Why Namibia has a panhandle

Lines on a map in Berlin and London

Germany ruled South West Africa from 1884.^[1] In a treaty of 1 July 1890, Britain and Germany fixed the edges of their spheres of influence across Africa.^[3] In the south-west, Germany’s sphere started at the mouth of the Orange River and followed its northern bank east to the 20th meridian.^[2]

From there the treaty drew the line with a ruler: north along 20° E to latitude 22° S, east along it to 21° E, north along that meridian to 18° S, then east along 18° S to the Chobe River, and down the Chobe’s main channel to the Zambezi.^[2]

A corridor to the Zambezi

The last step of that line created the strip. The treaty said Germany should have free access from its protectorate to the Zambezi “by means of a strip of land not less than twenty English miles wide at any point.”^[2] It was named after Leo von Caprivi, the German chancellor from 1890 to 1894.^[1]

The strip runs about 450 km east from the main block of the country to the Zambezi, between Angola and Zambia to the north and, mostly, Botswana to the south. It is a flat, swampy plain on the northern edge of the Kalahari.^[1] After the First World War it became part of South West Africa, now Namibia, which South Africa then ruled under a mandate.^[1]

“It is understood that under this arrangement Germany shall be granted free access from its protectorate to the Zambezi by means of a strip of land not less than twenty English miles wide at any point.”^[2]

An island in the Chobe

The 1890 treaty put the border in the “main channel” of the Chobe River without saying which channel that was.^[3] Kasikili/Sedudu, a 3.5 km² island that floods for months each year, has a channel on each side. Botswana said the northern one was the main channel, and Namibia said the southern one was.^[3]

The two countries took the question to the International Court of Justice. On 13 December 1999 the Court ruled that the northern channel was the main one, so the island belongs to Botswana. It noted that the two sides had already agreed, in 1992, to let each other’s boats use both channels freely.^[3]

Caprivi after independence

In the early hours of 2 August 1999 the Caprivi Liberation Army, a secessionist group, attacked government forces and buildings in Katima Mulilo, the region’s main town. Eleven people were killed.^[5] The treason trial of 122 accused that began in 2003 became the longest and largest in Namibia’s history.^[5]

In August 2013 Namibia renamed the Caprivi Strip the Zambezi Region, as part of restoring African names in place of German colonial ones.^[4]