Page 108 - Understanding NCERT Histroy 09th

3. PASTORALISM IN AFRICA
l More than half of the world’s pastoral population lives in Africa. Above 22 million
Africans depend on some form of pastoral activity to meet their daily needs.
l Like the Indian pastoralists the lives of African pastoralists have also changed during the
Goyal Brothers Prakashan
colonial and post-colonial periods.

3.1 Where Have the Grazing Lands Gone?
l Before colonial times, Maasailand stretched over a vast area from north Kenya to the
steppes of northern Tanzania. In 1885, an international boundary between British Kenya
and German Tanganyika was created by cutting the Massailand into two halves.
l After the division of the territory, the best grazing lands were captured by the white
settlement and the Maasai were pushed into a small area in southern Kenya and northern
Tanzania.
l Before the Colonial rule, the Maasai pastoralists had their dominance in agriculture.
During colonial period the Maasais were pushed into arid zone with uncertain rainfall
and poor pastures.
l Due to encouragement by British Colonial government in east Africa, large number of
peasants took to cultivation. Earlier, the pastoralists had dominated cultivators economically
and politically; by the end of Colomial rule, they were miserable.
l Many game reserves were set up – Maasai Mara, Samburu National Park in Kenya and
Serengeti Park in Tanzania—further reducing their pasture lands.

Source E (Page no. 111)
Pastoral communities elsewhere in Africa faced similar problems. In Namibia, in south-west
Africa, the Kaokoland herders traditionally moved between Kaokoland and nearby Ovamboland,
and they sold skin, meat and other trade products in neighbouring markets. All this was stopped
with the new system of territorial boundaries that restricted movements between regions.
The nomadic cattle herders of Kaokoland in Namibia complained:
‘We have difficulty. We cry. We are imprisoned. We do not know why we are locked up. We
are in jail. We have no place to live … We cannot get meat from the south … Our sleeping
skins cannot be sent out … Ovamboland is closed for us. We lived in Ovamboland for a long
time. We want to take our cattle there, also our sheep and goats. The borders are closed. The
borders press us heavily. We cannot live.’ Statement of Kaokoland herders, Namibia, 1949.

Quoted in Michael Bollig, ‘The colonial encapsulation of the north western Namibian pastoral
economy’, Africa 68 (4), 1998.

Source F (Page no. 112)
In most places in colonial Africa, the police were given instructions to keep a watch on the
movements of pastoralists, and prevent them from entering white areas. The following is one such
instruction given by a magistrate to the police, in south-west Africa, restricting the movements
of the pastoralists of Kaokoland in Namibia:

‘Passes to enter the Territory should not be given to these Natives unless exceptional circumstances
necessitate their entering … The object of the above proclamation is to restrict the number of
natives entering the Territory and to keep a check on them, and ordinary visiting passes should
therefore never be issued to them.’
‘Kaokoveld permits to enter’, Magistrate to Police Station Commanders of Outjo and Kamanjab,
24 November, 1937.

History Class IX H-99