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Hayes, Patricia, et al., eds. 1998. NAMIBIA UNDER SOUTH AFRICAN RULE: MOBILITY AND CONTAINMENT, 1915-46. Windhoek: Out of Africa; Oxford: James Currey; Athens: Ohio University Press. 330 pp. No price indicated (paper/.
In August 1994, the editors, all of whom were living in Windhoek, secured funding for a conference of local Namibian historians, scholars and other interested people. The curious name for the conference was "Trees Never Meet," the name which the project adopted. The material included here grew out of that assembly. By limiting the time frame to the first thirtyone years of South African rule of the former German colony, they have managed, at the expense of some repetition, to include a large number of accounts of that period. In addition to collaborating on the introduction, each of the editors has one article, while an additional seven writers are included.
The underlying theme of the work is the attempt by the administering power to establish control, a different version of control, in the colony following the defeat of the Germans. The aims of the policy were the mobilization of male labor, maintenance of order, and the control of the social order for those ends.
The provision of labor for the various mines and farms, without altering the settlement pattern, is a continuing theme of many of the articles here. Men were needed for this work and...