Abstract
Pokot and Himba pastoralists face environmental as well as political hazards. These hazards are clearly distinguishable along the lines of duration, spatial scope and reversibility of impact. Environmental degradation, for example, is slow working and has a gradual impact but, at the same time, is highly irreversible. A drought on the contrary, is a sudden and dramatic event but rarely has long lasting effects. Long — term processes and short term events are interlinked via negative feed backs: droughts accelerate processes of degradation, violent conflicts almost inevitably result in entitlement loss. The following chapter will first outline hazards that lead to an increased vulnerability of households. Then short term hazardous events are discussed. The chapters are concluded with a comparative view on the extent and importance of specific hazards in both societies.
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Endnotes
Roth (1994:139) questions this assumption on the basis of detailed demographic data on the Rendille. Taking into account emic ideas on population growth, he quotes Rendille informants denying any relation between sepaade and demographic trends.
Archer, one of the first officials to tour the area, reported that Pokot and Turkana were living together in “Nagoretti” (probably Nakorete) and that Turkana were in possession of the springs at Nginyang. Both places, Nakorete and Nginyang, are today in the midst of Pokot territory and almost one hundred kilometres away from the nearest Turkana settlements (KNA DC BAR 3/5 Archer, Report on a Journey in the Suk Country, July 1904).
Broch-Due (2000) gives a comprehensive account on how British colonialism formed and transformed ethnic identities and boundaries.
KNA DC BAR 3/4 1936: Annual Report 1936 Revised Census Baringo District for 1936: 1934 figures showed a decrease of 629 men and 896 women. This population shift was a result of heavy stock losses due to drought. Many people moved to West Pokot “and still more settled in out-of-the-way areas near the boundary and thus avoided having their names put on a Census Register”.
The figure compares well with growth rates estimated for the neighbouring Samburu (Spencer, 1998:214).
For camels only figures for 1928–1933 are given. The number of camels in those days was around 1,000 for the entire area. Camel husbandry amongst the Pokot apparently only gained momentum after the Pokot were paid with camels after a punitive expedition against the Turkana in which they participated in 1917 as auxiliaries of the British army (Bollig, 1992b).
KNA DC BAR 3/4
Oorlam is a designation of pastoral cum raiding groups of mixed Nama and coloured descent who controlled large parts of central Namibia in the 19th century (Lau, 1987). The term was used until the 1920s.
Based on other data Talavera et al. (2000:32) also gives the figure of 3.2 children as completed fertility rate.
There is few comparative data on these aspects from ethnodemography: Lang (1997:10ff) reports an inter-birth interval for the !Kung of 4 years and for the Sudanese Mahria of 2 to 3 years. With the American Hutterer, a highly fertile population, the interval is down to 2.1 years. The !Kung reach a completed fertility of 4.3 children
A definition of degradation by Abel and Blaikie stresses the effects of irreversibility (Abel & Blaikie 1989:113): “Rangeland degradation is an effectively permanent decline in the rate at which land yields livestock products under a given system of management. ‘Effectively’ means that natural processes will not rehabilitate the land within a timescale relevant to humans and that capital or labour invested in rehabilitation are not justified.”
Kenya National Archives (KNA) District Commissioner (DC) Baringo (BAR) 3/4 Annual Report 1959
In an article on pasture degradation in West Pokot District Conant (1982:114) calls bush encroachment justifiably “green desertification”. For further literature on this little understood problem which obviously results from overgrazing as much as from undergrazing see Belsky (1990).
In a report to the mining company he was working for, Kuntz said “Under high acacias in thick green grass grazed hundreds of cattle and thousands of sheep; evidently I had got to the hitherto legendary Ovatschimba paradise ... For several hours I rode up the river, finding village on village and water everywhere in the riverbed.” 12/10/1910 Kuntz’s Report to the Kaoko Land und Minengesellschaft, 1910 (NA Accessions 327).
The analysis of aerial photographs from 1975 for the Omuhonga basin shows 23 homesteads for which the size of the inner enclosure, circumference of inner and outer enclosure, and additional fences could be measured. Additionally the size of some 10 gardens and the length of their fences could also be determined. The average size of homesteads was 3,907 m2 (range: 1,216m2 to 12,988m2) and of inner enclosures 110,5m2 (range 52m2 to 268m2). Inner enclosures had on average a length of 36 metres (range 23 to 58 metres) and outer enclosures an average of 228.5 metres length (range: 127 to 469 metres). For 15 homesteads the circumference of severe denudation around the homestead could be determined: it was at 22,807 m2, which indicates that per household about six times more ground is severely exploited (i.e. severe cutting of all trees, complete denudation of bush and grass cover) than the homestead structures actually cover. In 1975 23 households were counted in the basin. Some 85.8 hectares were covered by household structures and 514.8 hectares were exploited in an extreme way. The number of households rose sharply from 11. 1979 onwards. Around 1985 it had reached a number of about 80. Then some 288 hectares were covered by structures and 1,728 hectares were exploited in an extreme way (Sander, Bollig & Schulte, 1998).
Brunotte & Sander (2000) give radiocarbon dating for charcoal remains from the Kunene basin. They assume that the burning of riverine vegetation since c. 1200 indicates increasingly dense settlements along the river
Malan & Owen-Smith (1974:167) report old people as saying that tall perennial grass used to grow in many places. I obtained very few traditions hinting in this direction. The general idea was that the cover (of annuals) changed according to annual rains and that these had become less over the years.
For a general discussion on the conflict-laden relationship between states and African pastoralists see Azarya (1996)
KNA DC BAR 3/5. Trade Report 1909 by A. Bruce.
Anderson (1984) analysed the changing environmental policies of the colonial administration in the Lake Baringo region. He proves that administrators’ perceptions of environmental decline were more dependent on government campaigns than on local empirical observations.
The title of this paragraph alludes to Jean Ensminger’s book “Making a Market: The Institutional Transformation of an African Society” on the emergence of market relations amongst the Kenyan Orma pastoralists (Ensminger 1992). The history of Kaokoland points in the opposite direction; while trade flourished for some decades prior to the advent of colonialism, it was categorically inhibited by the South African colonial administration later on.
Many had decided to shift their premises from Walfish Bay and Omaruru to Mossamedes as the ivory resources of central Namibia were extinguished and the Herero-Nama wars had made trade risky (Siiskonen, 1990:146–148).
A side story of the booming ivory trade in south west Angola, which cannot be covered here, is the history of the Thwa, nowadays a group of despised craftsmen. They claim that they were professional elephant hunters during that period and that, only when the elephants were depleted, did they turn to smithing and pottery. During the earlier days they called themselves “Thwe”, which they translate as “the courageous ones” (interview with Tjihandura 05/07/1995 at Ohikara).
This group of Dorsland Boers originally stemmed from the Transvaal. They had made their way to southern Angola moving from the Transvaal along the western fringe of the Kalahari through Kaokoland where, in 1879, they stayed for at least one season at Kaoko Otavi (Immelman, 1978: 131/132; William Chapman, n.d.).
Lau (1987:41 ff) has described the political organisation of Nama/Oorlam commando groups in great detail. Like the groups in southern Angola, these commandos relied heavily on livestock raiding.
Knowledge on these groups is derived from oral traditions and few reports of German travellers (see Ngeendepi Muharukwa and Eengombe Kapeke in Bollig, 1997; Hartmann, 1897, 1902/03; Kuntz, 1912, and Vedder, 1914).
NA ADM 156 Major Manning: Kaokoveld Tour Diary Notes, November 1917, and NA ADM 156 Second Tour Kaokoveld by Major Manning: Disarmament Native Tribes, August 1919.
SWAA Kaokoveld A 552/1 Monthly reports 1926–1938, here Post Commander Tshimhaka to Native Commissioner Hahn, 11/1926. In the colonial records the place name Tshimhaka is used. However, when not directly referring to a colonial document I will use the correct Herero spelling Tjimuhaka.
In a later definition Glantz (1989:57) defined meteorological drought as a 25 to 50 per cent reduction in precipitation. There have been further attempts to define meteorological drought on account of the duration of rain-free periods. A clearcut definition which needs a lot of research, relates to a method of soil moisture budgeting that accounts for precipitation and temperature for a given year (Palmer Drought Severity Index, PDSI, Palmer 1965).
Glantz (1989:57) refers to the etymological root of drought in the Anglo-Saxon term drugoth, dry ground.
Scoones (1996:205) observes a typical pattern of losses: “Birth rates drop off dramatically to practically zero prior to the onset of significant mortality. Mortalities start slowly but then rapidly accelerate. Peak mortality periods are during the onset of rains.”
In this chapter I will mainly concentrate on the effects of drought on livestock mortality. The effects of drought on milk production are not analysed in detail. Donaldson (1986:44ff), in a report on the Ethiopian drought of 1985, reported a decrease in milk yield of 35 per cent; the number of lactating cows was only 10 per cent of the normal level.
Dietz (1987:93) documents similar rates of variation for Kongelai and Kacheliba in the West Pokot lowlands. In his data no trend was detectable either.
If at all there is a slightly positive trend. This has also been observed for Lodwar, the centre of Turkana District (Ellis et al. 1993:36f).
Rates of reproduction decrease rapidly as a result of drought. Donaldson (1986:41/42) reports that during the 1983/84 drought in southern Ethiopia the intercalving interval rose from 14.5 to at least 17.3 months. During the year following the drought he recorded a decrease in calving rates from 70–80 per cent in pre-drought times to a low of 8.7 per cent after the drought. Homewood and Lewis (1987:628) report calving rates in the Baringo District which are reduced from 83 per cent to 69 per cent as a result of the drought of 1984.
Enterotoxaemia (also pulpy kidney disease) is usually noted as a disease which occurs mainly in sheep (Schneider, 1994:163) but in this sample was found mainly in goats.
Fukui and Turton (1979) gave a first overview on the problem, representing historic cases (Jacobs 1979) and recent conflicts (Turton, 1979; Fukui, 1979; Almagor, 1979). Fukui & Markakis (1994) show how local conflicts escalated in the 1980s and early 1990s and how local conflicts were tied into larger conflicts (e.g. Turton, 1994; James, 1994; Baxter, 1994; Kurimoto, 1994).
Beech (1911:3) claims that the Samburu were settling the valley and that it was more the deeds of a ritual expert than of warriors which made the Samburu leave the Baringo plains. Oral accounts, however, point to the fact that Beech’s Samburu must have been Laikipiak Maasai and that it was not the deeds of a wizard but the raids of warriors that made the Maasai retreat. This is also corroborated by other literature on the history of the region (see Weatherby, 1967).
KNA DC WP 3/43: J.W. Hym, Memorandum on the Customs of the Suk viewed in the light of the clan system, p. 60.
KNA DC WP 3/42: J.W. Hym, Memorandum on the Customs of the Suk viewed in the light of the clan system, p. 69.
ibid., p. 72.
KNA DC WP 3/42: J.W. Hym, Memorandum on the Customs of the Suk viewed in the light of the clan system, p. 78.
In both volumes on violent conflicts in East Africa Fukui (1979, 1994) and Turton (1979, 1994) demonstrate the effect of new turns in armament on warfare patterns in the Ethiopian Omo-Valley. Both the Bodi and Mursi in turn became victims of groups which had earlier access to automatic guns than they themselves.
A closer look at the literature published in recent years on the southern Turkana, proves that at least some Pokot also gained during this period. Johnson (1990:182f) reports that about half of 22 Turkana households he worked with were raided by the Pokot during the early 1980s.
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Bollig, M. (2006). Hazards and Damages. In: Risk Management in a Hazardous Environment. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, vol 2. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-27582-6_3
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