Indeed, some have suggested that it is precisely their wealth in cattle that prevented them from being sucked into the contract migrant labour system that wrought such social havoc in other areas beyond the Police Zone.

Given this importance, how are cattle inherited? The information presented here pertains to the wider Okangwati/Epupa area where inheritance has a strong matrilineal bias.

Property rights in cattle are held by the head of a homestead, who is usually male.

The household herd is only divided at his death.

Herd owners, however, may give out livestock on a loan basis.

A look at the distribution of ownership rights within single herds shows the significance of livestock redistribution via loans.

The distribution of livestock ownership correlates fairly well with the age of the household heads.

While older men possess up to 100 per cent of their animals themselves, younger household heads borrow up to 98 per cent of their cattle.

Women - especially older women - do also own livestock, sometimes even in substantial numbers.

They inherit cattle usually to their sons and daughters, who are of the same matriline as themselves.

While use rights in livestock are transferred frequently, ownership rights are predominantly transferred after the death of a herd owner.

Households are inherited within the matriline (eanda), first from the deceased to a brother (of one mother) and then to a sister's son, or any equivalent in the matriline like sister's daughter's son or sister's daughter's daughter's son.

As matrilineal relatives tend not to live together, inheritance usually implies a major shift of the entire household.

As it is well known who has inherited from whom in the past and who will do so in the future, one may represent inheritance transfers as chains.

One such inheritance chain may serve as an example for the spatial scope of inheritance transfers.

The example highlights the rules of inheritance as well as the spatial character of transactions.

Tj., an extremely wealthy herder owning about 800 to 1 000 cattle, will pass on the entire herd to his sister's son (omusyia), Ka.

Ka, who is already in his sixties and not much younger than his uncle, will in turn will pass on the herd to his next younger brother, Mb..

Mb.

will once again pass it on to a younger brother, K..

Then the herd will be transferred to their sisters' sons' line.

The first heir of the herd will be We., the eldest son of Ka's, Mb.'s and K.'s oldest sister, Wa..

We.

will hand on the herd to his younger brother Ma..

If Ma.

should die, then the sons of Ka.'s, Mb.'s and Ka.'s second eldest sister (Mu.

and Ma.) will inherit and when the herd has been handed down the brotherly line, the herd will fall to the son's of Ka.'s, Mb.'s and K.'s third and youngest sister.

The household herd in question will cross the Namibian/Angolan border several times.

Within a period of about 30 to 50 years residential changes of the household may take place eight times Inheritance leads to a continuous redistribution of the regional herd.

At each inheritance transfer, several herders, closely related to the deceased matrilineally, may take out a few head of livestock from the herd.

This takes the form of tolerated theft (okurumata).

The night before the inheritance is finally allotted to the heir by the elders of the clan, they pick out single animals and leave the scene.

Referring to this rather clandestine way of livestock appropriation, these secondary heirs are referred to as ovarumate, "the biters".

There is even an elder who looks into it that these cases of tolerated theft do not get out of hand, the omurumatise.

While inheritance on the one hand guarantees a concentration of property rights it also leads to a continuous redistribution of use rights in livestock.

The case presented above entails the ideal line of inheritance and it is hard to imagine that the inheritance of Tj.'s herd will actually run on the lines prescribed by several Himba informants.

It is obvious that this presentation of inheritance glances over several incongruities.

First of all, it is highly unlikely that all the people on the list will be still alive when it is their turn for inheriting livestock.

Tj., Ka.

and Mb.

are roughly the same age (the oldest perhaps seventy and the youngest sixty), and We., Ma., Mu., Ma.

are all between 25 and 40.

There is something very special about the Himba inheritance system that combines a concentration of property rights and, at the same time, facilitates the distribution of rights.

Many inheritance transfers listed above include a transfer of property rights from a deceased to his brother.

Frequently the brother is roughly the same age as the deceased person.

Even transfers from a deceased to his sister's son do not always bridge a generation.

Many sisters' sons who were enlisted as heirs were only slightly younger than their mothers' brother.

In fact, cases in which an entire herd is transferred from a deceased elder to a very young man are rare.

Most men who have inherited a herd have done so when they were older than 45.

Of all the animals transferred in inheritance, herders of 60 and above obtained 52 per cent, people between 45 and 59 obtained 44.9 per cent while herders under the age of 45 received just 2.6 per cent of all the inheritance transfers.

Young people only rarely get the chance to inherit substantial numbers of animals! Examining the probable life expectancy of elders between the ages of 60 to 70, several models can be tested.

The life expectancy lies between 13.1 to 13.9 years for a 60-year-old senior and between 8.1 and 8.5 for a 70-year-old man.

Hence, a senior man inheriting a herd will own that herd roughly between eight and fifteen years.

Then the herd will be handed on to the next heir.

Himba rules of inheritance constitute a system in which many men have a vague chance of becoming owners of larger herds at some indefinite time in the future.

The practice of inheritance guarantees that most herders will only become wealthy herd owners when they are already quite aged.

Property is moved within the matriline from "station to station" through generations.

The "rotating pot" works like a trans-generational, matriline-bound savings association: everybody contributes (livestock and/or labour) and has the hope of being the sole owner of the herd one day.

But Himba inheritance is not only about the transmission of livestock property.

The institution also addresses the question of maintenance.

In fact, this point is made very strongly at the ritual that finalises inheritance.

At the very end of the ritual, a mighty pole is put into the earth for the children of each wife.

This is the otjpande tjozosewa; the commemoration pole of the orphans.

Next to these orphans' poles the heir puts "his" pole.

Frequently Himba take the solid stems of Commiphora trees to produce these poles.

These stems have the capacity to grow into a new tree once they get sufficient water.

These poles and trees are to remind the heir that it is his obligation to care for the orphans.

And in fact it is fairly usual that a heir leaves major parts of his inheritance with the orphans who keep these animals as livestock loans.

It is exactly this characteristic of the inheritance system - controlled and predictable transmission of property and care for maintenance issues - which makes it a strong pillar of the Himba society.

When estimating the wealth of their neighbours, Himba generally look at the entire herd and often do not differentiate between cattle owned and cattle loaned; i.e.

somebody counts as wealthy even if half of his 300 cattle are loans.

The fact that all livestock are inherited along the matrilineal line is exceptional.

In most Herero groups and, in fact, among the western Himba too, ancestral cattle are inherited patrilineally while non-ancestral cattle are transferred in the matriline.

* Professor Michael Bollig teaches at the University of Cologne.

He has undertaken extensive research in both Kenya and Namibia

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