Sbusiso Xaba wrote:
> 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
>
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