Do you know and understand what “reconciliation” means? Who is reconciling with whom and on what basis? What is the role of colonial-apartheid occupational history in reconciliation in Namibia and throughout Africa?
The clarion call that one hears ad nauseam – let’s forget the past and focus on the future – is nothing less than patronising the indigenous African in Namibia, with the structured attempt to destroy the credibility of those who still suffer the consequences of the crime against humanity, colonial-apartheid-UDI-structured-poverty.
It actually means that by forgetting the past, the indigenous African would not understand his history and resultant position in the hostile and exclusive economy today and why he would be kept on the side of the playing fields of the economy, watching how a few privileged, mainly whites and their paid-up African gatekeepers are playing.
It is a rightwing racist attempt to disempower the indigenous African majority.
That regurgitated continuity of calling to ‘forget the past and focus on the future’ is ironically as racist as racism itself. The plight of black-African human beings of being excluded from their land and an economy, based on their land and its resources, does not seem to suffice.
It seems however, that minority neoliberal Caucasians’ voices alone are enough to preach, “to forget the past and focus on the future” in order to dictate the condition of a country and an entire continent.
Imagine, the global Jewish community would be told to forget the past, when Nazi Germany killed millions of Jews up to almost the end of World War II?
What would happen, if the international Jewish community were to be told to close the Holocaust museums around the world, stop making films about the history of and publishing books on the Nazi German past of 68 years ago?
It could lead to WW3.
The Nuremburg Trial immediately after WW2 was aimed at clearing the ranks of both the political and the supportive economic structures of the defeated Third Reich then.
But, the self-righteous neoliberal mindset of assuming that “popular and respected indigenous African leaders are corrupt and immoral” and “indigenous Africans generally are immoral, stupid and lazy”, is conveniently overlooked, if not promoted. To add insult to injury, popular liberation movements and their leaders are being maligned and ridiculed from all sorts of public platforms. Meanwhile, the national, regional and continental plunder however, carries on as if there was no change in administration whatsoever.
In return, Namibians reached out to reconcile, as did most African countries. Namibia’s retired head-of-state and Founding President, Sam Nujoma, as well as current President Hifikepunty Pohamba and their leadership teams have expressed their anger and frustrations at the unwillingness of certain privileged minority groups. Those minorities do not seem to be willing to accept the hand of national reconciliation, as they erect obstacle after obstacle, hiding behind the law and the judiciary, to avoid having to give real assistance to integrate the indigenous Namibian community into the economy. As President Pohamba explained in a media interview, “Today they have the land. Tomorrow someone else has taken the land. This is a consequence.”
It does not bode well for those who pontificate to ‘forget the past and focus on the future’, for it is an integral part of colonial-apartheid and its current political character of Neoliberalism, as it is protecting the old status quo of crony capitalism. That attitude of race-based entitlement would, rather sooner than later, lead to polarisation and instability in today’s times of hardship caused by the current global debt war.
• Udo Froese is a non-institutionalised, independent political and socio-economic analyst and columnist, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
My Twitter Handle: @theotherafrika
Follow my Blog: theotherafrika.wordpress.com
By Udo W. Froese