The Uukwangali King’s Death At Grootfontein

WAS Kandjimi zaHauwanga, affectionately known as Ndjimi, of the Uukwangali kingdom, murdered or did he die naturally?If his was murder, who did it? For what reason?

Hompa Kandjimi is believed to have died around 19 March 1924 at Otjivanda shoNgwe now referred to as Grootfontein. That is about 250 kilometres away from his people.

His death also marked the fall of the Uukwangali empire. Kandjimi’s warriors were known for conquering other kingdoms in Kavango and southern Angola. So says a muKwangali elder.

It was the combined forces of king Mandume yaNdemufayo and hompa Kandjimi that showed the colonial Portuguese a middle-finger at the battle of Oihole. Kandjimi commanded that battle.

King Mandume and hompa Kandjimi were relatives. At some point they lived in one household in both what was known then as Owamboland and Kavangoland.

When the Portuguese were defeated by the Germans at the battle of Fort-cuangar, they had no doubt but to suspect that hompa Ndjimi had a hand in their defeat. To avenge their loss, they lured him to Luanda in Angola.

Halfway, however, the vaNyemba people tipped him off and helped him to escape. The Portuguese actually wanted to kill him. Brothers and sisters helping one of their own. That’s information from the Rukwangali literature I read in Standard Five.

History is in unison. Kandjimi died and was buried at Grootfontein. That is where the consensus about his death ends. Everything else is a toss. His death, how he died, who buried him and where in Grootfontein he was buried still remain an elusive mystery.

If deep mystery surrounds his death, why the hompa was in Grootfontein at the time of his death also remains a big mystery.

One version of the vaKavango oral story is that Ndjimi was lured to Grootfontein by the Germans to participate in a shooting competition. Kandjimi was known for being an avid sharpshooter who always was fond of, and walked around with his gun, even in the presence of vahona, colonial bosses.

That he was not docile, apparently upset the vahona very badly and possibly led to his demise.

Then there is another version: The Germans lured him to Grootfontein on the pretense of wanting to consult him about Kavango matters, more in particular his people, the vaKwangali.

Circumstantially, the Vakavango oral story widely points to assassination by the German colonial forces. The widely held beliefs among the vaKavango people are that he was poisoned through, either, food, drinks, cloths or the blankets he slept in while at Grootfontein.

Romanus Kampungu, an authority on Kavango matters, in his Kavango custom writings alludes to the same conclusion of poisoning. Kampungu studied Roman law, and was the first indigenous Namibian to obtain a PhD. Therefore, from a research methodological perspective, he qualifies as a credible reference source.

The official version, however, by the powers that be during the time of Kandjimi’s death, majorly contradicts the vaKavango oral history of death by poisoning. Instead, they advance the theory, to which many vaKavango people take offence, that hompa Kandjimi basically drank himself to death. Some historians and scholars also support this official version.

Inconsistencies about the vaKavango oral story that their hompa was actually poisoned by the Germans also abound. A closer examination of Kandjimi’s time of death suggests that he died during the apartheid South African occupation, not during the German colonial period.

The historian Shiremo Shampapi, however, is of the opinion that it could be possible that some individual Germans, acting on their own instincts, as opposed to the German colonial regime, could have participated in his death.

Why are the vaKavango people pointing fingers to the Germans? There are plausible reasons for that: First, it might be that the vaKavango oral history is mistakenly attributing their hompa’s death to the Germans because they could not separate (due to skin colour) other whites from the Germans. Meaning, other white ethnic groups present in Namibia that time could have been the killers.

Could it also be that the demise of the German soldiers whose remains are buried at Kakuro in the Kavango West region motivated the Germans to lure him to Grootfontein, if they are the killer? How about the battle of Oihole and Fort-cuangar? Could it have triggered the Portuguese to act? Oral history has it that it was the Portuguese who transported him to Grootfontein.

More importantly are the remaining unanswered questions: why did the vaKwangali people allow their hompa to be buried at Grootfontein? Who buried him and how sure are we that he was buried there?

If he drank himself to death, is there any medical record of his death? And most importantly, why are the vaKwangali people not seeking to repatriate his remains back to his people where he belongs?

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