Crisis Management and Risk Minimization among Pastoralists, Peasants, and (former) Foragers in southern Africa

Research Program

The project examines how population groups in southern Africa cope with an unpredictable social, political and physical environment. Researchers within the project

• examine the relations between hazards, risk perception and risk minimization,
• conduct historically contextualised and regionally / globally embedded studies describing and modelling changing patterns of vulnerability and coping strategies,
• describe indigenous perceptions and conceptualisation pertaining to hazards, crisis management and risk minimization strategies,
• look at the instrumentalisation of cultural capital in conflicts over resources in the “New” South Africa and Namibia.
  

Ethnographic fieldwork is carried out with seven different groups:

1. Ovambo in the Omusati region,
2. Himba in northwestern Namibia and southeastern Angola,
3. Nama in the Richtersveld, South Africa,
4. Hai//om in the vicinity of the Etosha National Park,
5. Khwe in Caprivi Game Park,
6. inhabitants of a small town in western South Africa, and
7. commercial farmers and their employees in Kunene South.

The comparative analysis shows that the livelihoods of rural communties in southern Africa have been endangered throughout the last two centuries, the main hazards being violent conflict, enforced eviction and/or encapsulation. Droughts and degradation added up to the range of hazards. Major coping mechanisms are above all a heavy investment of capital and time into social networks and the diversification of productive strategies.

Lately however, with the end of the Apartheid era in southern Africa options and contraints changed. Whilst most actors have more agency than in former times, we observe at the same time an increasing competition over scarce resources. Recent developments in Namibia and South Africa contribute to the use of ethnic identity as an instrument to cope with risks and crisis for some groups. Ethnic “communities” try to revitalize or reinvent traditions and traditional leadership in order to safe-guard key-resources or to gain access to new ones. Non-governmental organizations, working on an international level, are central for the mobilisation of ethnic consciousness and the use of cultural capital on the local level.