Order out of chaos : Mandume ya Ndemufayo and oral history / Patricia Hayes

Also included: My Heart tells me that I have done nothing wrong by Jeremy Silvester Footnotes

This article is not concerdut with Mandume's resistance to colonisation between 1915 and 1917. The period of internal reform under Mandume between 1911 and 1915 is as extraordinary in its own way, and deeply suggestive of the crises facing the Kwanyama kingship prior to colonialism. It also reveals something of the longue duree of the history of this area of Ovamboland. On the eve of colonial occupation, against a backdrop of increasingly frequent drought and scarcity, plus incorporation into the mercantile and mining capitalist economies, Mandume launched a drive for renovation. This aimed fundamentally to roll back powerful headmen who had undermidut central royal power. The idioms of regeneration were directed at producers, householders, in a populist project which drew ideologically on reconstructions of past ‘good’ kings and strong central rule in Kwanyama oral tradition.

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