Patterns of Translocality: Migration, Livelihoods and

Patterns of Translocality: Migration, Livelihoods and Identities in Northwest Namibia1 By C l e m e n s G r e i n e r

Summary Social relations in Namibia’s southern Kunene region are shaped by translocal patterns of migration, exchange and identity. Young people move to urban areas for schooling and work, older family members return to the countryside upon retirement to take care of the livestock and the rural homesteads. These movements are accompanied by remittances and resource transfers, critical for securing livelihoods in rural as well as in urban contexts. People experience movement between households from childhood on, and many migrants develop identities that combine rural and urban lifestyles. Still, the rural homes remain the symbolic, social and economic center for most migrants. Based on data from multi-sited fieldwork, this article examines the emergence and current patterns of migration, exchange and identity formation. The author outlines a translocal perspective and argues that, in order to deepen our understanding of these dynamics, it might be productive to borrow insights from recent studies of transnationalism.

1 Acknowledgements: I am indebted to Julia Pauli, Michael Schnegg, Michael Pröpper and Martina Gockel-Frank for valuable comments on draft versions of this paper. Further, I thank Bettina Beer, Don Gardner and two anonymous reviewers for their critical and helpful feedback. Parts of this paper are based on a working paper (Greiner 2009a) presented at the Basler Afrika Bibliographien (BAB), Switzerland, in February 2009. I thank Dag Henrichsen (BAB) as well as those attending the lecture for their comments. The data presented here are based on 13 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in rural and urban Namibia in 2005 / 06. Fieldwork was carried out on 10 farming settlements in the Fransfontein communal area (Kunene South) and in urban areas, particularly Windhoek and Walvis Bay. Details on research design and methodology can be found in Greiner (2008a, 2008b, 2009b). The research was part of the multidisciplinary collaborative research project ACACIA (Arid Climate, Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa, SFB 389) at the University of Cologne, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). I am deeply grateful to Julia Pauli, the senior researcher of the subproject C10 and her husband Michael Schnegg for their friendly collaboration and their helpful methodological and conceptual advice. For further information on the ACACIA project see: http: //uni-koeln.de/sfb389/ .

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Zusammenfassung Soziale Beziehungen in Namibias südlicher Kunene-Region sind durch Muster translokaler Migration, Austausch und Identität geprägt. Für die Schulausbildung und zur Erwerbstätigkeit ziehen die Jungen in die städtischen Gebiete, die Alten kehren zurück aufs Land, wo sie sich um die Viehzucht und die Höfe kümmern. Diese Bewegungen werden von Ressourcentransfers begleitet, die einen wichtigen Beitrag zum Haushaltsbudget in Land und Stadt darstellen. Mobilität wird von Kindesbeinen auf erlernt, und viele Migranten entwickeln Identitäten, die ländliche und urbane Lebensstile vereinen. Dennoch stellt die ländliche Heimat das symbolische, soziale und ökonomische Zentrum für viele Migranten dar. Auf Grundlage ethnographischer Daten aus Stadt und Land analysiert dieser Beitrag Entstehung und gegenwärtige Muster von Migration, Austausch und Identitätskonstruktion. Der Autor entwickelt eine translokale Perspektive und argumentiert, dass es hilfreich ist, auf Erkenntnisse der jüngeren Transnationalismus-Forschung zurück zu greifen, um diese Dynamiken besser verstehen zu können.

Translocal social practices dominate the processes of migration in Namibia’s southern Kunene region. The young move to nearby and more distant towns and cities for schooling and in search of work, the elderly return to rural communities where they take care of the livestock and the family homesteads. People are accustomed to being mobile from early childhood on, and many migrants develop identities that are neither urban nor rural. They are accustomed to coping in rural and in urban areas and their movements involve resource transfers that are critical for securing livelihoods. Despite the region is shaped by a historical participation in out-migration, for most migrants the rural homes remain the sentimental, social and economic centers towards which they direct their activities and aspirations. In this article, I examine rural-urban migration and exchange in north-western Namibia and their historical trajectories, highlighting how the regional patterns differ from those reported elsewhere in southern Africa. I also argue that it might be very productive to apply insights from recent studies of transnationalism to the socio-spatial dynamics I describe. I begin, though, with a sketch of some anthropological analyses of migration and urbanization on the Zambian Copperbelt that contrast with the approach I will adopt.2

2 I will limit this overview to a few prominent approaches in order to frame my argument. For a detailed overview on the Copperbelt anthropology see Ferguson (1990a, 1990b, 1992, 1994, 1999), MacMillan (1993, 1996) and Potts (2005).

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I. From Discourses of Contrast to Translocalism In southern Africa, processes of migration are deeply embedded in historical patterns of pre-colonial mobility, colonial wars, land dispossession, the white settlers’ attempts to exploit the native labor force and the recent post-colonial transformations. The colonial endeavor to efficiently rule the native populations and extract their labor created a regime that was built upon a division of rural and urban areas in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa (Mamdani 1996). These historical processes have led to a representation of rural and urban spheres that is deeply embedded in “discourses of contrast” (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992: 160). Contrasting concepts of city and countryside are rooted in many of the famous anthropological attempts to analyze social change on the Copperbelt. Anthropologists of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute (RLI) who produced an influential body of literature on social dimensions of urbanization in what was then Northern Rhodesia developed a framework that analytically separated the rural and the urban. In this approach, urban African culture was to be understood as a social field in its own right, independent of and somehow in opposition to the tribal rural areas from which the migrants originated (see for example Mitchell 1966). Within this dualistic framework, the representatives of the RLI observed that rural-urban migrants quickly abandoned their rural, i.e. tribal, roles upon entering the urban social milieu and reverted to them as soon as they returned to their villages. Rural-urban migration was therefore not a one-way process but rather a situational, context-dependent switch between different roles, an “on-and-offphenomenon” (Hannerz 1980: 141). This perspective was particularly stressed by Gluckman (1961: 81) who concluded in the early 1960s that “our examination of town and rural areas shows that it is possible for men to dichotomize their actions in separate spheres.” This perspective, however, was not shared by all members of the RLI. Epstein (1967) for example, who was himself sharply criticized for writing about rural and urban areas “as if they were two separate and partially autonomous systems” (Bruner 1967: 285), recognizes in his approach to Urbanization and Social Change in Africa that most people in the towns retain strong links to their villages. Referring to Godfrey Wilson’s work on circular migration, he reviews the rigid dualist framework provided by Gluckman and argues for a more differentiated position that takes into account the rural-urban “feedback mechanism” (Epstein 1967: 282). Mitchell (1987), too, recognized the role of rural linkages for customary urban procedures and concluded that “the disparity between rural and urban therefore was not absolute”

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(1987: 39). However, he does not provide a conceptual framework for taking these links into account: In an earlier essay he writes that labor migration can only be properly understood if town and country are conceptualized as one social field that allows for the analysis of the forces within it, concluding that he “. . . doubt[s] whether social science is yet in a position to be able to do this” (Mitchell 1959: 44). In his fierce criticism of the RLI literature, Ferguson (1999) provides a more recent interpretation of rural-urban relations in the Copperbelt. Based on the negative urban growth in the wake of declining copper prices he concludes that the approaches of the RLI anthropologists were biased by a “metanarrative of modernization” (ibid: 15). According to Ferguson, the unilinear perspective on urbanization implicit in this bias fuelled a “myth of permanent urbanization” (ibid: 41) which is called into question by recent processes of de-urbanization in the region. Based on his own ethnographic data he finds that many urban dwellers either return or intend to return to their rural relatives because of the declining urban economy. Ferguson observes that people faced with the choice of return migration “operated with stereotypical images of urban and rural virtues and vices and mapped these differences onto contrasting urban modes of life” (ibid: 83). In doing so, the urbanites fall into two categories which he conceptualizes as opposing “cultural styles.” These styles are encoded in diverging performative practices that express distinct “cosmopolitan” (urban) and “localist” (rural) values. They are not per se mutually exclusive, but, because adopting both styles is too costly, Ferguson (ibid, chapter 3) argues, most actors are forced to specialize in one style only. Different cultural styles thus split the urban-based workers into two groups, those that have always stayed in contact with their rurally based families and those that have distanced themselves from these relations, trying to escape the claims of their rurally based relatives. In contrast to the position held by the representatives of the RhodesLivingstone Institute, Ferguson’s view does not provide any scope for a situational adaptation. Rather, the actors choose to comply either with the localist or the cosmopolitan agenda and the on-and-off between rural and urban characteristic for much of the earlier anthropological work is replaced by a more unilinear specialization. Despite his criticism of previous anthropological attempts to analyze social change in Zambia, Ferguson reproduces the rural-urban dualism, albeit in a post-modern form (Gordon 2003: 134). The approaches outlined so far represent “discourses of contrast,” to borrow the phrase from the Comaroffs (1992: 160). Situational or permanent, they dichotomize actors and actions as either rural or urban. They obscure the relational dimensions of space created by migration,

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exchange and multiple belonging, and thus do not allow to analyze the creation of localized neighborhoods by circulating populations that Appadurai (2003: 192) describes as “translocalities.” Many scholars of migration and urbanization in sub-Sahara African criticized the dualist perspective on rural and urban spheres as misleading and too narrow and developed alternative approaches: Mayer (1962), for example, in his study on Xhosa in East London, South Africa, focuses on “sets of relations” connecting township and rural area. Summarizing their research on rural-urban migration in Kenya, Ross and Weisner (1977: 371) point out, that the rural and the urban has to be analyzed as an interdependent “single social field”. Peil and Sada (1984: 187) refer to rural and urban areas as “interrelated social fields”. Gugler (1991: 408) observes a “dual commitment” of rural-urban migrants in Eastern Nigeria, and Bank (2001: 136), in his work on township youth in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, refers to the integration of rural and urban orientation as “social hybridity.” However, despite all criticism and discomfort, the rural-urban binary “has survived this onslaught of material reality and philosophical re-positioning”, as geographers Cloke and Johnston (2005: 11) point out recently. With regard to migration and urbanization this might be due to the fact that binary conceptions of rural and urban are cornerstones in major macro-theoretical paradigms that either positively or negatively correlate development and migration, such as modernization –, urbanbias- or dependency theory (see Steinbrink 2009). In the past two decades or so, however, new theories emerged that challenge these older paradigms: Complementing the rapid growth of global interconnectedness, much attention was drawn to processes of transnational migration. Researchers increasingly realize that many migrants keep up continuous and multifaceted relationships with their countries of origin, and that these relationships significantly shape their political, economic, religious and social lives (Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc 1995, Brettell 2008, Kokot, Tölölyan, and Alfonso 2004, Rouse 1991). These dynamics seriously question earlier notions of migrant behavior, that conceptualized them either as completely assimilated in the “melting pots” of their host societies or as parts of a multicultural “salad bowl” (Levitt and Jaworsky 2007: 130). In anthropology, the growing body of studies on international migration, diaspora formations and globalization was accompanied by the emergence of new theoretical frameworks that significantly diverge from earlier, more territorialized notions of space, place and field (Clifford 1997, Gupta and Ferguson 1992, Hastrup and Olwig 1998, Kearney 1995, Malkii 1997, Smith 2001). Within this context, a new paradigm of transnationalism emerged in the early 1990s (Glick Schiller 2008).

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Transnationalism, as defined by Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton Blanc (1995: 7) refers to “the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link their societies of origin and settlement.” The idea emerged out of the necessity to conceptualize social fields that increasingly crossed national borders and thereby challenged concepts of nationhood and citizenship. Despite its preoccupation with the role of the nation state, research on transnationalism has revealed some social and spatial dynamics that are closely related to the processes of rural-urban interaction which I will describe for Namibia’s southern Kunene Region below. Scholars examined, for example, how “transnational families” manage to take care of their emotional, material and spiritual needs across national borders (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002). As transnational actors, they create networked spaces that are “composed of observable social relationships and transactions” (Glick Schiller 2008: 458). These resource flows are also made up of immaterial, “social remittances,” consisting of “ideas, behaviors, identities, and social capital” (Levitt 2001: 54). Although it is now widely recognized that many home countries are increasingly dependent on remittances, transactions across national borders are not restricted to flows toward the migrant’s home countries: “Reciprocal transactions ( . . . ) are the symbolic and material enactments of transnational family relationships” (Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc 1995: 84). In these approaches, space is conceived of in terms of social relations rather than physical distance and to emphasize the role of the actors in creating, negotiating and transforming transnational social spaces. They acknowledge that within these spaces actors can be incorporated simultaneously into multiple settings and networks (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). Within these networks, many transnational migrants develop a “diaspora consciousness” (Vertovec 1999) that connects them to their home as well as their host society. Despite the various processes of “deterritorialization” (Appadurai 2003) that go along with transnationalism and globalization, many migrants remain nevertheless “rooted in a particular place and time” (Levitt 2001: 11). These localities where the local and the global intersect are crucial for the social reproduction of the transnational networks (Levitt and Jaworsky 2007: 138). Olwig (1997) for example, writing about transnational migration from the Caribbean island of Nevis, observes that the translocal migrant networks are grounded in particular places that she terms “cultural sites.” These cultural sites are old family houses, often held as common family property. They are maintained and modernized by means of remittances. For most migrants, Olwig (ibid: 31) notes, this is a crucial practice for sustaining a home “with which they can identify and where

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they will always be welcome.” As such, these specific localities become important focal points in transnational family networks. Internal migration clearly did not receive the same amount of attention and theorization (Bilsborrow 1998: 2, Trager 2005: 4). Sub-Saharan Africa, where internal migration is the dominant form of population mobility, has therefore been largely excluded from the theoretical developments sketched above (Trager 2005: 6). Nevertheless, one could argue, following Adepoju (2006: 28), that the distinction between international and internal migration in Africa is blurred anyway because “international migration sometimes involves relatively shorter distances and less social heterogeneity ( . . . ) and fewer barriers than internal migration.” Furthermore, it is important to note that disparities in economic development, considered as major push and pull factors in international migration (Faist and Reisenauer 2009) not only occur between nations, they are apparent within developing countries as well. This is particularly true for Namibia, where colonial legacies and apartheid spatial planning remain evident in significant rural-urban income disparities and uneven regional development (see for example NPC 2008). Hence I argue, that the distinction between international and domestic migration in many respects is rather an artificial one and that research on rural-urban migration can benefit a great deal from the insights into the dynamics of transnational migration outlined above. I suggest extending the concept of transnationalism to include processes of migration and exchange across boundaries that are not necessarily national borders (Oßenbrügge 2004). To fit the concept to these requirements, I refer to it as translocalism. The term “trans-local” goes back to Guarnizo and Smith (1998): Rejecting the notion of “unboundedness” of transnational migrants, they point out, that their actions take place in historically and geographically specific places. Through their “local to local” relations, the migrants establish a “triadic connection” that links them to these particular places of origin and migration (1998: 13). This approach includes the processes of migration as such, but also captures the processes of material, social and ideational exchange going along with them and opens the perspective on social change. It embraces the primacy of place (Casey 1996) by at the same time de-essentializing it. To sum up, I refer to translocalism as sets of multidirectional and overlapping networks, constituted by migration, in which the exchange of resources, practices and ideas links and at the same time transforms particular places. In this article I will then seek to answer the following questions: How did translocal social fields emerge in the research area and what patterns do they follow? How do translocal livelihood strategies enable

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the households and families to secure their livelihoods? How is translocalism reproduced culturally? And why does the rural home remain such an important point of reference for many migrants? II. The Namibian Context Recent research on migration and urbanization in Namibia has clearly moved “beyond the traditional rural-urban dichotomy” (Frayne 2007: 94), stressing mutual dependency and interconnectedness of rural and urban livelihoods (e.g. Frayne and Pendleton 2001, Pendleton and Frayne 2000, Tvedten 2004). However, as Namibian sociologists Winterfeldt and Fox (2002:149) write, rural / urban and modern / traditional still are “common dualities in Namibian social sciences.” These dualities are in part due to a serious lack of comparative research. Colonialism and Apartheid have led to a geographical bifurcation of the country: The relatively densely populated regions north of the red line3 like the former Ovamboland and the Kavango Region were never subject to direct colonial rule and land dispossession. The inhabitants of the sparsely settled central and southern areas, however, suffered a long and often bloody history of dispossession, conquest and displacement (see for example Werner 2001). Patterns of labor migration in Namibia vary according to this division: In the north, labor migration was institutionalized in the 1920s (Cooper 1999), largely following the infamous South African model of contract labor: Young men were recruited to work in the mines, factories and farms on exploitative contracts. To prevent their permanent urbanization, they were forced to leave their families behind while temporarily living in cramped compounds and townships. The women stayed behind in the impoverished rural homelands, responsible for subsistence farming and for the reproductive needs of the migrants. Influx control and other racial restrictions to mobility forced the labor migrants to return to their rural homes once their labor was no longer needed (Gordon 1977, O’Laughlin 1998). While the emergence and impact of labor migration in the northern areas, particularly in former Ovamboland, is documented and analyzed to some extent (Cooper 1999, Gewald 2003, Gordon 1977, Hayes et al. 1998, Hishongwa 1992, Moorsom 1995, Voipio 1981), migration in 3 A fence established during German colonial rule that serves as a cordon sanitaire to prevent the spread of livestock-related diseases. It separates the northern regions of the country from the central and southern parts, which were formerly known as the ‘police zone.’

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the central and southern regions is much less understood.4 Patterns of migration in the southern Kunene Region, however, diverge in many respects from the paradigm sketched above, as the following description will show. 1. The Research Area

The small farms scattered on the communal land surrounding the village of Fransfontein in the arid north west of the country represent a settlement pattern typical for the wider region. It is characterized by an average size of about a dozen homesteads scattered around a communal water point. Windmills and diesel engines pump the water from the boreholes into a tank, from where it is distributed to a fenced-in watering place for the livestock and to a tap for human consumption. Water point committees represent the settlement’s major political decision making units. As in many other parts of arid southern Africa, the availability of water and pasture are the main limiting factors for human settlements. The average yearly rainfall is at 209mm5 and subject to high regional variations. Recurring droughts like those in 1981 – 83 and 1991 – 93 are endemic to the climate regime and pose a constant threat to the livelihood of the local pastoralists. Typical homesteads comprise several small houses and shacks of a square layout. Built from a framework of Mopane wood poles, the walls are covered with a reddish-brown mixture of cattle dung and clay and roofed with corrugated iron plates. Some of the homesteads also contain stone houses with whitewashed walls and cemented floors. These houses usually belong to the more affluent families, representing a growing socioeconomic stratification within the rural population. Most homesteads are surrounded by fences of wire or waist-high walls. The fenced courtyards contain the families’ cooking sites and the thatched open constructions which provide shade for the sitting area where most of daily social life takes place. Outside these courtyards but still located within earshot of the homestead are the livestock kraals. Here the household’s cattle, goat, sheep and draft ani4 The contract labor system in Ovamboland is also described in various accounts of former SWAPO fighters; see for example Helao Shityuwete (1990) and Helmut K. Angula (1990). Work that deals with issues of labor migration in central and southern regions include Henrichsen (2008), Silvester (1998) and Werner (1998). The focus, however, is mainly on the transformation of local pastoral economies in the context of colonial land dispossession. 5 This yearly average refers to the nearby town of Khorixas in the period from 1957 to 1999. The standard deviation is at 104mm (Zeidler / Hanrahan / Scholes 2002: 391).

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mals are kept during the night to protect them against jackals and theft. Livestock husbandry is the predominant economic strategy on the farms, though not in terms of absolute income. Most households keep some goats and cattle; some also keep sheep and draft animals. However, only few households survive on pastoral production alone, and many combine different sources of income to make a living (Schnegg 2009). In terms of absolute income, contribution-free old age pensions6 and remittances in cash and kind, often in combination, dominate in many households. Households with limited or no access to such transfer incomes usually belong to the lower income strata (Greiner 2008b, ch. 9). They eke out a living by performing odd jobs such as collecting and selling firewood or building materials and brewing homemade beer. Apart from the young men who work as hired herders, wage employment is rare and largely restricted to a few jobs in local government and administration.

2. Immigration and Ethnic Diversity

Fransfontein was founded as a settlement by Swaartbooi / Namas in the 1880s; the surrounding area was already inhabited by Damaras. Because of its relative remoteness from colonial settlement patterns, white settlers arrived in the research area comparatively late (Sullivan 1996). In 1922, the area was declared a Damara and Nama reserve (Bollig et al. 2006). In the late 1930s, a group of Herero-speaking pastoralists obtained permission to settle in the reserve. The newcomers, a group of comparatively rich farmers of mixed ethnic origin, had been forced to leave their reserve in the vicinity of Outjo. With their arrival, the reserve’s population almost doubled and livestock numbers grew fivefold (Miescher 2006). In the late 1960s, the Fransfontein reserve was incorporated into the newly created Damara homeland. This was established by the South African government alongside 10 other ethnically homogenous homelands in the process of implementing apartheid policies in what was then a South African colony (Vesper 1983). Despite the South African attempt at separating the different ethnic groups, immigration of people of other ethnic backgrounds into the region continued. This was partly due to the dynamics that Rhode (1993: 8) describes as a “com6 In Namibia, every citizen aged 60 years and over is entitled to a contribution-free old age pension which is paid out on a monthly basis. For a detailed account on the pension system in Namibia see Devereux (2001).

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plex and largely hidden movement of peoples within and between localities ( . . . ) in response to dwindling resources.” These processes usually followed the lines of kinship affiliation and mainly led to the immigration of Herero-speaking families into the research area. Another significant group of immigrants are hired herders and farm workers who have been increasingly employed by wealthier livestock owners since the mid-1980s. Most of these young men come from the northern areas of the country, predominantly from the Kaokoveld, but also from Ovamboland, the Kavango area and from the adjacent southern Angolan territories (Greiner 2007). Farm workers and their family members account for about 20 per cent of the total resident population. Accordingly, today’s population is ethnically diverse with Damara and Hereros constituting the biggest groups, followed by people of Ovambo and other ethnic origin such as Himba, Kavango, Nkumbi, San, Nama and Zemba. Conjugal and kinship ties, however, cross the ethnic boundaries, cultural practices are widely shared, and many people are multilingual, speaking both Khoekhoegowab and Otjiherero.7 3. Mobile Populations: Age and Gender Patterns

Processes of circular and return migration have led to a bifurcated age distribution on the farming settlements: The resident population is dominated by pre-school children and old-age pensioners. The predominance of the youngest generation can partly be ascribed to the widespread practice of child fostering. Many urban-based parents send their pre-school children to grow up with their grandparents on the farm. About 40 per cent of all minors can be classified as foster children. Children usually leave the farms for school, because schools are too far away for daily commuting. After this initial out-migration, people usually tend to stay in the urban areas, although many return to the rural areas where they spend months or even years in times of unemployment, pregnancy, illness, or if their help is needed. About every third rural-urban migrant claimed to have spent a period of at least three consecutive months on the parental or grandparental farm since schooling (N=56). There are younger men and women who stay on the farm to guard the homesteads of absent relatives, often on a temporary basis. Others settle down and try to make a living from livestock hus7 Otjiherero is a Bantu language; Khoekhoegowab is the language of the Damara and Nama (Maho 1998). Besides these languages, Afrikaans is spoken widely.

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bandry. Most farm-related work, however, is performed by hired herders who usually are not related or otherwise affiliated with the resident families. Some of these workers bring their families along; most, however, are single young men in their 20s and 30s. Upon retirement from their jobs in the cities, older people usually return to the farms: About 21 per cent of the farm residents are aged sixty and older. This number is three times higher than the national average (Republic of Namibia 2003: 11 – 12) and strongly emphasizes the continuing significance of return migration and the relevance of the rural hinterland as a retreat area for elder people. The prevalent right to return to the farm leads Rhode (1993: 41) to the conclusion that “the population of a farm settlement at any particular time tends to represent only a small proportion of people claiming rights of residence.” Contrary to the skewed age distribution, the male-to-femaleratio in the research area is relatively balanced and the statistical figure is close to the ratio given for the Kunene Region as a whole.8 Regional census data from 1981 (Rhode 1993: 24) and from 1991 (Republic of Namibia 1994) indicates that the balanced sex ratio has been stable throughout the last decades. In the Fransfontein region, the out-migration of women does not differ significantly from that of the men. Like their male counterparts, the women leave for schooling and in search of employment. There are, however, slight gender differences in return migration, as women tend to move back to the rural areas more often. This might be due to higher unemployment rates amongst young women (Mufune 2002: 185), but also to gender specific divisions of labor and social roles. While typically male working domains in the rural household are often outsourced to hired farm laborers, daughters and granddaughters are more likely to be asked to return to the farm to help out with ‘female’ household tasks such as caring for old or sick relatives and children. III. Patterns of Translocality In the previous section, I have described regional setting, historical background and demographic impact of the migration processes. 8 My census data shows a sex ratio of 97 (N = 256, hired herders excluded). The sex ratio is defined as the number of males per 100 females. A ratio of 101 was given for the Kunene region for 2001 (Republic of Namibia 2005). By contrast, the sex ratio in former Ovamboland diverges significantly, most probably as a legacy of the contract labor system mentioned above. The respective figures for 2001 are: 83 (Ohangwena), 81 (Omusati), 84 (Oshana) and 90 (Oshikoto), indicating a clear predominance of females in those Regions (Republic of Namibia 2003: 12 – 16).

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Starting with an ethnographic vignette, I will now explore, how patterns of translocality are produced and reproduced in three distinct fields, namely mobility, exchange and identity formation. I met Richard Shikongo and Ismael Murangi9 on a hot afternoon in the dusty mining town of Arandis, where they work for the Rossing Uranium Mine, a huge open pit some kilometers out of town. We were sitting in the living room of Richard’s flat, the windows covered to keep out the blistering sun. A noisy TV-set in the background showed a popular soap opera. They had just arrived from their shift. Both are in their twenties, both grew up on a farm in the Fransfontein area. Richard has been living in Arandis since he graduated from high school in Windhoek. His sister, who works as an accountant for the Rossing Company, told him about the job opportunities in the mine. Excellent high school marks opened the door to the company’s fully reimbursed vocational training for him. After passing the exams he was offered permanent employment with the company. He now works as an operator. Ismael, by contrast, found employment only five months ago. He went to school in Khorixas, a small town close to Fransfontein, where he failed his final exams. Since then, he has been living partly with his grandparents on the farm and partly with his mother who works as a cook in a staff canteen in Arandis. Ismael is part of the newly recruited staff working for the subcontracting companies involved in maintenance, cleaning and other services. After a long depression on the world market, demand for uranium oxide has been rising since 2005 and the mine has increased production. For both, the rural home is of great importance and they both agree that they are planning to settle down back there as soon as they retire from work. Richard has a two-year-old daughter who lives with his grandparents on the farm. On weekends, he always returns there to see her and to provide the household with some groceries. He has his own livestock on the farm, about ten heads of cattle and some goats. He bought the goats with his first salary; the cattle were given to him by his grandfather years ago. The animals are kraaled with his mother’s animals and looked after by a hired herder from southern Angola. Like Richard, Ismael spends most of his free weekends on the farm visiting his rural family. He plans to buy some goats soon and wants to leave them with his grandfather’s flock. When the young men return to Arandis after having spent the weekend on the farm, a goat is slaughtered for them so they can take some meat along to deep freeze it. Meat is expensive in town. Asked, if they would not like to spend their weekends in town and adapt to a more urban lifestyle, Richard answered: 9

All names are pseudonyms.

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“. . . You won’t stay for the rest of your life in town. One day, you will have to go back to the rural area where you are coming from ( . . . ). So if you are moving there, you won’t be able to cope with the farm activities. But if you are both, you know the lifestyle of the town and you know the lifestyle of the rural areas, it will go. Wherever you go, you will be able to cope.”10

This quote is representative for a “culture of migration” (Ali 2007, Klute and Hahn 2007) widely found in the Fransfontein region: a culture that allows people to adapt flexibly to rural and urban lifestyles while at the same time preserving a strong sense of belonging to the farm. This attitude has shaped and is shaped by the migration-specific age and gender structures highlighted above, and by patterns of translocality that facilitate the mobility of people, goods, services and ideas between rural and urban areas, as the following sections will demonstrate. 1. Patterns of Mobility

Emigration from the farming settlements starts around the age of six, when children leave for attending school. Schooling is compulsory, and most pupils stay at their relatives’ homes or at school hostels during their schooling days. A frequent change of residence is common: By the end of their school career, most children have lived in several towns or cities and with different relatives within and beyond former Damaraland. These patterns of movement have shaped the biographies of many children from the rural areas since long before independence. The relative proximity to the capital Windhoek, to the coastal towns of Swakopmund and Walvis Bay and mining centers such as Arandis and Uis has spurred the migratory movements between the farm settlements and the urban centers, and did so even during the times of Apartheid. A figure given by Rhode (1993: 73) gives insight into the extent to which the residents of the former Damara homeland are linked to urban areas. He notes that in 1981 more than a third of those classified as Damara by the South Africans were living in the Katutura area of Windhoek.11 In contrast with the Ovambo and other inhabitants of the homelands north of the ‘police zone,’ who were bound into Arandis, 29. 11. 2006. As early as in the 1920s and 1930s, the Damara were considered ‘overrepresented’ in urban areas by the colonial authorities (Emmett 1999: 221), and by the 1950s, they were described as the indigenous group that was most profoundly rooted in the urban milieu (Peyroux 2004: 41). In the 1960s, about 42 per cent of those classified as Damara resided in urban areas (Botha 2003: 5). Labor migration of Damara started as early as the 1870s with the shipment of indentured workers to the Cape Colony (Henrichsen 2008). 10 11

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the contract labor system, Africans from the central and southern homelands were allowed to enter Windhoek on a temporary basis. Upon arrival, they had to apply for a permit within 72 hours. Persons under 16 years of age were exempt from this regulation (Pendleton 1996: 30). The families in the Fransfontein region whose kinship networks stretched into the capital seemed to have made extensive use of this relative freedom. Many school children were sent to stay with their relatives in Windhoek, where they stayed and acquired a permanent residence permit. The life history of Isaak Ndjoze illustrates a typical pattern of return-migration: Isaak is sixty years old and has just retired from his well paid job working for a parastatal developer of low income housing. At the age of six, he was sent first to Otjiwarongo and later to Windhoek by his parents to attend school. He started to work with a South African-based company in Windhoek. Due to racially restricted opportunities of advancement he changed to the National Building and Investment Corporation in the 1980s, where he quickly climbed the career ladder. I met him in his private town house, a nice two-story building in a more affluent neighborhood of Windhoek Katutura. He was preparing his return to the farm where I had met him a couple of times before while he was looking after his house and buying cattle at a local auction. City life, he told me, is too expensive once you do not have a steady income anymore. But apart from this, he had planned to farm cattle for many years already, and he made great efforts to improve the farm house he inherited from his parents. He wanted to sublet his town house until one of his children, who currently live abroad, are prepared to return to Namibia and inherit. Asked, if he was looking forward to country life and prepared to leave the amenities of urban life behind, he told me: “Well, the thing is also that the older you get, you feel much better out of town, on the farm, because it’s very quiet. You know in town, people are getting clever; most of the botsotsos12 is here. ( . . . ) So best thing to do is to move from a busy area to a more quiet area like the farm: because of the living standards.”13

Like in the case of Isaak, returning to the rural home at the end of one’s working life completes the circular structure of migration. Lower costs of living in the countryside as well as issues of security are given as main reasons for returning by rich and poor migrants alike, and many are looking forward to escape the city for a quiet and peaceful 12 Botsotso is a term used to describe youth gangs and urban criminals (often synonymously with “Tsotsi”). 13 Windhoek Katutura, 03. 12. 2006.

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life as livestock farmers: The farm remains the place of identity, comfort and belonging, a “cultural site” (Olwig 1997): Many migrants frequently return to the farm for holidays, particularly at Christmas, when the whole family meets there to enjoy their days off. Some even come to celebrate their birthdays on the farm. Urban born children are taken for baptism in the Fransfontein church and most migrants prefer burial in the local cemeteries, in which many grave markers are produced of fiberglass in Windhoek-Katutura. Although urban houses are important nodal points in the rural-urban networks, they usually do not receive the same amount of attention as their rural counterparts. Upon retirement, houses and rented flats will often be passed on to relatives so that they stay within the family. They serve as a main entry point for newly arrived migrants, enforcing and enabling the patterns of chain migration. In contrast to the rural homes financial investment remains relatively low. Unlike homes on the farm to which many migrants feel emotionally attached, urban homes are considered transitory dwellings. This transitory state of urban residence is reflected in the attitude of rural-urban-migrants toward their livestock: While in town, many migrants leave their own animals behind in the rural areas. Some keep them in the family kraal. Others, who are referred to as part-time farmers, leave their livestock in the hands of hired herders. For these people – most of them economically successful labor migrants – pastoralism is not only an economic strategy, it also enables them to create and sustain a sense of belonging to the area, meanwhile transforming it according to their needs (Schnegg, Pauli, and Greiner forthcoming). Therefore, in a material as well as an emotional sense, the rural home remains a center of gravity.

2. Patterns of Exchange

Individual mobility is accompanied by multidirectional flows of material support and services between town and country. About a third of all children and grandchildren living in urban areas send remittances in cash and kind (N=416) to their relatives in the villages. Most remittances come once or twice a year as food or household items such as furniture or clothes. Smaller amounts of money are sent back as well, and in fewer instances financial support is given on a regular basis.14 14 Remittances and rural-to-urban transfers follow complex intergenerational patterns that also relate to processes of socio-economic stratification. These dynamics cannot be analyzed here. For a detailed account on remittance

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These patterns of exchange are clearly gendered: Money and foodstuff sent from urban-based daughters of heads of rural household significantly exceed the contributions made by sons. Furthermore, the monetary value of female remittances is substantially higher. The withdrawal of men from family support relations has been observed in other African societies (Schäfer 2004: 7 f.). However, in this case, a portion of the female support can be traced to single working mothers sustaining the fostering household (for similar observations see Gordon 1972: 42, Iken 1999: 110). Many households in the rural area, especially those that do not qualify for the old-age-pension scheme, depend on these transfers. They are not passive beneficiaries of these transfers, as they provide their urban-based kin with highly appreciated meat and dairy products which are expensive in the urban centers. Some of the more affluent rural households also provide cash generated by livestock sales for their urban-based relatives. These transfer relations are notable for the ties persistent even among those family members having lived in urban areas for the entirety of their adult life. There are no significant differences between sending and receiving patterns of family members who recently migrated to cities, and those who were born there (a similar conclusion can be found in Frayne 2005). Evenia Murangi, whose parents live on a farm in the Fransfontein area, is a case in point: After growing up with relatives in Windhoek, she moved to Arandis and then later returned to Windhoek for a job as a government officer. She is in her forties and sees herself as a modern city woman who appreciates the comfort, entertainment and access to information of urban life. Unlike her brothers who also work in urban areas, she does not want to grow old on the farm. Still, she feels the need for her own house in the vicinity of the parental homestead and has begun to search for a suitable place there. She would like to have a place outside of Windhoek to feel at home and to keep livestock. Apart from the emotional attachment, the rural home for Evenia is a source of material security and sustenance. Both her parents are entitled to an old-age pension. Furthermore, they own a large herd of cattle, and are not dependent on money remitted by their children. In contrast, a family member can ask the parents to sell a cow and send the money to town. Evenia explained in our interview: “We are benefiting from our parents although we live in town. We are always going back if we need something, especially if we are in debt with money.

sending and the socio-economic impact of transfers see Greiner (2008b chap. 8 & 9, 2009b).

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Usually we go then back to our parents and then they help us. So it is a twoway traffic.”15

Apart from being a source of material security, rurally-based households provide important services to their urban relatives, offering services such as child fostering, caring for sick family members and looking after livestock. In this context, the contribution-free old age pensions play a crucial role. Implemented in 1973 and augmented after independence in 1990, the pension system enables the elderly to lead an economically independent life and even care for their dependents. For the family members living in the rural areas, their urban-based relatives on the other hand provide a “bridgehead to the outside world” (Geschiere and Gugler 1998: 310). They provide them with information on employment possibilities and allow them to access town-based facilities such as hospitals and government offices. Furthermore, they accommodate new migrants that come to the cities in search of work or to attend school. The translocal networks, spanning rural and urban areas, allow the involved families to utilize existing price differences to combine rural and urban incomes. These translocal livelihood strategies connecting rural and urban households have been observed in many other societies in sub-Saharan Africa (see for example Adepoju 1995, Foeken and Owuor 2001, Geschiere and Gugler 1998, Gugler 1996, Koenig 2005, Krüger 1998, Lohnert 2002, Potts 2000, Schmidt-Kallert 2009, Smit 1998, Steinbrink 2009). They underline the fact that rural-urban relations often do not reflect a one-sided dependence, as presumed in earlier center-periphery approaches to rural-urban migration (e.g. Santos 1979). These relationships are rather based on mutual dependence, bilateral exchange and reciprocal strategies of informal social security: My survey data on transfer relations shows that in 2005 the economic value of rural-urban transfers was largely equal with the value of remittances sent by urban-based family members.16 I however believe that there are cyclical variations in the value of transfers, which depend on the ecological conditions, events such as droughts, and on the national economic situation. This suggests that the rural-urban relations are a flexible and adaptive mechanism that increases the resilience of both rural and urban households.17 Windhoek, 31. 01. 2006. In 2005, when data for this project was collected, the rural area, however, has experienced a number of consecutive raining seasons with above average precipitation. 17 Several authors (see e.g. Fuller 1993, Klocke-Daffa 2001, Schnegg 2006) have pointed out, that among the Damara and Nama, reciprocal obligations and 15 16

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3. Translocal Identities

Lensey Nel returned to the farm in his late 30s. Having lost his job as an insurance broker in Windhoek he decided to concentrate on his livestock, supervise the herders hired by his brothers and sisters, and assist his mother on the farm. He as well manages a small bottle shop in the nearby town of Khorixas belonging to one of his brothers living in Swakopmund. Lensey doesn’t plan to stay for the rest of his life, but for the moment enjoys being on the farm where he grew up. He tells me that one day he plans to return to Windhoek or Swakopmund to find another job. He has lived in many towns and cities for schooling as well as for work: in Windhoek, Rundu, Khorixas, Otavi, Oranjemund and Arandis specifically. Similar to his brothers and sisters who live and work in urban areas, he has always held a close relationship to the farm. In our interview, he pinpoints these translocal family dynamics: “We move, we go to cities, we come back. We believe in our roots, even the rules we have here on the farm, we apply them in our houses in Windhoek and the rules we have got there in Windhoek, we apply them here. The experience we pick up in Windhoek, we bring it back. You know, we build toilets, showers. Some people bring TVs, they watch. You know what we are doing at the farm? We modernize with our tradition. You know, we don’t throw our tradition away, we mix.”18

The translocal movement of people and goods between town and country brings with it a profound change of rural lifestyles, tellingly described in the quote above. People planning retirement from their urban jobs build township-style “matchbox” houses on the farm, protected by burglar bars and often fitted with connections for running water and electricity. Both are unlikely to be available in the years to come. In creating their place on the farm, they express their urbanized tastes and experiences. They modernize livestock breeding by upgrading kraals, cattle pens and watering tanks. They also introduce urban style furniture such as upholstery, glass cabinets, and other accessories associated with town life such as international soccer, fashion magazines, high-quality clothes, plastic toys made in China and solar-powered TV sets. The endeavor towards rural ‘modernization’ through the implementation of urban conveniences touches on a central argument of this “demand sharing” are part of the culturally shared system of norms and values. Against the multicultural background of the research area, the question emerges how far these cultural traits are shared by the non-Damara / Nama population. This point, however, cannot be elaborated here in more detail. 18 Khorixas, 25. 11. 2006.

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essay: In bridging the gap between two locations, migrants create translocal spaces of ideational and material exchange, thereby transforming their places of origin and migration. This dynamic is closely linked to a translocal identity which embraces the particularities of different localities and allows the migrants to adapt and negotiate their back and forth. Like Lensey, most people in the Fransfontein region acquire this translocal identity while growing up: they become accustomed to a mobile way of life, to rural urban-exchange and a blending of lifestyles from early childhood on. This was also described by researchers in southern Namibia (Iken 1999: 74, Klocke-Daffa 2001: 59 f.). Migration in this region is not perceived as a threat to ethnic identity or family solidarity, but as a necessary and even welcome step inherent to certain stages of life. The necessity to adapt translocally is deeply rooted in the region and should not be reduced to the recent phenomenon of rural-urban migration. Historical perspective reminds us that people in north western Namibia have always been mobile, whether as pastoral nomads, as hunter-gatherers, or as labor migrants (see for example Henrichsen 2008, Rhode 1993: 7 f.). The rootedness of translocal dynamics is reproduced in linguistic patterns: Among the Oshivambo-speaking people in northern Namibia, those who went to town and broke their ties with the rural-based family are called ‘ombwiti,’ which means that they have “lost their roots” (Frayne and Pendleton 2001:1066). This term suggests a cultural concept of migration which implies fear of alienation similar to what has been described for the “red Xhosa” on the Eastern Cape by Mayer (1971) and by Cliggett (2005: 151) for the Gwembe Tonga in rural Zambia.19 Many of the residents on the Fransfontein commons are familiar with the term and know that some of the hired herders and other immigrants to the region could be referred to as such. However, they do not use it, nor do they have a similar word. I agree with Frayne and Pendleton (2001: 1066) in arguing that this reflects their long exposure to town life. Ovambo contract workers, by contrast, often lived in compounds and have long been excluded from mainstream life in towns (Emmett 1999: 258). When asked how they refer to their relatives who have migrated to the towns and cities, people from Fransfontein usually reply that for them there is no need for a term like ‘ombwiti’ because people always come back and stay in contact. There are, however, Afrikaans terms to address different lifestyles, referring to true urbanites as ‘dorpenaar’ and to villagers as ‘plaasjapies.’ Although these words may be derogative, they are mostly used in a rather joking manner. 19 In the Kavango Region, similar linguistic concepts exist (Michael Proepper, personal communication, June 2009).

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Besides these linguistic concepts, people mostly operate with contrasting images of rural and urban lifestyles: Life in the urban areas is characterized in terms of entertainment, access to information and manifold possibilities for personal economic advancement, but also as bustling, expensive and unhealthy. Crime, alcohol abuse and violence are perceived as major urban threats, as opposed to the countryside, where life is considered to be safe, quiet and relaxed. Life in the rural areas is mostly referred to as a ‘life in freedom,’ and as self-sufficient and cheap. In the urban areas, one is forced to work day-in day-out, but in the end spend it all for daily consumption: Bus rides, rent, water and food, everything is expensive. But if one finds a good job, one can, for example, buy new clothes, which are clear markers of difference in this context: urbanites, almost by definition, wear elegant and clean western-style clothes. ‘Plaasjapies’ cannot afford this luxury. They are dirty from their work and are mostly considered to be backward and clumsy. Urbanites on the other hand, are described as clever, but also as being inept with their hands. As one informant expressed his disapproval, “those [urban] people, when they come to the farm, they cannot even slaughter a goat.”20 Like Richard and Ismael, the young men living in Arandis, many people from the Fransfontein Region claim to familiarize with both lifestyles. They refuse to specialize in being either rural or urban. Only this translocal identity allows them to remain mobile and make the best of an environment characterized by a high degree of economic and ecological insecurity in both the rural and the urban sphere.

IV. Conclusion: Toward a Translocal Perspective Contrasting representations of the rural and urban worlds are common in Namibian everyday life. As the dynamics outlined above illustrate, this is only one side of the coin. Concentrating on discourses of contrast obscures the “intimate interdependence of rural and urban, of sources not only of income but also of identity” (James 2001: 94). Scholarly analysis of the rapidly changing social structure of post-independence Namibia must take into account the multiple layers of rural-urban connectedness. In order to analyze this complexity of rural-urban relations and the various challenges connected with it, I have argued that a translocal perspective which borrows from the insights of recent studies on trans20 Windhoek Katutura, 17. 11. 2006. Interviewee: Vincent Louw (pseudonym).

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nationalism provides a useful starting point. In this perspective, space is conceived of as primarily relational, consisting of multiple interrelated networks. Based on this framework, I focused on four interrelated sets of questions, namely: What are the translocal patterns and how did they emerge? What is their role in securing livelihoods? How are these patterns reproduced culturally? And why does the rural home remain such an important point of reference to many migrants? With regard to the emergence of translocal networks, I have argued that they are a result of the connectedness and geographical proximity of the homeland population with the urban centers long before independence. The patterns of mobility and exchange follow a circular structure, typical to many countries in sub-Saharan Africa (Adepoju 2006, Collinson et al. 2003, Gugler 1996, Posel 2003). In many respects, these patterns diverge from other representations of contract labor migration in Namibia and southern Africa. Contrary to what is described for Ovamboland (Hishongwa 1992) or Lesotho (e.g. Murray 1981) families in the research area are not divided along gendered patterns. The population is rather divided along age-specific markers such as schooling and retirement, as migration is inherent to certain stages in the life cycle. Translocal livelihood strategies bridge these generational divisions and close the rural-urban divide: The multi-directional exchange of goods and services, the circulation of people and ideas connect town and country and brings the actors into a position of mutual interdependence. This spatial formation of multiple, circulating networks allows the rural and the urban households to secure their livelihoods. It enables them to access complementary resources, to make use of price differences and thereby increase their flexibility in the face of environmental and economic insecurities. In many cases both rural and urban households profit from these networks, and the value of transfers flowing between both areas is largely balanced. Although the urban and rural spheres are codified in contrasting concepts, there seem to be no mutually exclusive, mono-cultural identification schemes as suggested by Ferguson’s (1999) observations from urban Zambia. Rural-urban migrants rather develop translocal identities, allowing them to keep a foothold in both town and countryside. This appears to be the most suitable strategy, providing a flexible and adaptive competence necessary to make use of the advantages that both spaces offer and to make do in times of insecurity. Insights from transnational studies are particularly valuable for exploring these dynamics. Similar to what has been described in many studies on transnational migration as “hybridity continuum” (Levitt and Jawors-

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ky 2007: 139), people in the research area create translocal identities in order to position themselves within the social fields between the rural and the urban. This process is enhanced by the prevailing “culture of mobility” where migration is a “learned social behavior” (Ali 2007: 39) and children are accustomed to mobility early in life. The grounding of translocal networks in specific places is another insight, advanced by scholarship on transnationalism and valuable for an understanding of the rural-urban dynamics described. For many families, these localities are their rural homesteads on the farm. In a case study on migration and gender dynamics in rural Mexico, Pauli (2008) directed attention to the role of houses in cultural transformations. In the present case, a focus on the rural homesteads also reveals valuable insights: They are the places to which the migrants feel emotionally attached, where they frequently return, and where they invest, thereby transforming rural lifestyles. Similar to what Olwigs (1997) describes in her ethnography on transnational networks in the Caribbean, rural homes are the “cultural sites” where rural and urban worlds interact. Based on these findings, it’s possible to conclude that many insights from transnationalist scholarship are useful for a better understanding of migration dynamics in Namibia. Therefore, it is promising to move toward a more comparative perspective on international and internal migration dynamics, as scholars of transnationalism recently suggested (Levitt and Jaworsky 2007: 146). There are many social dynamics to be uncovered, such as the growing socio-economic stratification in the rural areas, the gendered dimensions of translocal practices or the ecological dimensions of part-time farming. In addition, the regional variety of migration experiences in Namibia must be recorded and compared. Clearly, more research is necessary.

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