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PATRICIA HAYES, JEREMY SILVESTER, MARION WALLACE and WOLFRAM HARTMANN (eds), Namibia under South African Rule: mobility and containment, 1915-46. Windhoek: Out of Africa; Athens OH: Ohio University Press; Oxford: James Currey, 1998, 350 pp., L45.00, ISBN 0 85255 748 5, 1595, ISBN 0 85255 747 7.
The first decades of South African rule in Namibia, following the German surrender in 1915, have long been the least well documented phase of that country's recorded history. This lacuna has affected virtually all Namibianists, whether historians actively seeking to uncover the past or social scientists concerned to gain an historical context for present-day research. Along with a companion volume of historical photographs, this book is the fruit of `the trees never meet' project, initiated by the editors in the early 1990s in an effort to address the silences.
By this yardstick alone, Namibia under South African Rule would rate as an important contribution to Namibian historiography. Its value, however, owes at least as much to the quality of research and editing reflected in its pages. The editors are young historians stimulated to initiate the project by the problems encountered during their postgraduate research. They organised a conference in Windhoek in 1994, bringing together local and foreign researchers, non-professionals and Namibians who were living repositories of...