Abstract  

Namibia’s Nguni cattle are a locally adapted breed that co-evolved with the country’s
semi-arid rangelands and pastoral societies over centuries. Colonial and capitalist
expansion, however, framed Nguni cattle as low-yielding and commercially “unsuitable”,
marginalizing them in favor of European breeds intended to maximize productivity and
market output. Through interventions promoting crossbreeding and breed “improvement”,
cattle were increasingly reconfigured as commodities shaped by global market logics.
Using a social-ecological and historical perspective, this paper examines how pastoralists
and commercial livestock keepers perceive and value the characteristics of Nguni cattle,
and how these values relate to use and exchange value within and beyond commodity
systems. We combine historical sources — showing that even some colonial observers
valued specific Nguni traits — with contemporary data from semi-structured interviews
and participant observation with Himba pastoralists and commercial farmers in Namibia.
Our findings show that, despite the introduction of larger-bodied breeds with higher
carcass and milk yields, Himba pastoralists value Nguni cattle for their ability to access
forage in difficult terrains during dry seasons, and for their reproductive performance and
drought resilience. In their livelihood system, annual cattle offtake is high, as Nguni cattle
fulfill important socio-cultural functions in marriages, funerals, and gifting. Other so-called
“improved” breeds, such as Brahman or Simmental, are maintained as additions “for good
years,” but fail to produce and frequently die during droughts. While higher-performance
breeds prevail on commercial farms, farmers committed to regenerative rangeland
management increasingly value African indigenous cattle and integrate their traits into
herd genetics.
The findings show that Nguni cattle persist not despite, but precisely because of their
patterns of use and exchange value in pastoral and commercial production systems. This
helps explain how Nguni cattle can withstand the pressures of commercialisation, as they
are valued according to different social and economic logics rather than unilateral marketoriented
breeding standards.

Bio 

The project “(Post-)Colonial Livestock Breeding in Namibia: Historical, Social-Ecological, and
Genetic Transformations” is an interdisciplinary research collaboration funded by the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). The team brings together researchers from
social ecology, history, and animal genetics to examine how colonial and post-colonial
interventions have shaped livestock, rangelands, and pastoral and commercial production
systems in Namibia. The following project members contributed to the manuscript:
Wilhelmina Nuule obtained a Master of Arts in Geography and Environmental Studies from
the University of Namibia and is currently conducting her PhD at DITSL. Lea Ludwig studies
Organic Agriculture at the University of Kassel, Germany, and writes her MSc thesis at
DITSL/University of Kassel. Dennis Yazici is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Passau. .

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