The British Tribe Next Door (2019): Reality TV in Kaoko, Tourism, and the “Hollywood Himba”

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 2019 British Channel 4 reality TV programme The British Tribe Next Door putatively compares contemporary life in Britain to a small, sustainable indigenous Himba community of Otjeme in the Kaoko region of Namibia. An actual British terraced house was built and provided with all the modern furnishings. British Reality TV celebrity Scarlett Moffatt and her family would live in the house. The idea was to have a “reverse anthropological exchange” between the Moffatts and the “nomadic” Himba. Critics of the programme called it “racist and exploitative” and “the most immoral show of all time.” Others in the British viewing public praised it for revealing the simplicity of the Himba way of life. But the programme fails to comprehend that “the Himba” is really an artificial construct created by the South Africa apartheid regime for its own racist ideas and then reenforced by advertising, the tourist industry in Namibia, and international media. This essay examines the evolution of that construct and its impact on the Himba. The British Tribe Next Door does reveal the persistence of problematic and condescending colonial tropes as well as the deception of Reality TV. While playing their tourist role, the Himba will pursue their own agendas in the Kaoko, Namibia, and the World.