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Reinventing the Family: Kinship, Marriage, and Famine in Northern Namibia, 1948–1954
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
In October 1952, during a famine in northern Namibia, an Ovambo woman named Helvi Kondombolo filed a complaint with colonial officials, stating that her son, a contract laborer, had been living in the southern part of the colony for eight years and that she wanted him either sent back to the Ovamboland reserve or persuaded to send her money to buy food. Her complaint is unique in that the laborer in question was Sam Nujoma, now president of Namibia. And yet she was only one of dozens of women who filed similar complaints against men between 1948 and 1954 (National Archives of Namibia [NAN], Native Affairs Ovamboland [NAO] 93 and 94, file 42/2). In colonial southern Africa, European officials and African men often collaborated in efforts to control African women. These complaints represent a rare case in which European officials and African women collaborated to control African men.
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