“Healing the Land” – Kaulinge’s History of Kwanyama

Oral Tradition and History by the late Reverend Vilho Kaulinge of Ondobe as told to Patricia Hayes and Natangwe Shapange. Transcribed and translated by Dan Haipinge

Author: Vilho Kaulinge †. Translated by: Dan Haipinge †. Edited by: Patricia Hayes, Dan Haipinge †. In collaboration with: Natangwe Shapange. With a preface by: Patricia Hayes. Series edited by: Michael Bollig, Wilhelm J.G. Möhlig †.

Series: HSA History, Cultural Traditions and Innovations in Southern Africa Volume 3

1997
97 pp.
Map: Major Pritchard’s sketch map showing location of the Ngonga and Kwanyama areas and the Angola/South West Africa boundary brought into effect from 1951; 4 b/w photos of Vilho Kaulinge
Text language(s): English
Format: 160 x 240 mm
210 g
Paperback
€ 34.80

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The late Reverend Vilho Kaulinge was the greatest living authority on Kwanyama history until his death in late 1992. The Kwanyama kingdom was the largest precolonial Ovambo polity in northern Namibia. During colonial occupation it was divided between two colonial powers – South Africa and Portugal – and lost its last king, Mandume. Kaulinge was born in 1900 and witnessed these devastating events which took place during World War I. He was also a repository and transmitter of oral traditions of the Kwanyama. As a pastor in the Lutheran Church in Ovambo, he used the pulpit after church service as a vehicle for his oral history. Kaulinge’s account of Mandume’s resistance and death by honourable suicide fired many Namibians in the liberation struggle against South African colonial rule. But his oral history went even deeper into the cultural recesses of the Kwanyama.

Kaulinge has carried into the 20th century a body of indigenous thought on the origins and organization of the Kwanyama, larger than any nationalist agenda. In doing so, Kaulinge sets out the political and social values necessary for the survival of an African society in the face of adversity across several centuries. At its core, Kaulinge’s account gives expression to the idea of connectedness, through kinship and bloodlines which are connected in turn to legitimacy, the land and productivity. In emphasizing the good behaviour of some rulers over others, Kaulinge sets out a whole philosophy about healing in a divided society. This in turn suggests ways of healing the land and keeping people from hunger.

Under these links you will find a grammar of Kwanyama and further descriptions of languages, cultures and the history of the Kavango region in northern Namibia and southern Angola:

Accompanying material:

• “Grandmother’s Footsteps” (ISBN 978-3-89645-056-2)
• A Dictionary of the Rumanyo Language (ISBN 978-3-89645-601-4)
• A Grammatical Sketch of Rugciriku (Rumanyo) (ISBN 978-3-89645-542-0)
• A Tonal Grammar of Kwanyama (ISBN 978-3-89645-980-0)
• An Annotated Edition of the Khwe Correspondence between Ndo Tinene and Oswin Köhler 1979–1995 (ISBN 978-3-89645-634-2)
• Der Caprivizipfel während der deutschen Kolonialzeit 1890–1914 (ISBN 978-3-89645-050-0)
• Die südafrikanische Militärverwaltung (1915–1920) und die frühe Mandatszeit (1920–1936) in der Kavango-Region / Namibia (ISBN 978-3-89645-360-0)
• Herrschaft, Macht und Einfluß (ISBN 978-3-89645-359-4)
• Konzeptualisierung von Landschaft im Mbukushu (K.333/K.43) Bantusprache in Nord-Namibia) (ISBN 978-3-89645-600-7)
• The Kavango Peoples in the Past (ISBN 978-3-89645-353-2)
• The Mbukushu in Angola (ISBN 978-3-89645-350-1)
• Trommeln in der Kirche (ISBN 978-3-89645-917-6)

Cross-reference:

• Die ethnographische Sammlung aus Südwest-Angola im Museum von Dundo, Angola (1954). Katalog (ISBN 978-3-89645-161-3)
• Ein Leben im Dienste der Afrikanistik (ISBN 978-3-89645-631-1)
• Kalahari and Namib Bushmen in German South West Africa (ISBN 978-3-89645-146-0)
• Max Buchners Reise nach Zentralafrika 1878–1882 (ISBN 978-3-89645-160-6)
• The Kalahari Ethnographies (1896–1898) of Siegfried Passarge (ISBN 978-3-89645-141-5)

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