3 minute read
THE WATERFALL DISPUTE
AND NAMIBIA’S BOUNDARY WITH ANGOLA
A cursory glance at the map of Namibia shows that the country is a classic example of colonial boundaries that were drawn by simply using rivers and lines of latitude and longitude to delineate the borders. In Namibia’s case it was easy: six rivers and six straight lines.
Although the first agreement between Germany and Portugal on the border between what was then German South West Africa and Portuguese West Africa (Angola) was signed on 30 December 1886, it would take 40 years before what became known as the ‘Waterfall Dispute’ was finally settled.
Germany disputed the exact location of the cataracts from where the parallel of latitude should be drawn from the Kunene River to the Okavango River. The German administration insisted that the cataracts were 38 km upstream of Ruacana, while the Portuguese maintained that the starting point was at Ruacana.
After the two governments failed to reach an agreement, it was decided in August 1909 to create a neutral zone which was 13 km wide. The arrangement was to remain in force until the dispute could be resolved. Administration of the zone became the joint responsibility of a Portuguese and a German resident commissioner based at Namacunde.
Following the capitulation of the German forces in German South West Africa during World War I, British officials accepted the neutral zone as a provisional arrangement in September 1916. It would, however, take another ten years before the dispute was finally resolved as a result of Britain’s insistence on water rights for South West Africa.
In line with international convention, the boundary agreed upon in 1926 was the middle of the Kunene River from its mouth to the Ruacana Waterfall. But it was also agreed that the beacon from where the boundary was to be drawn to the Okavango River would be placed on the left (southern) bank of the Kunene River. As a result, the entire Ruacana Falls were in Portuguese territory.
Joint South African and Portuguese teams demarcated the boundary with beacons placed at not more than 10 km intervals. They completed their work in September 1928 and the neutral zone ceased to exist when the Portuguese and South African governments confirmed the agreement in April 1929.
The boundary divided the Oukwanyama kingdom with two thirds of its territory in Angola and a third in South West Africa. Families were separated and people were denied access to grazing areas and cultivation fields. Tens of thousands of Ovakwanyama migrated into Owambo south of the border to escape the harsh Portuguese rule.
Nine South African soldiers who died during the punitive South African expedition against the last ruler of the undivided Oukwanyama kingdom, Mandume yaNdemufayo, in February 1917 were buried at Namacunde in the neutral zone, while a tenth soldier died during the time he was stationed at Namacunde. Following the demise of the neutral zone it was decided to disinter the bodies and rebury them at the Anglican mission station at Odibo, south of the border, in 1928.
By some strange twist of history, the boundary between the Cape of Good Hope (a colony of Great Britain) and German South West Africa was fixed at the high water mark on the northern bank of the Orange River instead of the middle of the river in 1890. This caused a protracted dispute between Germany and Great Britain, as well as successive political dispensations, including an independent Namibia. Although the Namibian constitution states that the country’s southern boundary extends to the middle of the Orange River, several rounds of talks and initiatives since independence have failed to resolve what has been described as “one of the longest disputes in the history of colonial diplomacy.”
Willie Olivier
