Today’s news is tomorrow’s history, so the saying goes. The richness of Hannes Smit’s news archives attests to that.
By Catherine Sasman
“These pages have all the ingredients to well your eyes up with tears,” says Hannes Smit, editor of The Windhoek Observer, as he peruses the yellow and brittle pages of an old Suidwes Afrikaner newspaper dated 1937. He stops and lingers at an illustration of an aeroplane. “This was the first plane to land in the country,” he gestures.
During an illustrious career as a “newspaperman” that spans over 50 years, Smit has collected innumerable and invaluable material that contains almost 100 years of the country’s history.
“The past, from 1916 until now, is contained in my archives. Anyone who wants to reconstruct the history of this country can find information here. They cannot err. It is all here in a pristine and clear manner, exactly the way it was,” he says animatedly.
The initial wealth of material contained in his archives today came from the Suidwes Afrikaner that folded in 1976. The paper – a supporter of the government of the 1920s until the National Party took over in the late 1940s – was founded in 1926.
Smit, who started out as an apprentice trainee reporter at the newspaper in the 1950s, remained there until the end.
“When they closed their doors, I went to my editor and asked him what were to become of all the photographs and other material collected over the lifespan of the paper. He said, ‘Go to the cellars and take what you want’. In the thousands and thousands of files I found the voices of what was. And then I started the archive in 1978.”
Today, the material is held in three separate archives. Due to a lack of space, only the contemporary archive – spanning about 22 years from the time of the transitional government to the present day – is kept on the premises of The Windhoek Observer.
The shelves of the archive are roof-high and meticulously stacked, and rows and rows of cabinets in the middle of the room are stocked to the brim with files labelled “towns”, “places”, “ministries”, and “people”, among others.
It holds photographic material and negatives, all the statements of political parties from the early days on, and letters. From these documents, Namibian life is conjured up in the meticulously recorded and catalogued in print and frame.
“When World War II broke out in 1939, the first newspaper to cover it in Namibia was the Suidwes Afrikaner. A front-page photo of a mass sermon held by the spiritual leaders of the time in front of a government building, is a moving account, because almost tangibly one can see that the people there realised that the world was on the brink of a very destructive war. Many Namibian Germans were also interned.”
The smouldering ashes of the demolition of the Old Location are also well recorded. Smit recalls how Clemens Kapuuo, widely considered a “traitor” stood as a lone figure in front of his shack at the Old Location, with bulldozers threatening to flatten him and his abode. But he refused to budge, and, according to Smit, was the only one remaining after all the other people had capitulated and moved.
“In my view Kapuuo was not a traitor,” reflects Smit. “He tried to negotiate with the masters in control and he succeeded. He was one of the greatest gentlemen that I have ever met. I find it inconceivable that the masters of the time would assassinate him.”
Kapuuo was assassinated in 1978.
“They (the government of the time) used him; they knew that he had a calming effect on the masses, and mainly the Hereros,” he muses.
“I can safely say that our photographic materials, inclusive of the negatives, must be close to 700??????’??