Flamingo - Art, Craft & Culture - The dogs of colonialism
Dogs have played a critical role in Namibian history since pre-colonial times, yet despite their paw prints being all over Namibia’s history, conventional history books have ignored their role.
When the first European explorers arrived, they found that local people ranging from hunters to kings all had dogs. They, of course, also brought dogs with them. Sir Francis Galton, Charles Darwin's cousin, described how he travelled with a pack as well as a fine-looking Newfoundland and a small dog, which would be ‘wakeful at night, to be carried on the wagon’. In choosing a large ‘attack’ dog and a small ‘barking’ dog, Galton was hewing to a settler practice, which is still operational.
Local people too appreciated dogs. Galton reports that his factotum “sold two of his curs to some of the Damara for two oxen each”, and that he was offered four oxen for his dog, Watch. Indeed, given these rates of exchange, dogs were a more profitable trade commodity than guns in Damaraland!
Galton's companion, CJ Andersson, found some dogs resembled those found in his native Sweden and made a special trip up to Chikongo's Kraal, where he "inquired of the chief as to the breed of dogs I had seen about, which I had thought might be a cross between the native and some mongrels belonging to the Europeans; but it seems they are purely native.” This observation leads to three points: firstly, that there was a paucity of indigenous dog breeds – probably a result of disease and predators; secondly, that a process of cultural diffusion was impacting this area long before the arrival of the first Europeans; and thirdly, that this concern with mongrel versus purebred dogs was a particularly dominant trope in colonial discourse.
Not only were they invaluable resources and, indeed, seemingly constant companions of these early European hunters, but they were also used by locals as guard dogs and for hunting. Dogs were so prized among the Owambo people that they were used as sacrifices for various crises and in the south were used to protect their flocks of sheep against predators such as jackals.
Indeed, people were even prepared to commit murder for a good dog. Thus Chapman describes the events surrounding the not insignificant murder of Will Worthington Jordan, a prominent trader and founder of the Republic of Upingtonia: “In Kwanyama Chief Nambathi insisted that Jordan should give him a small pet dog, which he had, but refused to hand over and the dog was stolen. Jordan believed that the Chief had instigated one of his men to steal it for him, and a couple of days later the Chief died and there were suspicions that Jordan had procured means of poisoning him in retaliation for the loss of his pet dog!”
As in other parts of the world, dogs were very much part of the instruments of colonisation. In Namibia though, their role was more indirect, being largely supportive and cultural. Although not at the forefront of colonial discussion, dogs were appreciated. Perhaps they were so taken for granted that discussion was deemed superfluous. Occasionally an article would appear in the settler press, like the one on the so-called Bushman Question, which argued: "The only way of following them in the thick bush is with dogs. The equipping of good police dogs in a suitable number would be of extraordinary value." And so it came to pass. The German authorities set up a special police-dog training school in Windhoek in 1911–12. Police dogs in German Südwest Afrika developed such a reputation that when South Africa conquered the territory, one of the earliest items ‘exported’ back to South Africa was police dogs.
In the wake of the 1904–7 colonial wars many Africans found themselves stripped of their primary means of subsistence – livestock – and this meant that the value of dogs, especially good hunting dogs, became even more important instruments of sur-vival. And that was how the South Africans found them after conquering the territory during the Great War.
The South Africans strengthened dog taxes by imposing a progressive tax for additional dogs. The Administrator felt that: “The necessity for this heavy tax was clearly demonstrated… when I found vast numbers of dogs in [the] possession of natives and a certain class of European squatter, who profited by the employment of these animals to hunt down game and obtained a livelihood thereby, instead of by honest labour.”
One of the places where zealous officials engaged in a collecting frenzy was on the Bondels Reserve. Since these people could not find the money to pay either the tax or the fine, this meant that they had to work for settlers, who moreover could not pay cash to their labourers. This, coupled to a long legacy of systematic impoverishment, was the final factor that precipitated the Bondelswarts Rebellion of 1922: the first attempt at organised resistance against South African overrule in Namibia. The brutal suppression of the rebellion was a cause celebre at the League of Nations.
Settlers, too, were dissatisfied because they were not exempt from these taxes and eventually the law was changed to focus on the ‘kind known as kaffir hunting dogs’. But a serious problem arose. How exactly was one to distinguish between European and ‘African’ hunting dogs? Not even the Attorney General could answer this question satisfactorily and the provision was quietly dropped.
One of the most famous colonial photographic sequences is that published by Governor Leutwein in 1906. In the first photograph he has life in 1900 in which Germans are served by indigenes; in the second, purporting to be a century later, indigenes are served by Europeans. But if you look closely you will see the major difference is that in 1900 there is a dog looking at its master and in the second picture there is no dog. That indeed was their worst nightmare! Clearly it is not simply a question of role reversal, but mourning for a world without faithful dogs!
