Vulnerability and Oral History. The Biography of a ‘GDR-Child of Namibia’ as a Narrative of Being Hurt

Abstract

Oral history adds granularity to the great historical narratives by supplementing them with the everyday stories of contemporary witnesses. It is against this backdrop that this article devotes itself to the story of a young woman who, as a child, was taken from a Namibian refugee camp and sent to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), where she spent her childhood and young adulthood in a children’s home, was then returned to Namibia, and who is currently living in Ovamboland in northern Namibia in isolation and poverty. Her biography is indelibly marked by the programme of cooperation which existed between the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) liberation movement and the GDR between 1979 and 1990. This political programme was part of a large-scale international solidarity pact and saw children and teenagers being provided protection in the GDR, where they were educated to be the future elite of an independent Namibia. The narrative related by our contemporary witness is one of vulnerability, a story which stands in stark contrast to the powerful narrative of international solidarity. She tells her story with the help of a photograph album. The album provides her own personal story with pictorial support, without which she would have struggled to tell her story at all. Her story is at one remove from the master-narratives surrounding the cooperation between the GDR and SWAPO; it permits an alternative reading of history and reveals a story of personal injustice, the effects of which are still being felt today.