His eldest son started by saying that he did not want to have his father's bow as he had once killed a man with a bow and went to jail for it for many years and therefore would not want to have the bow.

Then !Ubeb's widow talked.

She would not even use his personal name but talked about "the man who died" (nde go //o gaikhoeba) when she began to explain what should happen and who should get what.

In the end it did not happen quite as she said it would: flexibility seemed to be the rule, not the exception.

Thus, it is not always easy to find out about "inheritance rules" but it is easy to see that there is much more to inheritance than "rules".

A child being born, a marriage partner entering the family, and a person passing away are very personal affairs with many social implications to which we rightly attach great importance.

It is therefore not surprising that inheritance, which is connected to these elementary processes of life, touches on key questions of how we see ourselves and others.

Inheritance is indeed a matter of life and death.

This is particularly true where many people die prematurely.

The fact that people grow old and eventually die, continually challenges the established order of things, the social order and the moral order of who owns what.

There is much more to inheritance than the legal rules about who gets what after someone has died.

Firstly, inheritance rules are part of a complex system of social relations.

Secondly, in most cases there is more than a single system at work.

And thirdly, much can be learned about the general potential and limitations of inheriting from the various ways in which people deal with inheritance.

Learning about individual case studies can become particularly instructive also for people who follow different inheritance rules.

This article outlines some facts about inheritance that has emerged in the small community of ?Akhoe Hai//om speaking people in northern Namibia to whom !Ubeb and his family belong.

?Akhoe Hai//om speakers are, generally speaking, not people with a lot of property.

In fact much of their history is a history of disappropriation of their land and resources.

But it is a misconceived idea that people who do not own much would naturally not worry about inheritance.

In fact, the opposite may occur: If you own very little, the distribution of the little there is may become even more important than if you own much.

Similarly, one may wonder - as many do - why rich people worry so much about inheritance since they live in relative plenty and there should be enough for everyone.

There are no "natural rules" governing inheritance.

Inheritance is a matter of differing cultural conventions.

There is no way of knowing beforehand how a group of people should organise inheritance.You have to go and find out from people how they solve these matters and what they consider to be the relevant issues.

The first point concerning the ?Akhoe Hai//om is that inheritance is not limited to what happens after a person dies.

This is, of course, a much more general phenomenon.

In Europe, hefty inheritance taxes force many people to practise pre-mortal inheritance in which the inheritance is gifted while the person is still alive.

A good part of the exchange relations in many societies can be understood as a form of inheritance.

As for the ?Akhoe Hai//om, inheritance is hardly visible when someone dies because of a strong inclination to avoid anything, including any property items, associated with a dead person.

By contrast, the exchanges that go on between living people in their everyday life are of great concern.

People share food and other items daily but they also sometimes transfer items of considerable monetary value, eg clothing, tools, or radios and tape recorders.

But despite personal sympathies and preferences people are integrated into a social system of relations that provides them with orientation and to some extent channels their preferences and their decisions.

In most societies the kinship system fulfills this role and this is also true for the ?Akhoe Hai//om.

The simplest way to begin to understand kinship is by looking at kin terms.

There are in fact two sets of kinship terms used by the ?Akhoe Hai//om, one probably much older and "more traditional" because it shows no interference of Afrikaans, but what is interesting in this context is not so much the individual kin term itself but the system as a whole irrespective of the labels.

And the system as a whole is not only shared by many Khoekhoegowab-speakers but is found in similar ways all across the globe.

A major feature to note in this system is that parallel cousins (children of someone's mother's sister and of someone's father's brother) are classified as siblings while cross-cousins are classified differently (though irrespective of whether they are mother's brother's children or father's sister's children).

This pattern is matched by the way in which the siblings of one's parents are named.

A father's brother is literally called "small father" or "big father" depending on whether they are junior or senior to the father.

Correspondingly a mother's sister is literally called "small mother" or "big mother" depending on their seniority.

Terminologically mother's brother and father's sister are particularly marked in this system.

They are special.

In the old ?Akhoe Hai//om system the mother's brother has the same kin term (//naob) as the grandfather.

The relations between "uncles/aunts" and "nephews/nieces" and between grandparents and grandchildren are at least as important as relations between parents and children.

We are now in a better position to understand the inheritance rules that were recorded from !Ubeb's widow.

She said that while the hut would be left to rot, household utensils would later be taken by the deceased's family.

"Later" is a flexible term because the avoidance is partly conditioned by how closely the items were associated with the dead person, how urgently they are needed by others and how fearful the survivors are of the dead.

!Ubeb's widow, for instance, took one mortar with her because she needed it and considered it their joint property but she left another one in the old hut of her deceased husband.

The remaining property items are said to be then distributed amongst the children and the "//nurin" which refers to a large group of relatives, namely grandchildren but also children and grandchildren of (classificatory) brothers and sisters.

There is, therefore, also a limit to what kin terms tell us about what happens in practice.

In this particular case some items of everyday use were said to go to !Ubeb's children, for instance the axe, clothes, kitchen utensils and the bow already mentioned.

The deceased was also a !gaiaob, a trance dancer, and his gear (the ornamented skin and little bags he was wearing during dances) was said to go to his //nurin but only to the adult men among them who were also trance dancers.

If there had been any goats to inherit (unfortunately there were none) they should go to his annosôab (an old term for the //nurib to whom he was mother's brother).

A woman, by contrast, would leave her belongings (eg her digging stick or her mortar) to her children's children (//nurin or /gôaôan) and a few things to her daughter (especially beads and necklaces).

In other words, some items are marked out for more specific inheritance rules, in this particular instance reflecting the wide-spread rules concerning the mother's brother.

But we need to look how these specific rules are integrated into the system as a whole.

For instance, parallel cousins are not considered to be marriageable, but cross cousins are, which adds another dimension to the system, namely that of affinal relatives, relatives gained through marriage.

Here even people speaking very closely related languages differ in their relationships.

When comparing the ?Akhoe Hai//om inheritance rules with those of other groups in Namibia, especially traditional livestock owners, it becomes apparent that the ?Akhoe Hai//om like many other groups classified as "San" or "Bushmen" are not concerned about any "corporate property" in the form of accumulation of property in a corporate kinship group based on descent instead of marriage.

Why this is so is found in another system, namely the personal naming system which is as important for inheritance as the system of kin terms..

?Akhoe Hai//om have preserved a cross-sex naming system that in the past was more widely spread among Khoekhoegowab-speaking groups.

In this system sons receive their mother's "family name" and daughters receive father's "family name".

Again there is more to it than simply selecting a name.

In systems where names and family membership (and inheritance) are reckoned either through the male or through the female line, an opposition of family groups emerges that may also be expressed spatially if there is a rule for matrilocal or patrilocal residence.

The "clans" or "lineages" that are thereby created may also be seen as the corporate holders of property (in particular the owners of land and status).

Cross-sex naming effectively inhibits the emergence of opposed segments of that sort because in each generation the cards are reshuffled as it were.

This does not mean, however, that name identity is unimportant.

Rather, the naming system complements the kinship system in that it provides people with an easy tool to establish their relationship even with distant kin.

The name can become a short cut to establish a kin relation with someone when genealogical ties are not completely known.

The naming system has even been used to create kinship across ethnic lines because ?Akhoe Hai//om insist that their system is compatible and their names convertible into the clan system of neighbouring Ovambo.

This has consequences also for interethnic marriages, the identity of children resulting from such relations and potentially also for the transfer of property.

Within the group of ?Akhoe Hai//om being of the same "surname" can be used as an important marker of being closely related to one another with implications that also effect the transfer of property and inheritance.

Given the importance of names and the naming system, the interference of the state in these matters has indirectly also been an interference in social relations and relations of exchange and inheritance.

Officials have shown little sensitivity in dealing with indigenous names.

Speakers of Khoisan languages were most severely hit because the clicks of their language were simply dropped from their names and all kinds of bowdlerised versions of names have entered the identity papers.

To change identity cards is a major undertaking for people in the rural parts of Namibia who do not have the necessary resources so that past mistakes are continually reproduced.

What is worse, officials not only imposed their orthography and their language conventions onto the names but also the modes of transferring names from one generation to the other.

The cross-sex naming system of the ?Akhoe Hai//om was not recognised.

Instead the bureaucrats have imposed their own system which meant that either they adopted the father's first name as the surname of the child (as was common among Ovambo and is occasionally still practiced by some missionaries and church workers).

Or linearity was introduced into the system.

If a couple was not "officially" married (again according to the standards of the bureaucrats or missionaries) then all children would automatically receive the mother's second name.

If they were officially married they would receive the father's second name.

The results are a considerable amount of confusion paired with a discriminatory disregard for local practices which do not comply to the dominant model.

The issue of names also illustrates that neither systems of social relatedness nor the inheritance systems that are connected to them develop and exist in isolation.

As people mix with one another there have been adaptations and innovations.

For instance, the !Xû-speaking people who neighbour the ?Akhoe Hai//om have developed a naming system that is a blend between the systems used among the Ju/'hoan of Nyae Nyae and the ?Akhoe Hai//om.

Their first names are "recycled" from earlier generations thereby creating bonds of mutual assistance and of shared property while they also employ (or did employ in the past) a system of "surnames" that is similar to (and compatible with) that of the ?Akhoe Hai//om.

In other words, the systems are not immutable and rigid but they can be made to deal with new situations, including new situations of interethnic contact and marriage.

With the arrival of the state, however, an agent has entered the scene that forges these systems on very unequal terms.

The colonial history of name cards for control purposes has been well documented.

Control of its citizens continues to be an important element for any state, including independent Namibia.

This is particularly true where the state draws resources from its citizens (for instance in terms of tax) or hands out assets to the citizens (for instance in terms of subsidies or state pensions).

Pensions are important in this respect.

Many ?Akhoe Hai//om, who see the state as having appropriated their land and the resources, consider the state pension system as a form of compensation by those who have (forcefully) taken custody of the inheritance.

The state and its officials, needless to say, see things quite differently, they are under conflicting pressures to determine the use of the land.

The inheritance involved here is also a legacy, it is a potential for future generations but it can equally be a burden.

This brings us back to the property of the deceased as in the case of !Ubeb.

More than two months after I had enquired about what would happen to !Ubeb's belongings very little of it had in fact been appropriated by other people.

The place where ?Akhoe Hai//om commonly store their everyday belongings is under the roof of their hut, relatively secure from animals and fellow humans.

Since a hut is abandoned when someone dies, the belongings are usually just left where they are, inside the deserted hut.

The grave of a dead person is also left alone since it is not the basis on which others build their claims or their status.

What we have here, then, is an alternative to the idea that descent lines and property transfer constitute the channels for transmitting everything that counts, from personal identity to inherited property and other endowments that were created in the past but which can be detached from their previous owners.

The alternative, as seen in ?Akhoe Hai//om practices, is a refusal to see the death of a person as a point of transfer from "one generation to the next" that terminates the life process.

Instead, they are more inclined to emphasise the continuity which consists of interwoven engagements between humans at various positions in their life cycles but also including nonhuman beings.

One consequence is that most "inheritance" in these contexts should be seen as pre-mortal inheritance, that it is piecemeal and flexible with regard to the contingencies of engagement between persons who are connected with one another along a number of lines, including kin relations and name relations but also by simply sharing their lives with one another.

Especially contemporary urban dwellers who are not tightly integrated into "traditional" regimes of property and inheritance relations demand flexible inheritance rules that allow them to incorporate the particular circumstances of their lives.

It seems that there is a precedent for this kind of flexibility.

There is a tradition of flexibility in systems such as that of the ?Akhoe Hai//om..

The recognition of these inheritance practices is not only a matter of fairness and of the right of the ?Akhoe Hai//om to continue their cultural practices but there is a considerable potential for reflection and innovation for all of us that goes far beyond the single case.

There is something like a national heritage of flexible inheritance practices, and its value should not be underestimated.

* The author,Thomas Widlok, is an anthropological researcher currently at the University of Heidelberg in Germany who has done more than three years of field research in Namibia between 1990 and 2005.

(Thomas.Widlok@urz.uni-heidelberg.de)

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