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Defining Landscape: Resolving Contradictions at Postcolonial Omhedi, the Oukwanyama Royal Palace, Namibia



Author(s)

Napandulwe Shiweda Multidisciplinary Research Centre, UNAM

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DOI:10.17265/2159-550X/2017.02.005

The history of Omhedi in north-central Namibia is not simply about place but is a site that internalizes conflictual and contradictory social forces which are inscribed in place. While Omhedi was a contested site of conflict during the war of liberation and served as a stage for ethnographic tours and photography, it has in post-colonial period come to represent a segment of important local power as it is currently the seat of the new Oukwanyama kingship. The central aim of this paper is to explain the transformation of Omhedi as a site of “spectacles” of culture during the colonial period and as the seat of Oukwanyama monarchy in post-colonial Namibia. It centrally asks how the colonial politics of the time influenced the way Omhedi was organized and accessed and the ways in which people attach meaning to and organize a sense of space and place in the postcolonial era. This paper is significant as it explores how political legitimacy can be reactivated at such a contradictory site of “traditional” power like Omhedi and what meanings these hold in terms of access in postcolonial Namibia. I conclude by raising issues of the past with the restoration of the Oukwanyama monarchy and its installation at Omhedi after independence, posing key questions about shifts in political legitimacy in both the colony and the post-colony. My analysis utilizes theories on the important use of landscape as a physical “space” for living, but also as a “place” with its meanings and contributions to societal identity. Consequently the place identity is a particular element contributing to sense of place. I argue that there exists a sense of nostalgia that many Ovakwanyama people have for a precolonial past, and the Omhedi landscape serves that purpose. In analyzing these sentiments against the construction of Omhedi as a space and place, this highlights a sense of identity and belonging that many Ovakwanyama people have towards Omhedi in default of any site with deeper legitimation or authenticity.

Omhedi, history, post-colonial Omhedi, the colonial period, contradictions