In the early hours of 2 August 1999 members of the Caprivi Liberation Army (CLA), staged an insurrection and attempted to secede from the Republic of Namibia. Armed insurgents attacked a police station, army base, and broadcasting station in Katima Mulilo, the administrative capital of Namibia's Eastern Caprivi region. Initially successful, the insurgents failed to secure the military airport at Mpacha near Katima Mulilo and within a matter of hours units of the national army and paramilitary reinforcements streamed into the area and effectively quashed the rebellion. In the subsequent military operations, Caprivians were given to understand that whatever their marginal status, they were subject and answerable to the Namibian state.

The book under review has been written, in part, as the author admits, to determine his own position as a Caprivian in contemporary Namibia, and this sentiment is to be found throughout. In ten chapters Bennett Kangumu seeks to explore exactly what constitutes and determines the multiple identities of people living in the Caprivi. Kangumu argues that Caprivi identities have always been highly contested, and, somewhat controversially, that aspects of a unique Caprivi identity predated formal colonialism, survived through the colonial era, and continue to exist in the present. The first half of the book, chapters two to five, examines and explores the contested construction of Caprivi identities, whilst chapters six to nine are concerned with attempts to deconstruct Caprivi identities. Written partly on account of his academic training, ‘as well as from a desire for self-discovery, wanting to know more about myself, my past and my people’ (p. 9), this book is the first full-length monograph by a professional historian that deals with the complex history of the Caprivi.

Even amongst the arbitrarily drawn borders of Africa, the borders of the Namibian Caprivi strip are a striking anomaly jutting 500 kilometers into the African continent. Determined in the boardrooms of Europe as part of an exchange between the British and German Empires, the Caprivi strip was designed to enable German access to trade and traffic on the Zambesi river; an exchange determined by maps and not necessarily the reality of navigable rivers. Beginning with the establishment of the German protectorate through to the establishment of the independent Namibian state, the Caprivi strip and its inhabitants have consistently existed beyond the collective imagination of the Namibian state. The marginality of the Caprivi in relation to the newly independent Republic of Namibia came to a head with the insurrection of August 1999.

Throughout his work Kangumu seeks to show that the inhabitants of the Caprivi, although they may at times have been subject to other powers, retained their own identity; ‘it is untenable to think that the colonized inhabitants of Caprivi could have been expected to “disappear” into their master, to become Lozi’ (p. 11). It is this perceived desire for the maintenance of an own identity that informs all sections of the book, and is also its most controversial. Claims as to the existence and extent of the precolonial kingdom of Itenge, which conveniently encompasses all of the eastern Caprivi are debatable and subject to intense manipulation in the present. Nonetheless Kangumu's work is at its best in its detailed description of nationalist politics in the Caprivi from the late 1950s onwards. Based on extensive fieldwork and oral interviews, Kangumu sensitively sketches the development of nationalist politics through the personal histories of two men in particular, Brendan Simbwaye and Mishake Muyongo. Kangumu is to be commended for drawing to the fore the hidden history of Simbwaye, who was central to the establishment of the Caprivi African National Union (CANU) and its subsequent alliance with the South West African Peoples Organisation (SWAPO). Following extensive periods of detention and banishment by the South African authorities, Simbwaye disappeared, presumably killed by the South African Police in 1972. Similarly Kangumu charts the history of Mishake Muyongo who, following the detention of Simbwaye, was tasked by CANU to continue negotiations with SWAPO. Following the establishment of a formal alliance in 1964, SWAPO made extensive use of CANU supporters to infiltrate its guerrillas into Namibia via the Caprivi. However, by 1980 relations had soured and Muyongo and many others were expelled from SWAPO. Following Namibian independence in 1990, Muyongo was central to the failed secession of 1999, after which he settled in Denmark.

There are however two major concerns with this work. The first is an academic issue, and the second relates to editing and presentation. It is a pity that Kangumu relies so heavily on the work of Kruger and Fisch. Both were directly and extensively involved in the apartheid regime's administration of the Caprivi, a more critical approach to their work would have been useful; Kruger was more than a well-informed amateur historian, he was also an apartheid administrator who consciously sought to socially engineer the Caprivi. In addition, it is a pity that Kangumu has chosen to cite so many primary German sources through the secondary work of Kruger and Fisch. On the second issue of editing and presentation, it is unfortunate that this book retains so much of the PhD thesis that it was. It would have benefited from rigorous editing. This would have served to tighten the references and footnoting, condense the book, and get rid of numerous repetitions. In addition, the work is replete with typos and the maps provided are inadequate.

By publishing Kangumu's work, Basler Afrika Bibliographien has continued its longstanding commitment to Namibian studies and Namibian history in particular. Now for the first time readers are provided with an easily accessible and detailed insight into the convoluted and complicated history that is the Caprivi in the present.