South West African People's Organization Research Articles

Remembering the Herero-Nama Genocide in Namibia

Remembering the Herero-Nama Genocide in Namibia

“You are special”: othering in biographies of “GDR children from Namibia”

ABSTRACTThe article analyses a historical case of politically induced flight. The so-called German Democratic Republic (GDR) children from Namibia are about 430 people brought to the GDR between 1979 and 1989. They came from Namibian refugee camps and were part of a solidarity project between South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) and the GDR. They were educated to become the Namibian elite once the country had been liberated. Their stay was to be temporary, with the children identified as Namibian by SWAPO and GDR. The article reconstructs culturalist and biological-racist forms of othering as characteristic biographical experience of the young people which deny them belonging to GDR and Namibia. Simultaneously it examines how the young people irritate the categories of othering and create spaces of agency. They build a new hybrid language “Oshi German” thereby breaking culturalization and staying together as a collective in search of a place of belonging.

Exile biography and un-national history: the story of Kaufilwa Nepelilo

ABSTRACTIn the history of Namibia’s liberation struggle, Kaufilwa Nepelilo’s story is largely unintelligible. As one of hundreds of contract laborers to leave Namibia during the early 1960s in search of opportunities in postcolonial Tanzania, Nepelilo soon found himself living at Kongwa, the site of the first guerrilla camp granted to the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) and other liberation movements then supported by the Organization of African Unity. A reluctant “freedom fighter” at best, Nepelilo’s account of life at Kongwa focuses not on preparations to liberate Namibia from colonialism but rather on escalating tensions between rank-in-file guerrillas and the camp command. Nepelilo’s story is not a well-worn “dissident” narrative either, however. In contrast to this narrative, which introduces Kongwa in the context of SWAPO’s 1968 “Kongwa Crisis,” Nepelilo focuses on the inequities of camp daily life over seven years. Moreover, he highlights other personal experiences of exile which have fallen outside repeated narratives, including his motivation for traveling to Tanzania in the 1960s, his imprisonment in Tanzanian and Zambian jails in the 1970s, and his repatriation as an “Angolan refugee” in the 1980s. As I maintain, the discrepancy between Nepelilo’s story and Namibian struggle histories reflects both the politics of exile in contemporary Southern Africa and the times and places where exiles lived in Africa’s frontline states. Nepelilo’s story has not been “silenced,” however. Rather, it has been repeated often among friends who share stories about their experiences in exile to establish valuable relationships. The biographical details articulated in such stories may easily be drawn into a new national history. At the same time, they have the potential to push against nationalism altogether, allowing for different forms of historical narration and new insight into struggle pasts and their transnational legacies.

Changing of the guard? An anatomy of power within SWAPO of Namibia

This article presents an anatomy of power relations and policymaking within the ranks of the former liberation movement South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) in Namibia. It summarizes th ...

Liberation movements in power: Power and state in Southern Africa

Is there something special about National Liberation Movements (NLMs) and the liberation governments that they spawned? Their leaders certainly portray themselves as exceptional. South Africa's Jacob Zuma stated in May 2008: ‘Even God expects us to the rule this country … It is even blessed in Heaven. This is why we will rule until Jesus comes back’ (p. 343). Although NLMs may portray themselves as the political aristocracy of Southern Africa, having earned their legitimacy to govern in perpetuity through armed struggle, Roger Southall shows how they reinvented history, with particular emphasis on the ‘armed struggle’, to provide historical legitimacy and solidarity as they sought to combat internal and external threats to their national democratic revolutions. Liberation Movements in Power focuses on three NLMs: the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) of Namibia, and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) of Zimbabwe. Southall chooses these because their independence settlements shared the same fundamental characteristics of settler populations that lost political power in exchange for guarantees of rights of minorities and property, and NLMs that gained control of the state in exchange for accommodation with domestic and international capital.

International solidarity in the GDR and transnationality: an analysis of primary school materials for Namibian child refugees

As part of a solidarity project between the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), approximately 430 Namibian children were brought to the GDR from 1979 to 1989 to be trained as an elite for a future liberated Namibia. The children attended school in the GDR until they were brought back to Namibia in August 1990. The school lessons intertwined topics about Namibia and SWAPO with the usual GDR school curriculum. The linchpin of this intertwining was the socialist ideal of international solidarity. This article uses an objective-hermeneutic analysis to show how the school materials produced transnationality.

The 15th New York African Film Festival

The 15th New York African Film Festival Jim Dingeman (bio) April 9-May 26, 2008 The 15th New York African Film Festival, this year programmed by director Charles Burnett and writer Wole Soyinka, continues to offer a tremendous variety of stimulating films from countries throughout Africa and the African Diaspora. This year's entries heavily focused on themes of African history, past and present. The festival was blessed by the presence of Nobel laureate Soyinka. The year 2007 is the 200th anniversary of the British abolition of the slave trade, which received little attention in the United States. Soyinka narrates Diane Seligsohn and Richard Rein's The African Slave Trades: Across the Indian Ocean (US, 2007–8), an educational documentary series that reveals the Indian Ocean slave trade emanating from East Africa. The film looks at the Zanj revolt in Iraq in the ninth century. This revolt stemmed from the growth of Iraq's economy during the Abbasid caliphate and the influx of vast numbers of African slaves. They were used to reclaim marshland in the Tigris-Euphrates delta. The revolt was centered on Basra in southern Iraq. This film is complemented by another facet of the slave trade, Gül Büyükbese Muyan's Baa Baa Black Girl (TR, 2007). This focuses on the complexities of the Ottoman slave trade by examining the family of Mustafa Olpak, whose African grandfather, bought as a domestic slave by an Ottoman Turkish family, came to Istanbul as a result of the Kemalist revolution from the island of Crete. For the audiences, the film opens up a vast uncharted realm of how slavery played itself out during the period of the Ottoman Empire. Some films highlighted the crucial role that Cuba played in the wars of African national liberation from the [End Page 138] sixties onward. A remarkable story unfolds in Jack Lewis's Brothers in Arms (SA, 2007). It looks at the life of Ronald Herboldt, the only South African to fight in the Cuban Revolution after jumping ship in 1958. He lived in Cuba for forty years and fought in Angola twice. Given his knowledge of Afrikaans, he used his skills to listen to South African military signals while inside Angola. He returned to South Africa in 1998 and fought and won a pension as a militant involved in the struggle against the apartheid state. Jihan El Tahir's Cuba: An African Odyssey (FR, 2006–7) deals with Cuba's involvement in Africa's guerrilla wars that began with Ché Guevara's illfated efforts in the Congo to nurture continent-wide rebellion. It continues with the vital aid that Fidel Castro sent to Angola in the 1970s to thwart South Africa's and the United States's efforts to shape the geopolitical outcome in sub-Saharan Africa after the collapse of the Portuguese empire. While highly revealing, the film does not cover in depth the shifting of Cuban troops to Ethiopia to fight in the 1977–78 Ogaden War, which would have added more nuance. This conscious absence simplifies the film, but it still remains powerful and illuminating. The same could be said about Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation (NA, 2007), directed by Burnett, a departure for the director, better known for his remarkable features To Sleep with Anger (US, 1990) and Killer of Sheep (US, 1977). This film follows the life and times of Samuel Daniel Shafiishuna Nujoma, the first president of Namibia and of the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO). The film is hagiographic in tone, similar to any society's look at key figures in the national mythos (much as Americans regard George Washington). But, in that very process of creating mythos, the film gives us an invaluable wealth of perspectives into the nationalist narrative concerning the Namibian liberation struggle. There was no Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Namibia. Phil Ya Nangoloh of the National Society for Human Rights in Namibia has said that this is because SWAPO—the former liberation movement and now Namibia's ruling party—was also guilty of human rights abuses "in their camps in Angola, Zambia and Tanzania." For South Africa, the brutality of their colonial occupation and counterinsurgency war...

Party Cohesion and Fractionalization in New African Democracies: Lessons from Struggles over Third-term Amendments

The recent experiences of ruling parties in Malawi, Zambia, and Namibia provide a unique opportunity to investigate the factors shaping internal party dynamics in new African democracies. Between 1997 and 2003, sitting executives in these countries attempted to amend constitutions so that they could run for third presidential terms. Within that specific context, ruling parties exhibited different tendencies. Whereas the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) in Namibia held together, ruling parties in Malawi and Zambia fractionalized to varying degrees. This article examines why these ruling parties displayed such varying patterns while the executives attempted to extend their holds on power. Adopting an actor-centered approach to studying internal party politics, the article suggests that four different types of factors can shape party propensities toward coherence or fractionalization: exogenous institutional structures, internal distributions of resources, internal habits of dissent and unity, and external political opportunity structures. Examining the experiences of the ruling parties in light of these factors effectively shows the reasons for their different trajectories and suggests the utility of this approach for future work on similar dynamics in other contexts.

Towards Reconciliation of the Land Issue in Namibia: Identifying the Possible, Assessing the Probable

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that the case against a major land reform in Namibia is overstated and inaccurate, and that, in spite of its relatively harsh climate, the country contains sufficient land of good enough quality, and a small enough population, to undertake a major land reform. The paper suggests that the reasons why there is generally a conservative estimate of possible solutions to land hunger are largely related to the prevalence of a conservative colonial intellectual legacy in spite of radical ambitions stated by the SWAPO (South West African People's Organization) government. Furthermore, many commentators and officials in Namibia are following a pattern in Africa of ignoring lessons (positive and negative) from other countries—in this case particularly from aspects of Zimbabwe's land reform. The paper explores the comparison with Zimbabwe in order to emphasize the political lessons available for Namibia's land reform, but it also highlights practical lessons which exist, in spite of the fact that most of Zimbabwe's environment is generally much better suited to agriculture than is Namibia's.

Cuba and the Liberation of Southern Africa

From the 1970s onward, Cuba provided military and developmental assistance that helped stabilize the governments of Angola and Mozambique and strengthened such liberation movements in Southern Africa as the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, the Southwest African Peoples Organization in Namibia (SWAPO), and the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC). With the military advisors and training provided by Cuba, Southern African liberation movements were able successfully to challenge the power of white minority governments in the region. Above all, Cuba helped undermine these governments by fighting alongside the African nationalists in Angola.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The Constitution of Namibia: an Overview

Namibia finally achieved independence on 21 March, 1990, after a long struggle and many false hopes and setbacks. In a nutshell: the territory was colonized by Germany. It was seized by South African forces during the First World War, and then made the subject of a League of Nations Mandate, administered by South Africa, after the war. Following the Second World War, South Africa tried to incorporate the territory, a move resisted by the United Nations. In 1966 the International Court of Justice denied standing to Ethiopia and Liberia to allege breaches of the mandate. However, shortly thereafter the UN voted to terminate the mandate. At about the same time the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) launched its armed struggle. South Africa's response to these developments was to implement plans for the closer integration of the territory into the South African state, and into the system of apartheid. As a result, a system of native authorities, based on ethnicity, was introduced.In 1975 the “Turnhalle” talks were started which, although rejected by most of the black groups, led to the establishment of a constituent Assembly. During the same period, a “Contract Group” of Western Nations began to negotiate with South Africa over a settlement for Namibia. The ultimate proposals were accepted by the UN, SWAPO and South Africa, and the plans were recognized by UN Resolution 435. But immediately thereafter problems began to arise, and talks about implementation stopped and started for a number of years.

Deadlock in Namibia

DEADLOCK IN NAMIBIA /. William Zartman he struggle for collective independence against European colonization and the struggle for individual equality against apartheid are basically quite different—as is not often recognized. But the process of the struggle in both cases involves an underlying similarity. Oppressed peoples obtain agreement for change from their rulers only when they can make the present more painful than the predicted future, or when they can promise the rulers a future as agreeable as the status quo. The tactics are those of stick and carrot, and they need some sense of a deadline, a specific moment when the stick will be invoked if there is no agreement to change conditions for the better. There is no other way. But more important, those who do not have sticks to make the present unpleasant must resort to carrots; if they cannot beat the enemy into agreement, they must win that agreement by assuring him that change will not be unpleasant for him. Again, there is no other way. Namibia has spent forty years in search ofits final status. The conflict began in 1946 when South Africa attempted to annex its League of Nations mandate territory and was blocked by an international reaction within the United Nations and then confronted by the organization with the first forms of a nationalist protest within the territory itself. The I. William Zartman is director of African studies and professor of international politics at SAIS. He is the author of numerous books, including The Practical Negotiator (1982). This article is the result of research conducted in preparation for Dr. Zartman's forthcoming book, Ripe Jor Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (1985). Other cases covered in the book are the Western Sahara, the Horn of Africa, and Shaba. 249 250 SAIS REVIEW General Assembly and Security Council continued pressure while pursuing contacts with South Africa until 1973, when the members of the United Nations lost hope and instead began to work directly toward implementing their own declaration of independence. After the fall of the Portuguese cordon sanitaire and the independence of Angola in 1975, South Africa took over the formal goal of independence for Namibia as a cover for continued apartheid and South African dominance. Before South Africa could reach its goal on this policy track by its 1978 deadline, the five Western members of the U.N. Security Council launched a farsighted initiative designed to open a second track leading to an independence acceptable to both the world community and South Africa. Again South Africa changed its course and inJune 1977 cancelled its project for confederal independence, agreeing instead to hold oneman -one-vote elections underjoint U.N. and South African supervision for a constituent assembly. After a year of careful Contact Group negotiation, the South African government and the Southwest African People's Organization (swapo) agreed to a procedure for independence embodied in U.N. Security Council resolution 435. But in August 1978 the South African government stopped the momentum by withdrawing its agreement, and in October the Western foreign ministers went to Pretoria to give in to South Africa's action in exchange for its agreement to continue to talk to the Contact Group. The sanctions that Secretary of State Cyrus Vance carried in his pocket were never unsheathed. Two years of further effort brought near agreement on several occasions but no final settlement on the details of the elections, and another two years of effort by the secretary-general's office in support of the Western Five's demarche made more progress but without achieving agreement. At least the South Africans' movement along the first track was delayed and independence was not yet unilaterally declared. The problem with the Western initiative, laudable and skillful though it was, was that it contained neither carrots nor sticks. With no rewards for agreeing —since the conflict was not very costly—and no sanctions against either side for failure to agree, it was unable to take the deadline out of South African hands. The only crises in the conflict were of South Africa's making, in the form of threatened deadlines for independence on its own terms, and these crises have been avoided or...

DISPUTE OVER WALVIS BAY—ORIGINS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR NAMIBIAN INDEPENDENCE

WALVIS BAY is the only developed deep-water port along Namibia's coastline. It will therefore be crucial for the country's future, as it may enable an independent state of Namibia to achierre structural independence from neighbouring countries. But the control of Walvis Bay, and more importantly its ownership, are the object of a political dispute between the Republic of South Africa and the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO). WhiLe the former claims that Walvis Bay is South African territory and administers it as a part of the Cape province, SWAPO and the United Nations consider Walvis Bay as an integral part of Namibia. Despite SWAPO's claim, the question of Walvis Bay has been excluded from the negotiations for Namibian independence. This implies the pos sibility that Walvis Bay may in time become a South African enclave within an independent Namibia. Pretoria would thus be able to maintain considerable economic and political leverage over Namibia. It could, therefore, restrict the country's options for structural independence from South Africa and retard the process of decolonization in Southern Africa. But in order to assess the present, and future, importance of Walvis Bay, attention has to be drawn to its history, as the origins of the present dispute are to be found in the late nineteenth century's European partition of Africa. Existing historiography does not satisfactorily answer what the economic, political and strategic importance of Walvis Bay was in the past. If mentioned at all, it is generally relegated to footnotes in historical accounts of Namibia as a German colony, and, subsequently, as a mandated territory of the League of Nations under South African control. An examination of the history of Walvis Bay thus fills an historiographical lacuna and, more importantly, helps to identify the central features of the present political dispute, as well as to assess its possible implications for the ftlture of Namibia. The main argument in this article is as follows: since the British annexation of Walvis Bay in 1878, the importance of the Bay was reflected less in its economic performance as a port per se than in its perceived economic potential and political significance as the only point of access from the sea to the interior. Prior to the First World War, as today, this asset was,

With All Deliberate Delay: National Security Action Memorandum 295 and U. S. Policy toward South West Africa

Because of the ominous implications of a showdown in the United Nations over South West Africa, and in view of its uncertain outcome, it is of the highest importance that U.S. policy be actively directed to averting such a confrontation (Nielsen, 1965: 123). A perennial of international diplomacy-the question of Namibia (South West Africa-remains unresolved. South Africa maintains military and political control while diplomats come and go. United Nations' resolutions go unheeded, and war devastates northern Namibia and adjacent southern Angola.' A substantial body of literature on the international legal dispute over the territory has existed for some time.2 In recent years there has also been much research on Namibia's political economy and on the dominant role of foreign investment there.3 A few works also have appeared on internal political developments and on the liberation movement, the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO).4 Observers familiar with the issue have repeatedly noted the main features of Western policy: the Western powers, including United Nations Security Council members Great Britain, France, and the United States, have often concurred in stronger and stronger international condemnations of South African rule, but those same countries have consistently balked at agreeing to sanctions on South Africa. Western representatives again and again have rebuffed African pleas for effective action to compel compliance with UN resolutions. Such a contrast between rhetoric and practice is not unusual in foreign policy, of course. In the Namibian case, however, the contradiction is unusually explicit. It has also remained constant over a long period of time. The policy itself has been denounced, defended, and described in on-going news coverage and debate over current developments. There has been, however, little scholarly analysis of the decision-making processes and assumptions behind Western policies.5 One little known incident from the mid-1960s, in which the U.S. actually did use pressure against South Africa on the issue, throws some light on the policy

Conflict Resolution in Southern Africa: Why Namibia is not Another Zimbabwe

Despite continued American insistence that a negotiating impasse had not been reached, by the final months of 1982 it seemed clear that internationally-recognized independence for Namibia would not soon be achieved. While Washington claimed that negotiations between South Africa, Angola, and the Southwest African Peoples Organization (SWAPO) (with the U.S. as mediator) remain meaningful, there appears to have been a decisive move away from settlement. The latest round of negotiations, spearheaded by the United States as the leading element of the Western Contact Group (the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, and Canada), has attempted to move South African-controlled Namibia to independence on the basis of Security Council Resolution 435 of September 1978.