By Mex Mujazemee Muatjetjeja
AT the height of the Nama and Herero armed incursions of the early 19th century the two groups fought back and forth battles around the Windhoek, Okahandja and Otjimbingwe areas. The object of contention between the two formidable groupings was the generous herds of cattle commanded by the prolific Herero farmers. The Herero community, faced by the threat of Nama and other external aggressors (like the Ovandu vo tuvao), realised that they needed to organise themselves in order to be able to act in unison of command in dealing with the Nama and for better self-governance. They decided that the starting point would be to designate a supreme leader in the form of an overall chief to rule and lead them through the difficult times.
Chief Maharero Tjamuaha of Okahandja and his men had ferociously fought the Nama, warding off their attempts to confiscate and plunder his vast cattle resources. Oral authorities claim that fierce battles against the Nama had raged in the period from 1861 to 1863 and the biggest prize for Maharero’s forces was the enemy casualty of Kaptein Christian Afrikanner, a Nama military supremo of the time and son of the great Jonker Afrikanner, a.k.a Kakuuoko kua Mukuruuouje. Maharero had marshalled his forces with such profound tact that despite his inferior weaponry he managed to neutralise the amok-running Nama at least interimly. This earned him the status of an above-mediocre military leader and widespread recognition by his community and foes alike.
On the other hand, to the west of Okahandja Chief Zeraeua of Otjimbingwe, capitalising on his strategic interface with European traders and aspirant settlers at the coast had amassed a significant deposit of armaments and deployed them to his subjects. This was hailed as a notable display of entrepreneurial prowess by the man.
It is plausible to infer that the above exercise was an interim one and heralded an impending future where the tribe would have a supreme leader providing both civic and military leadership.
The historic Otjimbingwe gathering
Having dealt with the defence and security issue the Herero mobilised again and converged at Otjimbingwe in 1867 to convene a conference of epic proportions. The conference was a pioneering one in terms of constituting the political and organisational order of the Herero. The main deliverable was to designate a supreme leader, one with overarching authority and custodianship over an array of community affairs including the cultural, socio-economic, religious and political as well as the customary and legal. Most importantly he was to provide war-time leadership as well. In my view this was the founding occasion for the institution of the Ovaherero paramount chieftaincy. Hence Otjimbingwe should be a conspicuous icon in the continuum of Herero history.
Nonetheless the conference kicked off in earnest and candidates were nominated. Amongst those sounded were the names of Chief Zeraeua and Major General Maharero Tjamuaha. Oral evidence has it that Chief Zeraeua enjoyed a good measure of support from certain quarters to become paramount chief.
However, despite being flattered and humbled by the show of confidence in him Chief Zeraeua was evidently a modest man and out of either self-doubt or selflessness he voluntarily yielded to Chief Maharero Tjamuaha paving the way for the latter’s accession to paramount chieftaincy. He regarded Maharero as having had better credentials to lead, going by his recent combat success against the Nama.
Fact! The Ovaherero went to war with imperial Germany under the commander-in-chiefship of Chief Samuel Maharero in 1904. They suffered a crushing defeat and a great majority were killed. The surviving few scattered, one group fleeing over the border into Botswana, with Chief Samuel Maharero and some of his military top brass amongst them. Many of those remaining in the native land were cornered and gridlocked in a network of concentration camps.
Whilst enduring the harsh conditions in captivity the Herero decided to regroup and rebuild their shattered nation. They had lost family, community, property and became disconnected from their chief, Samuel Maharero who was now a fugitive and holed up in the then British colonial territory of Bechuanaland, present day Botswana. They decided to re-orient and appoint a new leadership whilst, in hindsight, taking cognisance of the comedy of judgement errors committed by Chief Samuel Maharero prior to the outbreak of war.
The Kutako exploits
The process returned Hosea Kutako as paramount chief after an incident-free democratic exercise that had pitted Kutako against another candidate by the name Kaivaka Kamaheke in the year 1915. Kutako was fully endorsed by the people as well as the exiled Samuel Maharero who had, perhaps out of guilty conscience and remorse for his ill-fated deeds, issued a warning to his paternal kinship against further involvement in the chieftaincy in a leadership role.
Thus Hosea Kutako went on to become a full paramount chief. So it is not unprecedented to have a non-royal person become a paramount chief and there is nothing wrong with that. I am challenged to understand why in this era I continue to hear voices that advocate for chieftaincy to be the exclusive preserve of royals. We cannot be doing things the same way we did them donkey’s years back and at the same time hope to be progressive. That would be quite paradoxical!
Back to the chronology. Chief Kutako served until his passing in 1970. Towards the latter years of his tenure Kutako put Clemens Kapuuo on a succession plan which ran until his demise whereafter Kapuuo took the reins. The late Dr Kuaima Riruako took over from Kapuuo after the latter was killed in a hitman-style strike at his retail business in Windhoek in 1978.
Oral evidence suggests that during the course of Kapuuo’s term there had commenced discontent with the custody of the paramount chieftaincy being with him. The issue was that the Maharero royals sought to and questioned the genealogical qualification of Clemence Kapuuo and his accession to the office of paramount chief, which they contended was theirs. Inter alia, this has since rendered the institution to be marred in controversy with disputes flaring to date. Dr Riruako’s tenure was also characterised by a trail of attacks and counter-attacks on his legitimacy as paramount chief. Compelling authorities claim that although there were lone dissenting voices at his designation and inauguration at Okahitua in 1978 a majority of the delegates in attendance at the event endorsed him as paramount chief of the Ovaherero and amongst that majority was a fraction of the Maharero royal family.
Hot on the heels of the passing on of Dr Riruako, an elective meeting held at a location in the Omaheke Region returned none other than Advocate Vekuii Rukoro as paramount chief of the Ovaherero. Status quo is that he is the new man at the pinnacle of the Ovaherero traditional authority. However, like his predecessor he has already been visited with a barrage of attacks by detractors who claim that the process of his accession to the pedestal of the traditional institution he is now running was fraught with procedural impropriety. They also seem to suggest that they doubt the existence of the traditional institution in the first place. Furthermore Chief Rukoro’s detractors have indirectly sought to cast aspersions on the legitimacy of his paramount chieftaincy seemingly drawing reason from the archaic dogma that chieftaincy should or ought to be a royal monopoly. This is a retired approach to doing things and cannot be sustainable anymore.
However, even in the pre-colonial past a man did not just ascend to the throne, one had to prove his worth one way or the other. For instance you had to be a leading warrior or founder of a town. However, the world has moved on and as it does, it throws at society other challenges like shortage of land, food, shelter, Ebola, competition for resources, etc. Contemporary chieftaincy should therefore evolve and adapt to new challenges.
Thus the modern chief must be global, modern and entrepreneurial. It is not suggested that chieftaincy should be modernised wholesome. It is recognised that for it to sustain itself chieftaincy should be a composite of both traditional and modern forces because it cannot be typified by a single characteristic.
The way forward
In conclusion, the Herero paramount chieftaincy institution did not exist before the inaugural Otjimbingwe conference. What existed were incohesive clusters of clans run by local chiefs. In many cases those chiefs were individuals drawn from prominent families and they only exercised authority over subjects within their jurisdictional purview. The threat of external aggression by the Nama and other groupings provided the catalysis for dialogue amongst the Herero which would eventually culminate in the transformation of the tribe’s organisational and administrative order. It was perceived as a new reality and an imperative for the Herero to defend and preserve their sovereignty, territorial integrity and property rights.
What we need today is a hybrid of both traditional and modern principles in determining who becomes a chief because in addition to his symbolic and ceremonial duties the chief is expected to provide leadership in the modern sense. Neither tradition nor modernity alone suffices to yield what the contemporary chief needs to face the challenges of modern day life.
Furthermore, in my view paramount chieftaincy is still as relevant as it was in the medieval past albeit the challenges it has to now deal with have changed. A paramount chief may have authority over a people or community with a generally distinct culture, value system and locale or even different locales although the subjects may have slight sub-local variances at clan level. Nonetheless for ease of governance, advocacy and unity of voice as well as community development it would be better to have an overarching traditional authority. For instance the issue of Herero-Nama reparations dictates that each tribe speaks with unity of voice under a unit of traditional leadership and one that has a proficient command of intellect in the tribe’s history, culture, genealogy, anthropology, etc. The individual traditional leader can then be expected to speak for the entire tribe or community with legitimacy and credibility.
Chieftaincy and better still paramount chieftaincy could make governance at national and local authority levels easier where adequate authority has been devolved to the institution. Chiefs could be used to assist government in implementing and coordinating development programmes at community level as well as help disseminate information. Thus, if harnessed efficiently, the paramount chieftaincy institution could serve as an instrumental element of the infrastructure of broader national organisation and should not necessarily be viewed as more of a societal scourge than the necessity that it could be.
*Mex Mujazemee Muatjetjeja is an observer of the evolution of Ovaherero paramount chieftaincy. He can be contacted at muatjetjeja@gmail.com