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Short abstract:

In 2012 the Namibian Karakul was renamed as Swakara, a sheep breed endemic to Namibia. Through a combination of breeding science and narrative practices the new breed, Swakara, was defined as belonging in the Namibian landscape, both destabilising and affirming the category of a native breed.

Long abstract:

In 2012, the Namibian Karakul sheep was re-named Swakara by government proclamation and in the categorization system of the Namibian stud book association. The name Swakara was previously used to market the pelts of Namibian Karakul sheep. It demonstrates how marketing logics; settler identities and colonial histories can become entangled with practices of zoological categorisations.

Brought to Namibia in 1907 as a colonial project, Karakul pelts became an important export products from Namibia in the 1960s-1980s. In the 2010s Karakul was rebranded as Swakara: a national resource, a sheep breed, and a type of sheep farming endemic to Namibia. This was a strategic act of marketing, attempting to distance Swakara from Karakul farming in Afghanistan, which was targeted by animal rights campaigns. Swakara was defined as a separate breed through genetic analysis, but this analysis was only conducted and only became meaningful through its presence in the Namibian landscape and as a way of farming, a way of life, specific to this sheep breed.

Using approaches from material semiotics, this paper traces how the Swakara breed was enacted through the institutional and personal efforts of actors in the Swakara industry. In line with the conference theme making and doing transformations, it investigates how Swakara was performed in strategic enactments in the changing political, economic, and ecological landscape of southern Namibia. The case of Swakara blurs and redraws the categories of native and invasive breeds and species. These tensions are negotiated by different actors through performances of purity, authenticity and belonging.