African History Commons^™

Facing The Epokolo : Corporal Punishment And Scandal In Twentieth Century Ovamboland, David Crawford Jones

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation charts the history of corporal punishment in Ovamboland, the north-central region of present-day Namibia. Long used as a method for disciplining cattle thieves, rapists, and men who had impregnated women outside of wedlock, the region's institution of public flogging sparked a scandal in 1973, when the epokolo, the five-foot long thorned branch of the Makalani palm tree, was deployed on members of SWAPO, the leading liberation movement in the territory then known as South West Africa. In the wake of that scandal, and in a rare rebuke of the traditional authorities who had long collaborated with the South …