The idea that African pastoralists did not consider cattle to be commodities, but rather cultural objects, for example, as signs of wealth, status, prestige or piety, was prominent in explanations of overstocking in colonial Africa in the 1960s. Herskovits coined the expression ‘cattle complex’ to describe this phenome- non.3 As it relates to environmental degradation, the cattle complex argument
explained that because of the animals’ high cultural value, the management objective was to maximize their numbers by minimizing their consumption and sale. The practice of hoarding cattle resulted in a cattle population explosion and overgrazing and desertification. The theory suggested that if livestock managers were to behave ‘rationally’, that is, respond to market opportunities and employ modern cattle management practices, the cycle of overstocking- degradation would be broken because ‘surplus’ cattle could be sold and con- sumed.4 Africa’s cattle complex, however, may be little more than a recent
(re)invention of tradition, and indeed the case of Ovamboland suggests that it was such a recent invention that it could hardly be called a tradition at all.5 In
that context it is significant that colonial officials and experts emphasized their view that cattle management in Ovamboland was ‘primitive’, but they did not employ the cattle complex theory in Ovamboland until the 1980s.
As elsewhere in Africa, reports for Ovamboland demonstrate that the cattle population increased rapidly during the colonial era, but time series figures for domestic animal population on the continent are often crude estimates. An influential study of cattle raising in the Sahel countries of West Africa, for example, uses livestock figures from 1950 and 1983 to demonstrate that the numbers more than doubled. If the available figures for 1968 and 1973 are added, however, the trends become less linear. In fact, the cattle population of Burkina Faso actually declined between 1968 and 1973 and the 1983 figures did not dramatically surpass the 1968 level. In South Africa between the early 1970s and the late 1980s, numbers of small stock were on the whole lower than
3 Herskovits, “The Cattle Complex in East Africa”.
4 See Scoones, “Range Management Science and Policy”, and Beinart, “Soil Erosion,
Animals, and Pasture over the Longer Term”. See also Swift, Conghenour and Atsedu, “Arid and Semi-Arid Ecosystems”. On livestock overpopulation, see Le Houérou, The Grazing Land Ecosystems of the African Sahel, pp. 90-128; and Beinroth, “Land Resources for Forage in the Tropics”. For India, see Jha, The Myth of the Holy Cow.
5 Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine; and Cohen and Atieno Odhiambo, Siaya, p.
at any time since the first decade of the century and overall the numbers were relatively stable over time.6
Moreover, assessing the impact of domestic animals on the environment as such is a challenge. The key scientific concept of carrying capacity – the number of animals an environment can sustain without structural degradation – is highly contested.7 An increase in the ratio of unpalatable species in pasturage
– either poisonous or woody plants (the spread of the latter being referred to in southern Africa as bush encroachment) – frequently is used as an indicator of environmental degradation.8 Poisonous plants, however, are often a “natural
part of high condition range communities”. They cannot be defined as ‘bad’ or interpreted as an indication of degradation simply because they happen to be poisonous to livestock.9 Moreover, some ‘poisonous’ plants are at the same time
important dry season sources of animal browse, including sorghum in Africa, oak in Europe and North America, and the one-time global agroforestry ‘mira- cle tree’, the native Latin American lead tree (Leucaenaleucocephala). Indeed, oak and lead tree are among many plants that contain chemicals that have poisonous effects if they are digested in large quantities or if they form the bulk of a livestock diet. Careful livestock management is the key to preventing overfeeding on any of these plants, and increased incidences of cattle poisoning may be the result of a deterioration of cattle management rather than an indi- cator of an increase in the ratio of poisonous plants in pasturage and the deteri- oration of grazing.10
6 See Le Houérou, The Grazing Land Ecosystems of the African Sahel, pp. 124-126,
tables 24-28, and Beinart, “Soil Erosion, Animals, and Pasture over the Longer Term”, p. 66.
7 On carrying capacity, see Scoones, “Range Management Science and Policy”, and
Beinart, “Soil Erosion, Animals, and Pasture over the Longer Term”; Little, “Re- thinking Interdisciplinary Paradigms and the Political Ecology of Pastoralism in East Africa”, pp. 163-164; and Munro, “Ecological ‘Crisis’ and Resource Management Policy in Zimbabwe’s Communal Lands”, p. 195. See also Simon, “Sustainable Development”.
8 Le Houérou, The Grazing Land Ecosystems of the African Sahel, pp. 90-128. 9 Laycock, Young and Uechert, “Ecological Status of Poisonous Plants on Range-
lands”, and Ralphs and Sharp, “Management to Reduce Livestock Loss from Poi- sonous Plants”.
10 On oak, see Ralphs and Sharp, “Management to Reduce Livestock Loss”, and Har-
per, Ruyle and Rittenhouse, “Toxicity Problems Associated with the Grazing of Oak in Intermountain and Southwestern USA”. On sorghum, see Hanna and Torres- Cardona, “Pennisetums and Sorghums in an Integrated Feeding System in the Tro- pics”, esp. pp. 195-196. On Leucaena, Lawton, “Browse in Miombo Woodland”, p. 30; and Shelton and Brewbaker, “Leucaena leucocephala”. In general, see Huxley,
The sections that follow analyze the impact of cattle management and use in Ovamboland within the context of Nature-to-Culture narratives of environ- mental change.