Comrades I have come across this analysis. It should be acknowledged that it is not written by independent observer. I was asking myself what lesson can learnt by our party? How did PAC do on measure of six element in which SWANU failed? Why is PAC almost in same position as SWANU? What did ZANU do differently to change in disadvantage of being outside the "Authentic Six" or "Big Six"? Please share your thoughts on critical questions.
I noted two things the danger of being drunk by history (victories and/or victimisation) and importance of programme of action as driver of party business. http://www.newera.com.na/article.php?articleid=6784#mytop • Helping to Clarify Background The past week was eventful and stressful by nature of human imponderables, particularly for those of the political universe. We have had to contend with Monday morning quarterbacking of opinion makers and news reporters, sliding sideways from earlier pontificating and focusing anew onwards forecasting on the make-up of the next National Assembly and Cabinet. That’s human nature. The youth themselves have been cracking heads, wondering about half-full or half-empty results SWAPO Electoral College handed them. Nature’s bequeath is for youth to emerge victorious always. Benefit of time with luck works – this from senior youth himself who knows. SWAPO Party put up public extravaganza of eminence as a people’s movement, with confidence of assured victory at the polls come November 2009. SWAPO Party besieged the public with a pragmatic Election Manifesto and an impressive, winning list of candidates for the National Assembly, confidently forward-looking and scrupulously balanced – default on women candidates notwithstanding. The Presidency is, let’s be serious, a done deal, the incumbent is going nowhere; except anticipating shopping around for furniture needed for State House living quarters. Matters of State enjoy his undivided attention. President Pohamba made a clarion call for hard work and the bandwagon is moving on and picking up voters on the way. That’s the way. In between, I have managed reading a New Era opinion piece, “Genesis of Namibian political intolerance” of 4 September 2009. The co-authors are Dr R. Kandango, SWANU Party Chairperson and Tonata Angombe, SWANU Party Youth League Acting Leader. This my latest writing is really in a nutshell about that latest SWANU intellectual offering. The above was more in nature of curtain raising and warming up. I found nothing new or redeeming in that article and wondering what urges intelligent minds to keep on returning to the scurrilous dump of years gone by when opportunities for redemption readily abounded for everybody. I am really astounded to say the least. The centerpiece of their complaint, a pathological ritual for SWANU, is the alleged injustice against it in favour of SWAPO’s real deal of the 1970s by the United Nations. That being recognition of SWAPO as “the sole and authentic representative of the struggling Namibian people”. What the United Nations did and rightly so was its multilateral decision by different UN member states consistent with resolutions and declarations over a long period of time, both in the General Assembly and Security Council. I happen to know this more than most. I was there as part of the process. My compatriots were otherwise engaged elsewhere and missed the boat. This will be demonstrated in due course as I proceed. My account will, however, not be coherent and topical if I didn’t pick up the story from Windhoek Old Location in the 1950s. There were amazing factors of convergence, on the one hand, and of antagonism, specifically at the time when Hendrik Verwoerd took over the apartheid regime and further entrenched vicious policies of racial discrimination, bantustans, police brutality, influx control, group areas acts, and separate development. A breeding ground for confrontation was created. That decade exacerbated contradictions of race relations and opened up a wider space for political agitation and resistance in black neighbourhoods. I am not writing history but creating a context engendered by that political awakening. A two-way traffic of communication between Namibians in South Africa and those back home was developing and spreading. That started a process of political education and knowledge sharing towards progressive nationalism and consciousness-raising. Ghana’s independence in 1957 followed adoption of the Freedom Charter in South Africa in 1956, Pan-Africanists split away from the ANC, and not least Garveyism’s creeping in clandestine ways into the country spurred heightened interests. Nearby Windhoek, Augustineum (Okahandja) and Döbra boasted of many hundreds of black students who were receptive to such influence and coupled with interesting stories brought by midnight contacts from Windhoek or Walvis Bay, stimulated excitement in our minds. I belong to that bunch of targeted audience, like many others of my generation during those days. Things started happening and the spirit of uprising was in the air. The question was who or what could pull the trigger to unleash energy and numbers as mass movements require. Among catalysts for that were Namibian students, workers and frequent travellers between South Africa and Namibia. Others were Windhoek Old Location rising spokespersons on behalf of the masses. They found fertile ground hanging around regularly at Augustineum, Döbra and other gatherings at sports, cultural or entertainment outlets preparing ground for launching a political organization. That was a big challenge. Let me add this here. In the fullness of time, organisers of OPO and what would become SWANU found common ground for mutual support and cooperation. Others of various types also gravitated their way and things started happening, slowly but surely getting audible around the country. Apartheid police and their dubious agents were getting anxious and “spies” were planted to watch what was happening. Most members of my generation, in urban areas, would have been deemed either members or followers of SWANU viscerally when it was launched. The move was timely and the following was assured, at least philosophically. My point is abundantly made if you could only have a look at the founding SWANU Executive Committee members and associates, including some traditionalist interests. But let me also stress a huge point here, often put under wraps, namely that the Windhoek Massacre (Resistance) of 10 December 1959 was organised by Old Location Damara women, not by politicians or organisations. So much for that here for now, awaiting the next encounter. What had started as OPO-SWANU mutual accommodation had later been transformed into SWANU-SWAPO mutual cooperative facilitation and accompanied respective leaders into exile in 1959 and the early 1960s. With the aforegoing as background, I now want to take my narrative heading for Tanganyika in the early 1960s. I am not writing chronologically but to make it topical and coherent. I have delineated five clusters for this presentation. First is the focus on Tanganyika where initial groups of SWANU and SWAPO leaderships arrived as freedom fighters making contacts. SWANU touched down first! While all that went on abroad, I settled in Walvis Bay in 1960 armed with a teacher’s diploma but unsettled mentally on the way forward and chose factory work at Metal Box Co. In the meantime, my mind was always preoccupied and I started devising an exit plan to South Africa or going abroad. In 1961, I joined SWAPO in Walvis Bay. In early 1962 I joined others who had gone ahead in Dar es Salaam. I was armed with both SWAPO and SWANU credentials: I stood inside of liberation politics. It was there I got to know more about the SWAPO-SWANU relationship or breaking up. For myself, I was in a self-governing and soon to be independent African country led by Mwalimu Julius Nyerere who became its first President in December 1962. I was still there witnessing independence celebrations and dreaming about Namibia. Second cluster is my further exposure to the real world out there when I attended the AAPSO conference at Moshi, Tanganyika in May 1963. It was my first international conference. I met key African liberation heroes and fighters, including Odinga Odinga, Oliver Tambo, various ZAPU, FRELIMO officials. I of course met Jariretundu Kozonguizi, Moses Katjiuongua, Solomon Mifima, Vuse Make and David Sibeko of the Pan-Africanist Congress, as well as members of the Cuban delegation. My horizon was expanding in front of my eyes. Comrade Sam Nujoma was responsible for doing that initiation for me. I was becoming an internationalist. Without that briskly context of networking and speechifying, I learnt a lot, including the manifest rift between ZANU and SWAPO on world affairs and particularly on a way forward for Namibia’s future. My painful regret, to date, was missing the OAU’s inauguration shortly after Moshi in Addis Ababa on 25 May, 1963. The vagaries of African air travel and pre-occupation to reach the USA on time for school registration prevented me. I would have gone down in history as a founding observer in the company of Comrade Nujoma who attended. Speaking of a silver lining, I was in Durban when the OAU became the African Union in 2003. So much for that. Thirdly, I move on to the creation of the OAU Coordinating Committee for the Liberation of Africa (Liberation Committee) based in Dar. As I know hearing from participants and reading, lines were drawn in sand by then about who is who among African Liberation Movements. SWAPO and SWANU took different paths on vision, plans and the conduct of Namibia’s liberation struggle henceforth. Up to today the two of them co-exist separately in Namibia. We have history and records for that. That says it all, one focused on liberation, political mobilization, and rehabilitation of exiles and the other opted for academic scholarships and political wilderness. SWANU became a longtime ago a victim of self-inflicted political hemorrhaging and dysfunctional mindset of its succeeding leaders. Memories can empower but without action disillusionment sets in. That’s what SWANU has been experiencing and what I read confirms that reality. Fourth topic deals with emergence in early 1960s of “Big Six” among African Liberation Movements, namely ANC of South Africa, FRELIMO of Mozambique; MPLA of Angola, PAIGC of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde; SWAPO of Namibia; and ZAPU of Zimbabwe. They constituted recognised movements and gained prestige overseas. I will in due course explain what happened and why. Fifth cluster is about efforts by both SWAPO and SWANU to establish diplomatic representations in friendly and receptive countries assisted by OAU, NGOs, MPs, Churches and influential individuals everywhere. History has recorded which one succeeded the opposite thereof. Sixth and lastly, centrality of United Nations platform and resolution as have come to have assumed as seen by SWANU. My task henceforth is to provide narrative and rebuttals for each of the six aforementioned clusters of events. It will become clear why SWANU’s politics, disposition of its different leaders and intellectuals have forever remained sterile over five decades – 2009 is no different. Present mimics past and SWANU is dead in the water politically speaking. But it dangles on the blame game. Tanganyika on its way to independence in 1962 provided a political haven for African Freedom Fighters. That opened floodgates and they converged by many hundreds from everywhere in Dar es Salaam, Namibians among them. Everybody wanted access and recognition and host country was generous and facilitating contacts, including with resident diplomatic missions and various other interested instances. SWANU had a head start but SWAPO gradually grew larger in the game of networking with clear political mind and plans. I arrived in Dar in October 1962. By then virtually all top SWANU leaders and activists had moved on mostly to Europe on scholarships and other ventures. Late Nathaniel Bwaeva was lone representative of a functioning office and busy making ends meet. I met the first group of SWAPO military cadres trained in Egypt, armed with weapons provided by the National Liberation Front (NLF) of Algeria. Other movements were similarly hard at work getting their act together. SWANU had moved on in a different direction and leaving the deck on the table. I mentioned the May 1963 AAPSO Conference at Moshi, Tanganyika, first of its kind for me. SWANU was a member, SWAPO not, but won favour there and maximized on that achievement. SWANU went down. Following the creation of the OAU, its Liberation Committee engaged leaders of liberation forces for interrogation on their programmes and preparedness for confronting the enemy, without discrimination of any kind, including SWAPO and SWANU. It was required of them to draw up vision statements, political programmes and an action plan to wage the anti-colonial struggle, which SWAPO did. SWANU opted for scholarships for leaders and the establishment of the “External Council’s headquarters in Sweden”. They left the scene. That’s when and how priorities differed and not much has changed for SWANU. The OAU had to make choices and the outcome is recorded and the rest is history. What became the story of the “Big Six” has according to SWANU’s longstanding view become a combination of sabotage and opportunism favouring ANC, FRELIMO, MPLA, PAIGC, SWAPO and ZAPU. In particular SWANU put the blame on the Soviet Union and unknown sources in OAU circles at that time. I must debunk this once again. The Cold War and Sino-Soviet antagonism were in full swing when the OAU was created in 1963, all of them canvassing for alignments. A There was Non-Aligned Movement and AAPSO also. OAU had fierce and independent-minded leaders, socialists, Pan-Africanists, critical intellectuals, fierce nationalists and pragmatic independents. There was favouritism for anybody. Nobody had overriding control over the OAU, that is for sure. Those ready, willing and prepared to fight the enemy were given recognition and assistance. SWAPO, among the six, stood alone as recipient of support from OAU, USSR and China at the same time. SWANU was nowhere. So much for that. The OAU did what was right and the outcome confirmed good judgment. At the level of external political and diplomatic representation, here too SWANU’s tactics and SWAPO’s consistency made the difference. And the latter outpaced the former by establishing representations in Africa, Europe, the West and East, Asia, Latin America, Americas and United Nations, by independence in 1990, 22 of them, including in the SWANU stronghold Sweden. Now, the bedrock of SWANU’s consternation and bleeding heart, the United Nations! Given the above, the UN had no pre-conceived preference between SWAPO and SWANU before 1972. Between 1963 and 1971, the OAU had kept all doors open concerning African liberation movements. Namibians petitioned side by side. But after 1972, the OAU Summit in Rabat, Morocco, the UN General Assembly aligned its policy with resolutions taken there by African leaders. It was in Rabat and not in New York where the language “sole and authentic representative” was given legitimacy. For example, MPLA, FLNA, UNITA, ANC and PAC were there led by their respective leaders. SWANU was absent. The OAU collectively took the decision on the basis of agreed criterion to fight enemies militarily, politically, diplomatically and morally. It was my first attendance at OAU meetings and I was proud of that achievement. The UN Council for Namibia and through it the African Group at the UN mobilised support, adding Non-Aligned countries and other friends to introduce a draft resolution on that subject which was adopted by the General Assembly. Again, SWANU was conspicuously absent as well as remaining indifferent. That’s the lot and all recorded by history and conscience, certainly on part. By 1978, SWAPO ascended to the status of Permanent Observer with enhanced the status and capacity to influence outcomes in favour of Namibia. Let’s revisit relevant co-authors of the New Era opinion piece. I can hardly understand “political tolerance” as a defining tool in this context and begrudging SWAPO’s successes and pre-eminence in Namibian politics, even looking at the post-independence situation in Namibia and beyond. Not only did SWANU fail abroad in all respects as a political organization, but also it has ceased to exist inside as a viable political entity, even worse than religious, ethnic and student groupings. It was sheer courage of Gerson Hitjevi Veii that put him in front of apartheid oppressors and faced incarceration at Robben Island, with Toivo Ya Toivo and other Namibians, most of them SWAPO members. SWANU suffers an existential dilemma as a victim of a self-inflicted lack of political leadership and intellectual motivation to overcome shortcomings of effective organising on the basis of political programmes. The /Ae-//Gams initiative was credible but was killed in its wake by the “too many chiefs and few Indians” syndrome. While I was busy writing this, I was surprised reading similar thinking penned by Kuzeeko Kangueehi, SWANU ex-President. The difference is the same. Inside Namibia, the 1989 election was preceded by deployment of large UNTAG personnel across Namibia and the arrival of all and sundry helping to level the playing field for all political tendencies, SWANU included. SWANU dissipated instead, failed elections and dropped dead when the Constituent Assembly met to draft the independence constitution. Its prominent former leaders put on different caps as NNF, NPF and so on. New parties emerged on the scene and SWANU remains an outcast by its own mental shortcomings. What’s good nature to do? Can anybody help here! Namibia held four Presidential and National Assembly elections since, SWANU keeps itself off the list. Similarly, SWANU has estranged itself from regional and local authorities elections. I can’t forget that great victory in one Omaheke constituency. I see no sign of SWANU seriously preparing for the 2009 elections in any form or shape. That’s really the story, and it’s better SWANU leaves the United Nations behind – that’s history – and rise anew and venture for resurrection and self-empowerment politically. The rest is neither here nor there. Problems SWANU has are both of leadership and membership that keep on shifting ground and consistency. “Ideals”, it has been said, “are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.” Let me conclude while leaving my personal big worry on the table as wonderment of bad kind. Old Location legacy and Augustineum cosmopolitan convergence among youth then had separated progressive nationalism armed with Pan-Africanism spirit from ethnic loyalties in fields of modern, competitive politics. This too is an area where SWANU still straddles the two and I wonder which is real priority. But I find this happening beyond SWANU. Herero-speaking intellectuals, professionals, students, political functionaries of various kinds, columnists and media reporters tend to analyse more often than not from subjective cultural rather than empirical perspectives. How this subjectivity feeds into national unity and problem-solving national paradigms baffles my mind. What I hear, what I read and notice seems to me as copping out and retrospective reassurance conundrum p -- “I want people to remember me as someone whose life has been helpful to humanity.” Sankara --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Sending your posting to [email protected] Unsubscribe by sending an email to [email protected] You can also visit http://groups.google.com/group/payco Visit our website at www.mayihlome.wordpress.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
