ETHNOLOGISTS IN CAMOUFLAGE
INTRODUCING APARTHEID TO NAMIBIA
Rob Gordon
ISBN 9789991642765
UNAM Press, February 2022
From the early fifties, South Africa used South West Africa/Namibia as a testing ground to promote Apartheid ideology and to devise methods of countering insurgency. In these exercises a number of experts, known as ethnologists, played an important role. Linked to the government and the military they carried out research among specific ethnic groups, describing their physical characteristics, material culture, language and beliefs. Their work was used to legitimate Bantustan policy by emphasizing unbridgeable differences between people to make a national liberation movement impossible.
Gordon presents fresh evidence on crucial questions which have gone unanswered over decades. This book undermines ivory towers and raises wider moral questions concerning the role of doubt in expertise and in debunking conspiracy theories.
I found this book highly engaging, confrontational of white conservatism and racism and justly devastating of expertise gone wrong.
C. S. van der Waal, Stellenbosch University
Rob Gordon has maintained a long-term research interest in Namibia where he was born and bred. He has taught critical anthropology at numerous universities, and published widely. Currently, he is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Vermont and a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State.
