By Catherine Sasman Mvula ya Nangolo is one of the first black journalists and published poets of Namibia, and has an interesting proclivity for the mysteriousness of the psychic world. He spoke to New Era about his life and times. WINDHOEK – Mvula ya Nangolo is a reflective man. His demeanour is that of quiet contemplation and contentedness. Yet, his life has always been one of movement and often emotional turbulence. His family was constantly on the move from the start. Born into a large family of ten children in Oniimwandi in northern Namibia in 1943, the Nangolo family soon trekked southwards to LÃÆ’Æ‘Æ‘ÃÆ”šÃ‚¼deritz where he grew up until the age of about seven. The family again moved, and this time they went to live in the Old Location in Windhoek where Ya Nangolo started school at the Rhenish Herero School, until 1958. Again he moved to Okahandja to attend the Augustineum Training College. “I was there for a while and then left to work in Walvis Bay for the Metal Box Company as a clerk,” he tells. But Ya Nangolo was not to complete his secondary schooling until a later stage. By the age of 20, he decided to go into exile. His reasons were two-fold: first, he wanted to further his education and become a journalist, an opportunity he did not have in his own country for lack of training colleges in the field; second, a simmering hatred for the oppressive apartheid system after a close and personal loss had triggered a burning desire in him to fight for change. His father, Kondo ya Nangolo, had died as a result of injuries suffered at the hands of members of the old South African police in 1955, and had rudely interrupted the young Ya Nangolo’s sense of safety – and his innocence. The unprovoked and random assault took place one night in front of the family home. “I was 12 when my father died and it had affected me very much,” he relates. “I felt I had to do something about an oppressive regime that had caused such cruel suffering.” And, without saying goodbye to his family, he packed up and ventured out into the unknown exiled world completely on his own. “I didn’t want to tell anyone where I was going. I was afraid my mother would call the police in an attempt to stop me from leaving. As a matter of fact, I was engaged to be married at the time, but didn’t even tell my fiancÃÆ’Æ‘Æ‘ÃÆ”šÃ‚© or my uncle, where I resided, of my plans.” His family would only weeks later receive letters from him while he was in Bulawayo in southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). One of his brothers, Andrew (better known as Nuumbembe), would later follow him into exile. Andrew qualified as an architect in the Soviet Union, and later died in a car accident in Lubango, Angola. Going into Exile “I went into exile quite alone, using my own money,” says Ya Nangolo. His voyage started out on a train from Walvis Bay to Mafikeng in South Africa. From there he travelled into Botswana where, during a 48-hour stopover, he met Mburumba Kerina – when he was still with SWAPO – who advised him to continue his journey through southern Rhodesia to reach Tanzania where many Namibian exiles were headed to at the time. “Kerina gave me a letter for a member of UNIP (United National Independence Party of Zambia) in Bulawayo called David Kalumba. I had the house number, and when I got to Bulawayo I went straight to the house.” Kalumba put him up for a week. While there, he finally wrote six letters to various relatives, lover and friends, telling them that he had left his motherland. After a week, he set off to a town called Kampiri Mposhi where the railway line ended, and boarded a bus to the border town of Mbeya before entering Tanzania. “In Mbeya I stayed at a hotel for the first time in my life,” he remembers. After three days, he took another bus, this time headed for Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. “I arrived in Dar es Salaam one day in September 1963 and asked a taxi driver whether he knew where the SWAPO people were situated,” he tells. After Tanzania gained its independence from the British administration on December 9, 1961, the country soon became the hub of political exiles from other southern African countries clamouring for their own freedom. As one of the first African countries to attain independence, it soon played host to many liberation movements that set up refugee and training camps for exiled members. A SWAPO card-carrying member since October 1961, Ya Nangolo then showed the officials at the party’s head office in Dar es Salaam his party credentials and again a letter from Kerina he had couriered throughout his journey. “There were some people at the head office. We talked a lot, and in the evening they took me to a refugee camp in Dar es Salaam. I spent the night at the Mgulani Camp, and the next morning I went to register as a refugee.” Life as a Refugee There were 12 other men at the refugee camp when Ya Nangolo joined. He soon went to the African-American Institute (AAI), which ran the Kurasini School, and enrolled for classes in preparation for when he would receive a scholarship to continue his studies abroad. “In those days, we got twelve shillings per week which we pooled for food and other things,” he says. Shortly after his arrival in Dar es Salaam, the Organization for African Unity (OAU) established a military training camp just outside the city. Here, six people at a time from every liberation movement from southern Africa hosted in Tanzania were sent for training. “There was nothing when we got there,” he recalls. “We had to clear the bushes and pitched our tents, and when we started training, we did it with sticks.” But the training camp changed from its rudimentary beginnings to a better-structured setup, and subsequently served as a veritable training ground for those movements. “That was where I met Frelimo’s Joaquim Chissano when he was just a party official, and later Eduardo Mondlane.” He would later meet other leaders of southern African liberation movements, writers and poets. After three months in Dar es Salaam, Ya Nangolo obtained a scholarship in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) where he first attended a political ideological centre for the youth, called the Willem Pieck Youth High School, which was run by Germany’s ruling party. Immediately afterwards, he ventured into journalism studies and was attached to Radio Berlin International which broadcast to Africa and other parts of the world in various languages. Ya Nangolo joined the English department where he was in charge of a youth programme. While in Germany, his political involvement took him to college and other lecture halls where he addressed crowds interested in what was happening in his country. “I was quite involved,” he says. “In fact, SWAPO wanted to make me one of its representatives in Germany.” That was not to happen because Ya Nangolo was on his way back to Africa after he completed his studies in 1966. It was also in Germany where he started writing poetry. His first collection of poems, From Exile, was first published in Zambia. His second collection was published in Thoughts from Exile shortly after Namibia’s independence. He also brought out a booklet, Cassinga – A Story Untold, after interviewing many of those who survived the Cassinga massacre of 1978. A more expansive version of the Cassinga accounts is currently being worked on, which will include more personal accounts of the incident. Returning to Africa After a three-year stint in Germany, Ya Nangolo returned to Tanzania, where he joined Radio Tanzania Dar es Salaam that was broadcasting to southern Africa. There, he was put in charge of SWAPO programmes that were broadcast on The Namibian Hour, a half-hour slot. This later became known as The Voice of Namibia. “Before the name change, I was in charge of the Otjiherero and Oshiwambo language programmes that were broadcast into Namibia.” At the same time, he was placed in charge of Namibia Today, issuing bulletins on behalf of SWAPO. He also became a correspondent on southern Africa for the Daily News of Tanzania, which was formerly the Tanganyika Standard. He later worked as a columnist for the paper for a year. “The atmosphere in Tanzania was quite encouraging; it was a newly independent country and people were reporting things as they happened. They still had a burning desire to rectify issues,” he states. He took part in – and reported on – student debates and addresses by leading international academics at the University of Tanzania. Nangolo remained with the paper until he left Tanzania for Zambia in 1973 where he, together with his colleagues, launched The Voice of Namibia when SWAPO moved its headquarters. This party news service reported the official viewpoint of the organization’s activities inside and outside Namibia, and other developments. “Initially, we had difficulties in obtaining information,” acknowledges Ya Nangolo. “Sometimes information came through sources in London, or people who would telephone certain people in SWAPO, or would simply write letters posted to the SWAPO headquarters.” In subsequent years, the fighting units of SWAPO would have radio communication and would relate information immediately on skirmishes from the battlefields, according to Ya Nangolo. Coming Home Nangolo returned to Namibia in August 1989, a seasoned journalist and world traveller. He came as a member of the SWAPO Department of Information, and with the re-launch of Namibia Today worked at this publication. He later joined Nampa as its features editor, a position he held for 14 years before he retired at the age of 60 in 2003. Today, he serves as a special adviser to the Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah. On his travels he had met the likes of Bessy Head, Wallie Serote, Louis Nkosi, Ama Ata Aidoo, Mohamed Ali, Martin Luther King, Louis Armstrong, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, Yoweri Museveni, and many more political leaders. But although he fathered five children, he never got married. In 1983 his common-law wife, Beryl McGovern, died from breast cancer. “She actually died on my birthday, which is the 9th August,” says Ya Nangolo, who takes numbers very seriously. A firm belief in numerology (“numbers and names do not just happen”) – with a strong suspicion of clairvoyance – first emerged when Ya Nangolo as a young man started to become aware of strange coincidences. One of his earliest memories of such coincidences occurred when he dreamt of his sister lying dead on a flat surface. The sister, who had travelled to the north of the country, was reported to have died the following day. Mvula ya Nangolo plans to get married – for the first time – in October this year. And the numbers for this union show up auspiciously, he confirms. The couple met last year when the prospective bride was 43 years old. Ya Nangolo was born in 1943. Further, the woman he is to marry was born 9 days (“the biggest number in numerology”) after he left for exile – another promising sign. And, he adds, Namibia’s birthday – 21 March 1990 – spelt out a good beginning for this growing nation. “I do not do predictions, but Namibia’s birthday is okay,” he says in all seriousness.