Zambesia has existed as a distinct political and cultural territory since at least the sixteenth century. Its peoples governed themselves, maintained functioning institutions, and built a way of life deeply rooted in the rivers and lands of Southern Africa. Yet today, approximately 300,000 Zambesians find themselves scattered across three different states – Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia – divided by borders they had no part in drawing, and denied the recognition needed to challenge them.
The right to self-determination, embodying the right of all peoples to freely determine their own political future and pursue their own economic, social, and cultural development, is enshrined in international law. For the Indigenous peoples of Zambesia, however, this right has remained out of reach. Their territory was fragmented not through conquest or administration, but through diplomatic agreements made between European powers thousands of miles away. When decolonisation came, the borders colonialism had drawn were inherited by the new sovereign states. Under the principle of uti possidetis juris, colonial boundaries were preserved as the basis for state sovereignty, ensuring political stability at the cost of entrenching the divisions colonialism had created. Sovereignty was transferred to the newly independent states, but the fragmentation of peoples like the Zambesians was not reversed. Decolonisation did not restore their territorial unity or their political standing, rather it replaced colonial administrators with new governments operating within the same boundaries.The result is a people whose political existence predates colonialism, but who have no recognised standing within the international system colonialism built.
A Nation Before Western Colonialism
Zambesia functioned as a nation long before the arrival of European powers in Southern Africa. The region, historically known also as Sebitwane country, Makololo country, and Sekeletu country, was governed by an established administration, including a king, advisors, an army, and a kotla, or court, where disputes were adjudicated.
The peoples of Zambesia are diverse and are commonly referred to as ‘The River Races’, reflecting their deep and enduring relationship with the waterways of the region – including the Zambezi River, the fourth-longest river in Africa, as well as the Kwando, Linyanti, and Okavango rivers. This relationship to the land and rivers shaped a distinct culture, expressed through food, dance, oral tradition, and modes of living that predate and transcend the borders later imposed upon the region.
The Berlin Conference and the Fragmentation of Zambesia
The fragmentation of Zambesia was not the result of direct colonisation, but of the geopolitical manoeuvres of European powers in the late nineteenth century. As British and German colonial authorities sought to expand their political and territorial control, the regions of Southern Africa were divided to accommodate their competing interests, tensions that ultimately led to the Berlin Conference of 1884-85.
The Conference brought together representatives from fourteen states to regulate colonial claims in Africa. Not a single African leader, community, or representative was present. The resulting General Act formalised the so-called Scramble for Africa, dividing the continent among European powers without the consent of African peoples. For Zambesia, the most consequential outcome was the Anglo-German Treaty of 1890, which created the Caprivi Strip (a narrow corridor of land designed to link German South West Africa with German East Africa via the Zambezi River). This decision entirely excluded the peoples already living in Zambesia and established boundaries that did not take into account indigenous inhabitants, their geography, their history, or their lands.
The consequences of this exclusion extended beyond borders. Colonial powers did not only divide territory, they controlled how that territory was recorded, named, and understood. Official maps, administrative records, and historical archives were produced by and for colonial administrations. Indigenous peoples like the Zambesians, absent from the processes that shaped these records, have since been required to prove their existence and history through archives they had no hand in creating and no power to shape. This structural disadvantage persists today. When Zambesians assert their rights, they must do so through institutions that were built on, and continue to rely upon, a colonial historical record.
Critically, Zambesia was never formally declared a British protectorate and was therefore never officially colonised in the conventional sense. While a protectorate entailed formal jurisdiction and administrative control by a colonial power, a sphere of influence (the category under which Zambesia fell) meant only that a colonial power held economic or political privileges in an area, without formally governing it. This distinction had profound consequences. Because Zambesia was never formally colonised, it also received no formal international recognition, no clear administrative boundaries, and no place on official maps. It became vulnerable to competing territorial claims and was eventually removed from the cartographic and administrative record altogether. The region was fragmented across what are today Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia, not through conquest or administration, but through agreements without the inclusion of the peoples who lived there.
The Limitation of the Decolonisation Process
The mid-twentieth century brought sustained international pressure for an end to colonial rule in Southern Africa. Yet the decolonisation process as it unfolded failed to address the particular situation of the peoples of Zambesia – and in several respects actively perpetuated their fragmentation. Many argue this process is incomplete, particularly when considering the limitation of self-determination for unrepresented nations today.
The decolonisation process broadly referenced ‘colonised peoples’ without clearly defining who this encompassed or to what extent it included Indigenous peoples. As a result, the peoples of Zambesia were grouped under a single undifferentiated category, at risk of having their distinct histories, identities, and political claims overlooked entirely.
While Namibia gained its independence in 1990, the colonial-era boundaries were maintained and inherited by the newly independent states of Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia, with no mechanism to account for the historical territory of Zambesia. The Zambezi Region, which had never been a formally colonially administered territory, was simply incorporated into the Namibian state (and the same goes for the Zambesian territory across Botswana and Zambia). The fragmentation of Zambesia was not reversed, rather it became institutionalised.
This is the central contradiction of formal decolonisation as experienced by the peoples of Zambesia, the end of colonial rule did not mean the end of colonial borders. Instead, they were inherited under newly independent states without the inclusion of the peoples. As a result, this incomplete process consolidated the exclusion Zambesians faced. By treating the transfer of sovereignty as the completion of decolonisation, the international community closed the door on any meaningful review of what colonialism had actually done to peoples on the ground. The colonial borders were not just preserved, they were legitimised.
The Tension Between Self-Determination and Territorial Integrity
Since the formal end of colonial rule, Zambesia has continued to advocate for its right to self-determination, a right enshrined in various international legal instruments, encompassing the ability of peoples to determine their own political status and to freely pursue their economic, cultural, and social development.
Yet the current international system offers limited mechanisms through which the peoples of Zambesia (as well as other unrepresented peoples) can advance such claims. The UN system is primarily state-centric, having been shaped in the aftermath of the World Wars, and is organised around the principle of territorial integrity – the inviolability of state borders. This principle stands in direct tension with the right to self-determination, particularly where the borders in question were drawn arbitrarily and without the consent of the peoples they affect. There is at present no international mechanism focusing solely on the right to self-determination, leaving unrepresented peoples at a structural disadvantage.
This disadvantage is compounded by the denial of indigenous status to the peoples of Zambesia. While Zambesians identify themselves as an Indigenous People, the Namibian state identifies them only as Namibians from the Zambezi Region. This absence of recognition excludes Zambesians from the protections afforded under international indigenous rights law and has led to their underrepresentation in political processes, as well as the erosion of their cultural and economic rights.
Conclusion
The case of Zambesia illustrates a broader truth about the limits of decolonisation as it has been practiced. Formal independence meant that former Western colonial territories became sovereign states, but it did not resolve or address the colonial borders and fragmentation of peoples between such boundaries. The transfer of sovereignty to new state actors was treated as the endpoint of decolonisation, not as the beginning of a process to correct the divisions colonialism had imposed. A people with centuries of documented political existence find themselves required to justify that existence within institutions whose architecture was shaped, in significant part, by the very processes that dispossessed them. This points to a structural gap in the international system. The decolonisation mechanisms available were designed to manage the transfer of power from colonial administrators to new states, not to review the historical exclusions those transfers aimed to resolve.
Recognising the rights of the peoples of Zambesia, including their right to self-determination, to indigenous status, and to meaningful political participation, is not only a matter of historical justice. It is a test of the international community’s commitment to the principles it has enshrined in law. So long as the gap between those principles and their application to unrepresented peoples like the Zambesians remains unaddressed, decolonisation will remain an unfinished project. That requires, at minimum, a willingness to reform the international mechanisms of decolonisation so that they can do what they were never designed to do – review the historical exclusions the decolonisation process left behind.
