. 2002.

⁷⁰ The archival sources give Tjongoha's, and with him Upani's, ‘removal’ from Kaoko Otavi, as occurring in about 1918, but they do not specify the context of their leaving. See NAN NAO 28 – 24/1/1, statement of Thomas Mutate, 30 Sept. 1930; and NAN LOU 1/2/2 – No. 23, second statement of Ventuura Nejanena, n.d.

⁷¹ NAN ADM 156 W32, General Kaokoveld Report by Major C. N. Manning, Resident Commissioner Ovamboland, November 1917; and NAN SWAA 2516, Report by Major C. N. Manning re Second Tour Kaokoveld; Disarmament; General, 25 Aug. 1919.

⁷² There are a number of authors who produced and reproduced this cultural hierarchy between Herero, Ovahimba and Ovatjimba in Kaoko, most prominently among them Heinrich Vedder, ‘The Ovaherero’, in L. Fourie, C. H. L. Hahn and H. Vedder, The Native Tribes of South West Africa (Cape Town, 1928), 153–211; and NAN J XII b5, Heinrich Vedder, ‘Reisebericht des Missionars Vedder an den Bezirksamtmann von Zastrow’, Geographische und ethnographische Forschungen im Kaokoveld 1900–1914 (1914).

⁷³ Meredith McKittrick has made a similar point for administrative policies in Owambo in the early decades of South African rule. See Meredith McKittrick, ‘Forsaking their fathers? Colonialism, Christianity, and coming of age in Ovamboland, northern Namibia’, in Lisa A. Lindsay and Stepahn F. Miescher (eds.), Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa (Portsmouth, 2003), 46.

⁷⁴ NAN NAO 28 – 24/1/1 – C. H. L. Hahn to the Secretary for South-West Africa 12 Jan. 1934; NAN NAO 19, C. H. L. Hahn to the secretary, monthly report January and February 1935. There had been several cases against Thomas Mutate earlier (see NAN NAO 28 – Vol. 3 – C. H. L. Hahn re cases against Thomas Mutate, 3 May and 25 Sept. 1934), the one mentioned in the statement of Upani was about a transaction involving sheep in 1919–20; see NAN NAO 28–2471/17, C. H. L. Hahn to the Magistrate Outjo, 28 Sept. 1930.

⁷⁵ For a discussion of precolonial, nineteenth-century trade in game and luxury items such as ivory and ostrich feathers, see Bollig, ‘Power and trade’, 175–93.

⁷⁶ Kaoko had been part of a game reserve since 1907, i.e. since the German colonial period. The Verordnung des Gouverneurs von Deutsch-Südwestafrika betreffend Bildung von Wildreservaten in dem südwestafrikanischen Schutzgebiete of 1907 (22 March 1907, No. 88) prohibited all shooting of big game. Game protection laws were generally taken over by the South African administration in 1916: see Game Law of 6 January 1916.

⁷⁷ See, e.g., NAN SWAA 2513 additional NC SWA to Chief NC, 26 Apr. 1939, on permits to residents in Kaoko. Most travellers, missionaries, scientists and members of the settler society who ventured into Kaoko in the early decades of the twentieth century used the occasion for hunting activities. See Rizzo, ‘Glance into the camera’.

⁷⁸ NAN SWAA 493 – A 50/256/4, C. H. L. Hahn to the Secretary for South-West Africa, 18 Mar. 1938.

⁷⁹ NAN LOU 1/2/2 – No. 23, further statement of Ventuura Nejanena, n.d.

⁸⁰ NAN NAO 20 – 24/1/1, statement of Hiakatondo Kututa, interpreted by Willem Hartley, recorded by Sgt. Cogill, Otjondjorese, 18 Nov. 1934. The spelling is from the original.

⁸¹ Stals and Otto-Reiner, Oorlog en Vrede, 29ff.; Bollig, ‘Power and trade’, 180ff.

⁸² Interview with Jairaeua Tjihoto, Kaoko Otavi, 6 May 2002; interview with Ngakurupe Koviti, Kaoko Otavi, 8 May 2002; interview with Maririro Koviti Tjihurua, Kaoko Otavi, 9 May 2002. There is plenty of archival documentation on these alleged raids; see NAN SWAA 2379 – A. 518/4/3, Kaokoveld Native Unrest, 1916–48.

⁸³ See Patricia Hayes, ‘Northern exposures: the photography of C. H. L. Hahn, native commissioner of Ovamboland 1915–1946’, in Wolfram Hartmann, Jeremy Silvester and Patricia Hayes (eds.), The Colonising Camera. Photographs in the Making of Namibian History (Cape Town, 1998), 172–3. Manning was the first resident commissioner in the north.

⁸⁴ The importance of arms and uniforms as signs of power and status applied to both the colonial and the African societies involved. Examples of martial symbols can be found in the reports by Major Manning and in Hahn's 1924 diary – see NAN Accession 450 – 23D.14, Kaokoveld Journey – and in photographs of Vita Tom and his rivals. See Rizzo, ‘Glance into the camera’.

⁸⁵ There were continuous debates on the question of corporal punishment and the ways chiefs and headmen ruled over their subjects. See NAN NAO 20, annual and monthly reports, C. H. L. Hahn, annual report 1937, 18 Jan. 1938; and NAN NAO 29 24/2, C. H. L. Hahn to du Buisson, 17 Sept. 1936; also the reports by the police stationed at Tshimhaka, between 1926 and 1931, filed under NAN PTJ 1 4/R. For a comparison with Owambo, see McKittrick, ‘Faithful daughter’, 275.

⁸⁶ Silvester et al., ‘Trees’, 20.

⁸⁷ See NAN NAO 19, C. H. L. Hahn to the secretary, annual and monthly reports 1932–36, C. H. L. Hahn to the secretary, annual report 1936, 16 Jan. 1937; and NAN NAO 20, C. H. L. Hahn to the secretary, annual and monthly reports, 1937–42, C. H. L. Hahn to the secretary, monthly report February and March 1938, 30 Mar. 1938. For a discussion of the co-existence of customary and metropolitan law under colonialism see Roberts, Litigants and Households, 18–19.

⁸⁸ Roberts has referred to the significance of written knowledge for ‘governmentality’. See Roberts, Litigants and Households, 25.

⁸⁹ NAN NAO 28 – 24/1/1, Sgt. Cogill to C. H. L. Hahn, ‘Confidential. Re: Disappearance. Petrus Kakuyu’, 5 Feb. 1934.

⁹⁰ For a discussion of the significance of knowledge in the exercise of colonial power, see Lalu, ‘Grammar of domination’, 54ff.

⁹¹ In fact Upani was not a candidate for the headmen council, which was introduced in Kaoko in the late 1930s/early 1940s, shortly after the removal of Mutate and Tom. From the mid-1940s onwards, Upani was continuously involved in conflicts with the administration.

⁹² There is an ‘empirical gap’ (Silvester et al., ‘Trees’, 13–14) here. The absence of women charged for offences considered to be serious mirrors the complexities of criminal classification in colonial Kaoko and a reluctance to consider violent acts by women in terms of murder or manslaughter. McKittrick discusses the only case of a woman from Owambo tried in a colonial court for murder between 1915 and 1955, although she was not the only accused murderess: see McKittrick, ‘Faithful daughter’, 274.

⁹³ For example, the case of a woman called Onderangandja against her husband filed under NAN NAO 26, miscellaneous 1916–46, 29 Sept. 1929, or in 1935 the case of a woman called Teresa, again in a conflict with her husband over stock, mistreatment and residence, filed under NAN NAO 28, Kaokoveld General.

⁹⁴ Marcia Wright made a similar point for legal procedures in colonial Zambia at a magistrate's court, where ‘women usually, but not always, figured as complainants in civil cases and as victims in criminal cases’: see Wright, ‘Justice’, 43.

⁹⁵ For a similar argument, see Patrica Hayes, ‘The “Famine of the dams”: gender, labour and politics in colonial Ovamboland 1929–1930’, in Hayes et al., Namibia, 117.

⁹⁶ This is most evidently expressed in the fact that women were exclusively identified by their first names.

⁹⁷ NAN NAO 28 – 24/1/1, statement of Karinana, Kaoko Otavi, 3 Sept. 1930.

⁹⁸ On alternative means for resolving disputes in another African colonial context, see Dickerman, Carol, ‘The use of court records as sources for African history: some examples from Bujumbura, Burundi’, History in Africa, 11 (1984), 69–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the deterioration of conflict management for women under colonialism, see Gesine Krüger and Dag Henrichsen, ‘“We have been captives long enough. We want to be free”. Land, uniforms and politics in the history of the Herero in the interwar period’, in Hayes et al., Namibia, 167.

⁹⁹ NAN NAO 28 – 24/1/1. Sgt. Cogill confirmed the difficulties of approaching women: Cogill to C. H. L. Hahn, n.p., 5 Feb. 1934.

¹⁰⁰ Ginzburg discusses selective biases in considering evidence in criminal contexts for both sixteenth-century Inquisition trials and twentieth-century criminal cases (Ginzburg, Judge and Historian).

¹⁰¹ At the time the murder was investigated, three women, among them Kakuyu's wife, were questioned repeatedly.

¹⁰² For a comparison with colonial Owambo, see McKittrick, ‘Faithful daughter’.

¹⁰³ I have discussed allegations that du Buisson beat people. Hahn is said to have beaten and tortured women who refused to make statements about the cases. As a particularly brutal instance interviewees recalled the native commissioner forcing women to stand in the sun while their skin burnt until they would agree to testify. Interview with Uetjipuraije Hiatjivi, Onjette, 9.1.2002.

¹⁰⁴ For the same argument in a different context see Roberts, ‘Text and testimony’: Roberts and Mann (eds.), Law in Colonial Africa, 31, and Roberts, Litigants and Households, 24.

¹⁰⁵ NAN LOU 1/2/1 No. 23, statement of Josefine Mavere, at the circuit court of Otjiwarongo, given in Otjiherero, translated into Afrikaans, 7 Jan. 1935 (my translation).

¹⁰⁶ On conflict resulting from colonial intervention and shifts in the construction of male status and power, see Meredith McKittrick, ‘Generational struggle and social mobility in western Ovambo communities 1915–1954’, in Hayes et al., Namibia, 248–9.

¹⁰⁷ See Marion Wallace, Health, Power and Politics in Windhoek, Namibia, 1915–45 (Basel, 2002), and Moore and Vaughan, Cutting Down Trees (particularly ch. 3). Female interviewees stressed problems resulting precisely from the emergence of powerful men such as Tom and Mutate: interview with Mariro Koviti Tjihuhura, Kaoko Otavi, 4 Jan. 2002; with Kainaa Menjengua Tjihero, Kaoko Otavi, 8 Jan. 2002; and with Emily Kazombaruru Kavari, Kaoko Otavi, 9.1.2002.

¹⁰⁸ See Roberts, Litigants and Households, 16. On the significance of colonial law for women and the sanctioning of violence, see Sally Engle Merry, ‘The articulation of legal spheres’, in Hay and Wright (eds.), Women and the Law, 87.

¹⁰⁹ See the introduction to Luise White, Stephan F. Miescher and David William Cohen (eds.), African Words, African Voices. Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington, 2001); Moore and Vaughan, Cutting Down Trees, xiii; and Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution. The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier (London, 1997).

¹¹⁰ Zemon Davis's work on sixteenth-century French pardon letters unintentionally hints at the specificity of imbalanced power relations under colonial rule. Zemon Davis, Fiction.

¹¹¹ Lalu, ‘Grammar of domination’, 50–1.

¹¹² Wallace, Health, 12. Wallace makes her point following Megan Vaughan, Curing their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Cambridge, 1991).

¹¹³ See Roberts, Litigants and Households, 30.

¹¹⁴ See Roberts and Mann (eds.), Law in Colonial Africa, 36.

¹¹⁵ Lalu, ‘Grammar of domination’, 53.

¹¹⁶ As Tom died in Uukwaluudhi, in then Ovamboland, he was buried there. His remains were taken to Kaoko only in 1985; see Stals and Otto-Reiner, Oorlog en Vrede, 72–3.

¹¹⁷ Mutate passed away in August 1956, see BOP 8 – 1/15/61, officer in charge Opuwo to chief native commissioner, 19 Jan. 1957.