Maggy Thomas
CHARLES HILL – Nampa in 2010 sat down with Ludwig Stanley, the man credited with helping Founding President Sam Nujoma flee into neighbouring Botswana at the height of the struggle for liberation. This is his story. For the most part of their journey to the Botswana border, there was silence between the two of them.
Each one sat with his own thoughts, but Ludwig Stanley’s was centred on getting his important passenger across the border safely.
When they reached the Namibia/ Botswana border, the quiet passenger said: “Goodbye, I will be back with independence,” and with that promise, Sam Nujoma’s journey into exile begun.
This is how Stanley recollected Nujoma’s journey into exile in an in-depth interview with Nampa at his Good Hope Farm in the southern Gantsi district of western Botswana.
Nampa travelled to Botswana to track the roots of Namibia’s independence struggle.
And Namibia’s history cannot be told without mentioning Stanley, the man who risked his life to see to it that Nujoma, Deputy Prime Minister Libertina Amathila and many others crossed the border into Botswana in search of Namibia’s independence.
“Welcome home,” said Stanley as Nampa arrived at his farm at around 20h00 on a Friday evening.
He still looks energetic, strong and healthy at age 82, even after a stroke in 2001, which left him almost paralysed on the left side of his body, and heart bypass surgery in 2006.
Stanley described himself as a Namibian residing in Botswana for more than 40 years.
He told Nampa proudly that he still wakes up early each morning to drink his vegetable soup before taking his medication.
From then on, he never rests until sunset, driving around his farm to check on his animals, or work on his farm’s fence.
“At the age of 82, I can still shoot; I do not miss. I like shooting, and it takes only one gunshot, then an animal is dead,” he boasted.
“I am a brave man, I never waver. Even when I was attacked by a lion and leopard (on separate occasions), I never turned back. So long as I have a rifle, I just face them,” he said proudly.
It is this fearlessness that let to him being chosen by the Herero Traditional Council, under the leadership of Chief Hosea Kutako, to transport Swapo members who wanted to go into exile in the early 1960s, to Botswana.
Stanley further narrated that the South African apartheid regime at the time was looking for Nujoma desperately, but Chief Hosea Kutako rescued him while he was in Walvis Bay, and urged him to travel to Gobabis for him (Nujoma) to be smuggled across the border into Botswana.
After arriving in Gobabis, Nujoma was hidden in a hut where a woman had just given birth.
In OtjiHerero culture, no man is allowed to enter the hut where a woman just gave birth.
“But we had to break the culture for Nujoma’s safety, otherwise he would have been captured,” said Stanley.
After some days when it was quiet, Nujoma and Stanley, then aged 32, got into the latter’s cream Chevrolet, heading for the Botswana border.
Nujoma was en route to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
“Close to the border, I switched off the vehicle’s lights and engine to avoid detection,” said Stanley, adding that on the journey there, they did not talk much as they did not know each other.
Said Stanley: “Something felt a bit different about this one (Nujoma). He remained pre-occupied with his thoughts and determined to proceed, even after he lost his shoe in the mud.”
It was a rainy day, dark and muddy, and one of the 30-year-old Nujoma’s shoes was without a shoelace.
“When Nujoma stepped in the mud, he left his shoelace-less shoe there. He was prepared to go barefoot, but I touched around with my hands in the mud to find the shoe, and I found it,” he said, adding that emotions then erupted between the two of them as they said their goodbyes.
“I was heartbroken seeing him go. I was sad to see him getting into a foreign country where he did not know anyone,” said Stanley.
At this point in the interview, he pointed to the spot where they hid the vehicle, and where Nujoma lost his shoe.
When they reached the border, Stanley gave Nujoma directions to a house in Botswana where he would be met by Daniel Munamava, who smuggled him into Southern Rhodesia.
“I was worried whether he would get the house in Charles Hill, as it was a bushy road to get there. It was only after two days that I was told that he arrived safely. I was relieved,” Stanley narrated.
He then took Nampa to that house, which is now desolated with overgrown bush and many graves.
The owner of that house, Hijazondjandja Kanguaiko, has since passed on.
Even in its current state, the house holds fond memories for Stanley, as it was where he directed Nujoma to.
“There were a lot of houses and bushes, but the young man (Nujoma) just got to the right house,” he stated happily.
The late Munamava is the father of Raja Munamava, the erstwhile editorial manager of the New Era newspaper.
On his own farm, Stanley had more than three cars and a truck, but he cherished the now 50-year-old cream Chevrolet which transported the Founding Father to the Botswana border to go into exile.
He is still in possession of that vehicle, even though it is no longer in working order, and is parked under a tree on his farm.
He bought the car for 70 British Pounds (approximately N.dollars 824,4 at today’s exchange rate).
“Most of the Namibians who went over the Botswana border were transported by this vehicle. I only remember the two of them, but there were many,” he said.
The car broke down 10 years ago, and has not moved since.
Asked whether he ever thought of selling the car to the Namibian government, Stanley had this to say: “I never thought of selling it or giving it away. It is with this car that I transported President Nujoma to cross the Botswana border. He promised me that he will come back with freedom. It is with this car that I, on a daily basis, transported Herero Chief Hosea Kutako to do his daily work. It is in this car that I used to put my first son when he was crying as a toddler to silence him. So, this car holds a lot of memories for me,” he said.
Stanley moved to Botswana in 1963 because of the bitter South African apartheid colonial regime in Namibia at that time.
Born in Windhoek to British father Albert Stanley and Herero mother Elizabeth Mbauruma, Stanley is now the proud father of seven children, 27 grandchildren, and 23 great-grandchildren.
He lives with his 55 year-old wife Claudia, who described her husband as stubborn but sympathetic.
“He is a brave man, who at the age of 77 killed a leopard which was killing our donkeys,” she said, adding that he even refused to walk with crutches when he suffered a stroke.
“I refused to die on many occasions,” Stanley interrupted jokingly.
Claudia then thanked her husband for taking care of her during a major head operation she underwent in the early 2000s.
*Stanley died in December 2013, and was laid to rest at his farm Good Hope in the Charles Hill district of Botswana.– Nampa