In the heyday of the restlessness of Father Martinus Luther, the monk from Erfurt in Germany, the man who started the Reformation of the Christian Church and after whom the Lutheran Church was named, warned against the sin of intellectual pride. By this he was referring to the tendency of Christians to think of their sinful state in such a self-pitying fashion that they would conclude that their sins were too big to receive forgiveness from God. Luther taught that God’s Grace was so great that man’s sinful nature, however severe, was nothing compared to God’s grace which comes through faith in Christ. Luther’s teaching was that whoever thought that his sins were too bad or too big to warrant God’s forgiveness was committing a sin of intellectual pride. God’s grace is far greater than man’s mendacity—this is part of the Lutheran doctrine! Hence his rebellion against the orthodoxy of the Roman Catholic Church at the time when Pope Leo X pontificated that people could receive forgiveness for their sins after confessions if they paid a fine through letters of indulgence.
In post-independence Namibia, we have committed an intellectual sin by omitting to record the history of the liberation struggle accurately such that our citizens, especially the young ones would be informed and enlightened about the sacrifices that were made to bring us where we are today.
While facing a hostile apartheid judge in the same Pretoria court that Nelson Mandela was sentenced in 1964, Tatekulu Andimba Herman Toivo YaToivo told Judge Rudolph on 8 February 1968:‘I know that the struggle will be long and bitter. Only when our human dignity is restored to us, as equals of the whites, will there be peace between us.’ And indeed it was long and bitter. Yet we do not appreciate what it took to come this far.
What followed Tatekulu’s prediction is something that the nation’s intellectuals have not given sufficient expression to cement our history properly. In the absence of this intellectual account of what Namibian men and women did, we are now scrambling for wealth and fame whereas those who laid the foundations for what we enjoy today did it not for gain. The veterans of the liberation struggle, most of whom we will not know, sacrificed to prepare a better future for all of us, as they kept their eyes on the price of freedom. We will never be able to thank them enough, and they themselves did it not to be thanked. Yet we not yet appreciated their contributions in a fitting manner, namely to have their stories told and recorded for posterity.
The sacrifices that were made by men and women, young and not so young, in their efforts to secure political independence, and the freedoms and liberties that we enjoy today are not known to the nation in order to appreciate the hard roads they walked against the stability we have today. Knowing this will help us do our bits in our own spheres of influence so that we can carry forward the values and principles that sustained a movement in very difficult times. It took me a great deal of listening to appreciate what these men and women did in my name to bring about political independence in 1990, not to mention the further sacrifices they made to fashion the system of government that we have today which is, to all intends and purposes, second to none in Afrika. Thank you to the brothers and sisters who continue to exhibit that spirit that was the quintessential foundation of and for the liberation struggle waged by Swapo specifically.
We take for granted that the freedoms we enjoy today came about naturally, or admittedly, with some work on the part of those who were politically minded. Many of us even think that it was nothing unusual or extraordinary to fight against the oppressive system of apartheid with its abusive and dehumanizing laws and practices in so far as the Afrikan people were concerned
It took more than what we know to wage a struggle for freedom for the length of time that it went on. Listening to eulogies of the stalwarts who passed on the last months only—one gets to know and appreciate the selflessness, commitment and dedication these Namibians had towards the goals of liberation.
In a real sense, they were possessed by a spirit equal to that which fueled missionary work around the globe. The first cadres of the military wing of Swapo and their commanders were fundamentalist in their commitment to the freedom of the Namibian people, so much so, that from the stories one hears from the real fighters in the most difficult days, they operated with a commitment that will never be duplicated in the history of this country. Some of them were very young, restless and willing to forfeit their education to go to the front to face the enemy, at that the invincible South African Defense Force.
Last week, my friend Primus Hango took me to a graduation party of a friend’s wife where I had the honor of meeting some of the former fighters who shared with me what they went through. I wish I could mention their names. I am sure they would not want that. I was so humbled, actually broken, unable to imagine how they could be so normal and gentle considering what they were telling me.
They are now distinguished members of the Namibian body politic, yet very down to earth and normal men. I felt so small next to these giants of the Namibian soil. I wondered in my head how on earth I could possible thank them for what they did. I could only manage to ask two mumbled questions: How old were you when you left, and what was it that motivated you to fight like that? One of the platoon commanders, who left at 17 and spent 15 years fighting and surviving in the bush, said in the most disarming calm voice: ‘We did not even know or care that we will see independence. What was important was to secure a better future for the Namibian child…” The others just nodded in a quite yet mature manner.
I felt terrible, I experienced a sense of happiness that these men were still alive and if they did not tell me what I heard now, I would have thought they were just normal university graduates. I closed my eyes as if to say a short prayer not just for myself, but for many Namibians who are not privy to these liberating narratives.
I added these stories to what I knew already. More stories came back to me as I recollected more faces of people who taught me the little I know about the struggle in its different forms. My memory took me back to my first encounter with a national leader. Ntate Andrew Matjila who gave me my first understanding of Afrikan politics, Helmut Angula who told me about his One Thousand Days, Hinyangerwa Asheeke in his gentle diplomatic way of educating foolish students in America like myself, Niilo Taapopi (Kambwa), another diplomat who never bragged about his fighting prowess in the struggle till I stumbled upon his story in a book, Ringo Abed whom I considered a fashionable musician till I discovered much later that he was a Plan commander, Tate Samson Ndeikwila’s suffering at the hands of SWANLA and WENELA while he was on his journey to join PLAN, to top it off the story of the current Speaker of the National Assembly, Hon. Theo-Ben Gurirab, who shared with me years ago that he spent time in several countries’ prisons, and that when he was in Nyasaland, now Malawi, he had to ‘nyasalise’ his identity by adopting the name Peter Mafulira. The Roman Catholic boy in me comes alive and feels guilty that these brothers and sisters of the soil did all that alone for the future of my child.
My head was spinning with names and faces and facts and more questions. I felt guilty that they did these things alone, for the sake of my child! I felt more guilty that as a nation, as we partake of the game of politics, we have not been kind to these men and women. My mind sprinted to Ndilimani’s lyrics: “Nge nda lemana moita, humbatenge po hailwa yange, meme wameme haillwa kumininenge”, which I comprehended for the first time. I left these brothers happy and sad at the same time. It is only later that I appreciated how much they had educated me.
I am not talking here of those who joined Swapo at a quarter past twelve and are now shouting the loudest and the most intolerant to different perspectives. I am talking of those with scars on their bodies as result of the hardship of surviving with very little.
I am talking of those who had to walk and sleep in the same uniform for days and nights on end, at times infested with ‘bosluise’, those who lived on dried rice, those who used natural instincts to see their way through the dark nights in the Oshikango, Kavango and Kwando forests, those who swam across crocodile infested rivers with their ammunition atop their fatigued bodies, those who picked up comrades who were just hit by enemy fire and continued to soldier on. I was broken.
I am sure there are lots of the gems in our country—the stories that should be the foundation of our identity as the Land of the Brave.
Our bravery is not about making money and becoming the richest or the most famous. Our bravery is about doing extraordinary things to serve the others.
We have not been grateful enough to the real veterans of the struggle. The story of heroism has not been told in a manner that it should be told. Tate Sam Nujoma has been sold short by the intellectuals of Namibia. Tate Nujoma is not just the Founding President—he is more. If we were to be true to ourselves, Tate Nujoma should have been a visiting Professor of African History at Unam, at UCT and Howard University in Washington, D.C. Tate Nujoma should not wearing Swapo colors but national colors and with the authority to speak at any political party’s rally as the Father of the Nation, not of one party for Namibia is bigger than one party. Tate Nujoma cannot be restricted to parochial party jurisdictions. The country is his political party. The unity, the peace, the stability, the justice for all in the country constitute the tapestry of his permanent Manifesto.
It is not too late for us to rectify our story. As we look ahead, we can dust ourselves and start putting the pieces together. We owe the generation that laid the foundation, the Plan fighters and the coming generation an honest and truthful account of how we are responding to the challenges facing us now and in anticipation of the challenges tomorrow. Those who have stories to tell need to be given the time and space to do so while the rest of us listen.–at least for now. From theirs will come the first lines of our own stories.
These pieces will become the quilt, colorful and vibrant of the Namibia that we wish to see. We have an obligation to leave behind a better place than we found it, as did our veterans who faced the future with very little or nothing. Ours is to make certain that we leave this country in a better state than the one we found it in. I am not altogether sure that we are doing this now.