Singing “The Song of Chief Iipumbu”

Abstract

Abstract This essay addresses “The Song of Chief Iipumbu,” an oral poem performed by a woman named Nekwaya Loide Shikongo in North-Central Namibia in 1953. It argues that “The Song of Chief Iipumbu” acted as an astute analysis of local power relations, employing scornful commentary on a deposed native chief as a cover for subtle but profound criticisms of European colonial institutions to which Shikongo, as a African Christian woman, was subject. Through a brief history of colonialism in Namibia and detailed attention to the linguistic and discursive webs woven by the poem’s author, this essay shows that Shikongo’s censure of oppressive authorities was not an attempt to undermine the networks of power operating in colonial Namibia. Rather, it was an effort to affect acceptance of (or at least resignation to) her subordination in order to achieve the renewal of psychological and social equilibrium.