Economic Activity Patterns in White Namibia

Abstract

Namibia is the last colonial territory in Africa. Primary activities are agriculture, mining, and fishing. Tourism has growth potential. Most economic activities are dominated by the Republic of South Africa, although some products can be exported without transshipment. An internal political structure, established in 1985, is designed to prepare detailed plans for Namibian independence. ONE of the last African territories to become a protectorate of a European power, Namibia is also the last country on this continent to remain a colony both politically and economically. European settlement began there by missionaries and traders, but the colonial impress came from the German Empire. Namibia, then called South-West Africa, became a protectorate of Germany in 1884, and Germans moved into the new colony as administrators, military personnel, and permanent settlers during the next thirty years. German control ended in 1915 when South African forces occupied the colony. After World War I the area was assigned as a mandate of the League of Nations to the Union of South Africa, as the republic was then known. Efforts to administer the territory as a U.N. trusteeship after World War II were resisted by the republic, which continued to govern Namibia directly from Pretoria. South Africa has refused to abide by any subsequent U.N. resolution about the legal status of the territory, but in 1977 the South African government did appoint an administrator general for Namibia with full legislative and executive powers. This change continued the pattern of colonial domination, that is, externally controlled governance. In 1985, there appeared to be some initial movement toward independence with the creation of a governmental structure for internal affairs and a concomitant reduction in the power of the externally appointed administrator. The purpose of this article is to describe and analyze the patterns of economic activity for white Namibia and to demonstrate that they remain characteristically exploitative, as they were previously in other colonies. Despite the prognosticators of doom, white Namibia, indeed the entire country, can survive political change, if the country is restructured in accordance with the goals and aspirations of all Namibians and if a thoughtful, innovative, effective, and peaceful design can be evolved for integrated regional development. * I am grateful to Arizona State University for a research grant as well as a sabbatical leave and to the German Academic Exchange Service for a research grant during the summer 1984. * DR. WEIGEND is a professor of geography at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.153 on Mon, 19 Sep 2016 04:49:36 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ECONOMIC PATTERNS IN WHITE NAMIBIA Namibia has a total area of 823,144 square kilometers (excluding Walvis Bay). The 1981 census recorded a population of 1,031,927. Whites numbered 76,430, or 7.4 percent of the population. The term white Namibia as used in this article is defined as the area of sixteen administrative districts where whites have settled ever since the German colonists began to occupy the land (Fig. 1). Full results of the 1981 census have not been released, but the 1970 census recorded that approximately 205,000 nonwhites lived in these sixteen districts. The total was probably higher in the 1981 census. Whites are not permanent residents of the ten administrative districts classified as communal areas, formerly homelands (Fig. 2). Excluding game reserves, recreational areas, and prohibited diamond zones, white Namibia covers 420,000 square kilometers, or 55 percent of the settled area of the country. Most of this area is on the interior plateau that rises steplike from the western coast and the Namib Desert to altitudes ranging from 1,000 meters on the south and north to more than 1,800 meters in the center. Primary activities in white Namibia are agriculture, mining, and fishing. Agriculture is by far the oldest activity, because natives herded cattle long before the arrival of the whites. Similarly the copper outcrops near presentday Tsumeb were known and used by native tribespeople more than two hundred years ago. Systematic surveys, discoveries, and mining, however, did not begin until after 1884. Fishing, in contrast, became a primary activity only after World War I.