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Literature on the Liberation Struggle

Home Archived Literature on the Liberation Struggle

By Ingrid Demasius WINDHOEK The Basler Afrika Bibliographien (BAB) in Basle, Switzerland, houses a special archival collection on SWAPO. The collection contains primarily printed material from SWAPO and about SWAPO dating from the 1960s to 1990. Thus, the collection covers a variety of perspectives on the history of SWAPO and the Namibian liberation struggle. A steady flow of new acquisitions led to the decision to bring out a revised and enlarged edition of the Guide to the SWAPO collection in the BAB first published in 1994. An introduction provides the reader with an overview of collecting material and conduction research on SWAPO and the Namibian liberation struggle since the country achieved independence in 1990. An extensive inventory then forms the core of the archival guide. The inventory lists every single document in the collection and provides a short description of its content. An index of personal names mentioned in the inventory concludes the archival section of the guide. The biographical section that follows, compiled by Susanne Hubler, contains a list of publications on SWAPO in the BAB library with about 650 entries. Furthermore, the company has also published a poster collection catalogue by Giorgio Miescher and Dag Hinrichsen. African Poster displays are a unique collection of some 900 colourful posters, mainly from Namibia and southern Africa. A product of the Poster Collection of the Basler Africa Bibliographien in Switzerland, which initially focused on South-West Africa (Namibia) and southern Africa, the uniqueness of both the collection and the book derives from the broad variety of posters. Not only are political posters reproduced, but commercial posters, awareness posters, advertising posters, and many others as well. The book is divided into the following chapters: introduction, liberation movements and exile (SWAPO, FRELIMO, MPLA, ANC, ZANU, amongst others), solidarity.