Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the geo-politics of future-making on the Zambezi in the age of African decolonization, focusing on the imperial ambitions of South Africa for the development of the Caprivi Strip in the context of deeper-rooted historical and political claims to sovereignty.

Paper long abstract:

As British colonial officials pursued plans in 1958 for decolonization in Africa, they received two proposals affecting the political future of the Caprivi Strip - the narrow pan-handle territory that gave South-West Africa (Namibia) access to the Zambezi River. The first, promoted by white settler politicians in Salisbury, was for Caprivi to be ceded to Northern Rhodesia, thus recognizing the historical claims of the Barotse kingdom while ensuring that Caprivi would become a strategically important part of the future Federation of Central Africa. The second proposal, enthusiastically pursued by the Nationalist government in Pretoria, was for the creation of a “school of tropical warfare” in Caprivi, on the northern frontier of South Africa’s own colony. As one empire ended on the Zambezi, others were being imagined. These proposals for Caprivi’s future are examples of many such schemes that emerged under the mandates, from Caprivi’s transfer to South-West Africa in 1929 to Namibia’s independence in 1990. Using British and United Nations archives to examine the ways in which Caprivi’s future was discussed and demarcated in a globalised geo-politics that took little account of the local political ecology of the region’s riparian environment, this paper is a first step in a wider project, building upon the work of Kangumu, Silvester, McKittrick and Lenggenhager, to present a history of “future-making” for Caprivi Zipfel.