Kae Matundu-
Tjiparuro
The Old Location Massacre! Yes, this is how I have been politically socialised to come to know the fateful events of December 10, 1959 when 13 Namibians were brutally gunned down by trigger-happy apartheid South African police.
By then I was only a year and a half and thus could not claim much knowledge of the actual events other than what had been passed on to me and what I have been reading.
However, my parents and their peers were central to the events. Especially my father, Methusalem Matundu, one of 54 people wounded on that day.
Not only this but the event came to be of much more significance having had a bearing on my latter-day upbringing on a commercial farm in today’s Aranos Constituency in the Hardap Region. Amidst the commotion of the day’s shootings, my mother’s relatives from her paternal side who were working on a commercial farm in the Aranos area, and who happened to be in Windhoek, realising the volatility of the situation, offered to take me along on their livelihood sojourn then. And that became my breeding place up and until school age.
And in the process the Nama language, so to speak, became my home language, if not my mother tongue during the early years of my childhood.
But back to the Old Location Massacre, alternatively I have come to know it as Ovita Viomaue (Battle of Stones) as then the indigenous, who resisted their forced removal from the Old Location, possessed no other means of self-defence than stones.
Also, in my political socialisation, this epoch, and the 1959 shootings in particular had also been transmitted to me and my fellow peers then as Ovita Via Katemune (The Battle of Katemune).
Katemune was actually the indigenous African name of one of the eminent African community leaders of the time, who was well known as Elifas Tjingaete, father to many, like the former Auditor-General Dr Fanuel Ngatangue Tjingaete, Dr Rukee Tjingaete, Reverend Boas Roree Tjingaete.
Because of his and many others’ active agitation on many socio-economic issues of concern to their people, culminating in the boycotts of municipal facilities in 1959, and eventually the shootings on December 10, 1959, many, particularly from his community, associated this mobilisation in this regard with him and fellow. Hence the reference to Ovita Via Katemune.
On Tuesday New Era’s youth publication, Youth Corner, did a vox pop among the youth about what they know about the day, and what it means to them.
And when I am referring to the day, I am referring to International Human Rights Day in as much as this day in today’s Namibia seems to have little reference, association and reflection on the Old Location Massacre, other than referral. This is despite the fact that the Old Location Massacre Day predates (in Namibia) International Human Rights Day, that practically, essentially and symbolically came to be known and observed as such only after independence.
On the contrary the Namibian people have known the Old Location Massacre Day since 1959. They have not only known it since 1959 but as much they have been observing it as such, attaching to it a specific Namibian context since, in the broader context of the Namibian Liberation Struggle.
A context that seems to this day to have been suffocated by reference to it in the shadow of International Human Rights Day.
Not that there is anything wrong with it since, as history would attest, the 1959 movement in Namibia properly gave impetus to the awareness for the national liberation struggle of Namibia for self-determination, and ultimately for the realisation of human rights.
Be it as it may, it is regrettable and unfortunate seeing none of the youth seem to link and deposit the day in its proper context, the 1959 Old Location Massacre.
Who is to be blame? Perhaps all of us for making such a travesty of history by not putting International Human Rights Day in its proper context, which is the the 1959 Old Location Massacre.
That this is the case is only baffling because some of those who were behind and at the forefront of organising and mobilising the African indigenous residents of the Old Location, and were thus directly linked to the Old Location Massacre, are today with us. But one hardly hears them when the day is being commemorated.
I am particularly reminded of the likes of John Garvey Muundjua, Gerson Hitjevi Veii, Dr Zed Ngavirue, Dr Tunguru Huaraka, Moses Kavitjimo Katuuo, Asaria Kamburona, Nora Schimming-Chase, Dr Kenneth Abrahams, Ottilie Abrahams, Mburumba Kerina, Ester Kavari, Ueja Ndura. All these and many others are living witnesses of the Old Location Massacre but have been conspicuously absent from events marking the day year in and year out, let alone the mere opportunity of their reflections on the day 55 years ago.
What a travesty of history!