ABSTRACT
In a performance lasting just under an hour a Namibian shopkeeper Elfrieda Binga retold “Berseba’s history … as told by my father”. She returned to this formulation several times in the course of her narration. Her recurring references to the history “as told by [her] father” obviously served as an expression of authenticity, a signal of continuity and above all as a mark of veracity. In one variation of her primary formulation she directly associated, “history” with “truth”, as in “the truth of history”. Given the weight that Binga attached to “truth” and “history” it is no surprise that her narration focused on those moments where there were tensions between competing versions of “history” and “truth”. This chapter explores the tensions in this historical tale on the founding of the southern Namibian town of Berseba. I suspect that the storyteller is telling a counternarrative, one in which she constructed their old opponents – the local politically dominant – “Namas of Berseba”, as the oppositional Other.
