EPISTEMIC VIOLENCE: TRANSBOUNDARY CONSERVATION’S SUBJUGATION OF BASUBIYA ECO-MISSIOLOGY AND RIVERINE AGENCY

Abstract

This paper elucidates an argumentative discussion of the transboundary conservation sanctioned by the Botswana and Namibia and its apophatic impact on BaSubiya Eco-Missiology. It places an emphasis on the geopolitical complexity of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), in which the authors contend that the model of state policies emphasizes a “Fortress Conservation” that acts as a weaker form of neo-colonial exclusion. Based on the African philosophies of wholeness in the cosmos (vital force), the paper will show how the bi-national policies are interfering with the symbiotic relations between the BaSubiya and their water world. By transforming the usual subsistence efforts into a crime of poaching, the state apparatus weaponizes nature and in a systematic way of taking away the identity of BaSubiya as the God sent custodians of the earth. Employing desk research methodology with mixed method design, the article argues that this form of degradation of indigenous ecological care amounts to a theological crisis, which replaces holistic African Eco-Missiology with a western, dualistic preservationism that unnaturally separates humanity and nature. A scathing analysis of border defence laws and conservation laws shows that allegedly green policies can be defined as a kind of structural violence of the imago Dei in the Chobe area. Lastly, the authors suggest a decolonised Eco-Missiological approach that will reclaim that sovereign right of the BaSubiya to manage their ancestral riverine knowledge