Under the hanging tree

Abstract

This thesis investigates how haunted colonial sites in central Namibia, most prominently the hanging tree at Otjinene and the battle landscape of Okandjira, function as lieux de mémoire, shaping collective memory, identity, and claims to justice in the present. Building on Pierre Nora’s theorization of memory-sites and Martha & Bruce Lincoln’s work on cultural transmission (with Fanon and Mbembe as additional anchors), the study reads these places as spaces of both primary and secondary hauntings: visceral encounters with spectral histories and their ritual, oral, and cinematic mediations. Ultimately, the Otjinene and Okandjira cases have the power to deepen our understanding of Herero historiography, showing how matrilineal descent, cattle practice, and ancestor veneration infuse colonial trauma with meaning and continuity. Methodologically, the project combines ethnography with creative practice: participatory filmmaking is used both as inquiry and as intervention. Through the Return to the Source Film Lab and the feature film Under the Hanging Tree (https://vimeo.com/681215845 password: UTHT1234), the research follows how communities reanimate suppressed histories, transforming sites of violence into living archives of remembrance, resistance, and repair. In doing so, the thesis contributes to debates on postcolonial memory, spectral justice, and the politics of form, demonstrating how story, song, and ceremony sustain Ovaherero futures from “Mukuru’s tree of life” to landscapes marked by martyrdom and rebellion.