The impacts of livestock farming in southern Namibia's communal areas are investigated. Small stock farming is ubiquitous in this semiarid region, and provides many people with their only source of wealth and income. It is traditionally thought that livestock grazing negatively impacts on the vegetation resource. Using both interviews and interpretation of sequential aerial photographs, veld (a South African word descriptive of the general vegetation and soils within an area) resilience and changes in vegetation composition and cover were analysed. Keywords: livestock, communal lands, Namibia, equilibrium theory, disequilibrium theory.