Nelson Mlambo

Nelson Mlambo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Arts at the University of Namibia. He was an AfOx (Africa-Oxford) Fellow at Oxford University for  2023/2024 working on the project: “Literary Archives of Conflict for Peaceful and Prosperous Societies: Memory, Truth and Faction About the Herero/Nama Atrocities in Namibia” 

Namibian Environmentalism and Ecological Justice Through Poetry 

This project advocates for the pluri-vocal form of eco-poetry as an aid for environmental justice. Poetry achieves ecological sensitisation and conscientisation, and it is an activist performance. My project, therefore, is rooted in understandings of human beings as homo narrans (storytellers). In this regard, intergenerational poetry helps to gather indigenous knowledges of intricate ecosystems and the diversity of African ecological landscapes, flora and fauna. The poets collectively call for environmental justice and my fascination with this project is that Namibia is a unique case study of fragile African ecologies, considering its harsh desert environment and the paradoxical resilience of its people and ecosystems. Floral examples in the poems, such as the welwitschia mirabilis, speak to sustainability, human-ecological entanglements and responsibility towards issues of worldwide concern. 

I am keenly motivated by the belief that impactful ecological justice requires a heightened sense of inclusivity, not only in terms of interdisciplinarity but also in terms of underrepresented regions and African voices. My rationale thus calls for context-specific examinations, interrogations and engagements of specific African ecologies to give voice to the unique Namibian microcosm, and the Namib desert especially. My critical readings will link community engagement on environmental issues with poetry’s creative expressions, and I will aim to produce literary analysis that is responsive to wider collective lived experiences and necessities. 

My project, therefore, offers ecological and epistemic justice as possibilities in the everydayness of creative meaning-making in poetry. The expression and appreciation of Namibian ecology lies in its charming aridity and fragility, and poetry affords us ecological intimacy and calls for ‘eco-patriotism.’ Given Namibia’s post-struggle context, poetry offers empathetic and impassioned reconnections with nature through its politicised engagements, and poetry forms the core of African cultural ecology since orality is central to the African socio-spiritual and contextually informed consciousness. Thus, understanding poetry as an effective and evocative institution for articulating human-nature interactions aids in environmental awareness, appreciation, activism and justice.  

My project will read selected Namibian poems to rural community respondents and I will facilitate open, sensible, embodied and affective responses. From our discussions, I will derive a communally-centred reader response theory for Namibian poetry. Moreover, Namibian poetry as an interventional narrative in place and its situated emotional and intellectual resonances can generate societally engaged responses for informed ecological justice. My project thus adopts the core principles of a nuanced reader-response theory, where identified local readers (through regional workshops) respond to poems based on their personal experience, previous knowledge and opinions with specific reference to environmental awareness, and ecological and epistemic justice. Local readers representing a wide range of demographics will be purposively selected from Windhoek and some from the Erongo Region, which houses the Namib desert and the Welwitschia Mirrabilis, and this is the region with the most fragile Namibian ecosystem and the poems under examination are a reflection of these specifics. Local Namibian research ethics will be observed and I will obtain written consent from respondents, will anonymise their responses and will have no personally identifiable data in the publications.