cc Two decades after their country's independence, Namibians inhabit a society that remains one of the world's most unequal, writes Henning Melber. The country's common people are the victims of a rapacious, self-serving elite group which is all too happy to cooperate with foreign corporations to exploit Nambia's natural resources for mutual gain. With Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) earmarked in official thinking as the new means towards 'trickle-down' benefits for all, Melber argues that such schemes are nothing more than a strategy for allowing private capital to generate profit from public property at the wider population's expense.

cc With Sam Nujoma turning 80 in May this year, Henning Melber considers the Namibian leader's role as a uncompromising patriarch and the significance of the notion of 'family' over 'individual' during the country's liberation struggle. Highlighting the overawing hold of a combat mindset on the leader, Melber considers Nujoma's strikingly dispassionate attitude towards the grim realities of the liberation struggle and the extent to which the liberators 'gave away their humanity'.

When liberation movements take power, their governments are often marked by military mindsets, categorising people as winners and losers and operating along the lines of command and obedience. Such trends are evident in southern Africa. Democratic discourse in search of the common good would look quite different.

A knee-jerk reaction of ‘Tiers-Mondisme’ is to show solidarity with the struggle for freedom among the ‘wretched of the earth’. Sometimes, struggles are glorified, as was the case back in the 1960s. Frantz Fanon’s book ‘Les damnés de la terre’ (the wretched of the earth) was paradigmatic. His manifesto became a call to battle for the Algerian resistance movement against France, the colonial power.

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the introduction. He was quite selective in his argumentation, tending in some spots to glorify violence as an act of emancipation. Indeed, he seemed to see violence as a purifying force that would turn the colonised into full citizens. Fanon himself however spoke out against excessive post-colonial authoritarianism. In penetrating analyses and withering criticism, he described what he had seen, mainly in West Africa, up to his death in 1961.

Fanon critisised the authoritarian attitudes of the African elite, which usurped young states in the course of decolonisation, and their abuses of power when securing privileges for themselves and turning entire states into instruments of control. His early warnings went largely unheeded, however. Not until the 1990s, when the shortcomings of revolutionary movements could no longer be ignored, did Fanon’s analyses come back into the foreground.

VICTORY IN PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE?

When liberation movements in the so-called third world took up arms, they enjoyed support from the socialist countries as well as solidarity movements in the West. Organisations such as the PAIGC, MPLA, and FRELIMO challenged Portugal’s colonial power. Their resilience in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, Angola, and Mozambique even had repercussions in the Lisbon metropole. They triggered the Carnation Revolution, bringing an end to Portuguese colonialism in Africa in the mid-1970s.

In Rhodesia – today’s Zimbabwe – the ZANU and ZAPU liberation movements fought the white minority regime under Ian Smith, which had declared unilateral Independence (UDI) from the British Empire. Colonial rule came to an end in 1980 when the Lancaster House Agreement was signed and ZANU subsequently won the elections.

In Namibia, the United Nations negotiated a transition period for independence, which was ultimately implemented in 1989–90. South Africa had occupied the country in violation of international law. SWAPO fought against this illegal occupation for a quarter of a century.

Four years later, the Namibian model of controlled change helped South Africans hold their first free elections, which were won by the ANC. The former liberation movement thus assumed political responsibility, and it did so in a legitimate fashion.

One must bear in mind that armed resistance was part of the solution both in South Africa and Namibia. It led to negotiations for transitional arrangements towards majority rule. The compromises required from all sides contributed to the transitional periods working out. At the same time, a decidedly patriotic form of writing history turned the independence struggle soon thereafter into a myth.

ZIMBABWEAN TRAUMA

It bears repetition that the unscrupulously violent character of Zimbabwe’s ZANU regime already revealed itself in the early to mid-1980s, when a special unit killed an estimated 20,000 people, mainly in Matabeleland, where the opposition ZAPU had most of its supporters.

The soldiers of the fifth brigade trained by North Korea, took no prisoners. They killed, tortured, raped and humiliated anyone who seemed suspicious (and it was enough to be Ndebele); men, women, and even children. The only organisation to protest was the local catholic church, which raised its voice to protect the victims. The rest of the world, including those who had originally shown solidarity, had little to say; after all, it simply couldn’t be true.

The violence did not stop until ZAPU agreed to sign a pact with the ruling party. ZANU basically took them over. None of this hurt the Mugabe government’s bilateral and multilateral standing. To the contrary: up to the late 1990s, Zimbabwe was considered a success story, an example of successful transition. Indeed, in 1994 Queen Elizabeth II personally bestowed knighthood upon President Mugabe, who had assumed comprehensive executive powers in the meantime. Not until June of this year was his knighthood revoked.

WOUNDS OLD AND NEW

When a new opposition party, the MDC, took to the political stage in Zimbabwe and turned out to be a serious competitor at the end of the 1990s, the ‘Chimurenga’ (struggle) became a permanent institution. Violence became the customary response to political protest. As political power shifted away from Mugabe after he lost a referendum in 2000, his regime became only more violent.

In 2005, Mugabe and his people launched Operation ‘Murambatsvina’ (Drive Out Trash) in raids on pockets of opposition in Harare and other major towns: more than 2 million people are estimated to have lost their already meagre livelihoods in the process. There is no need to delve into the recent escalation of violence, since the election troubles were reported in detail worldwide.

An estimated third of Zimbabwe’s people has fled the country for political and economic reasons; from exile, they try to support family members who have stayed home. All of this is sad proof that life under a liberation movement is not automatically better than it was under colonialism. The human-rights violations of SWAPO have also been downplayed. In the 1980s, the organisation imprisoned thousands of its own members in dungeons in southern Angola, accusing them of spying on behalf of South Africa. These people lost their liberty in spite of never having been proven guilty; indeed, they were not even brought to trial. Many of them did not survive the torture. Those released are scorned even today.

It could have been different in South Africa. The ANC government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission talked about human rights violations committed by its own members. But the final report containing these findings was never published in its original form. So far, ANC omissions have not been discussed openly.

VICTIMS BECOME PERPETRATORS

There is nothing new about military movements that are supposedly justified in ethical and moral terms quickly losing their legitimacy. Since the French Revolution, liberators have often turned into oppressors, victims into perpetrators. It is not unusual for a new regime to quickly resemble an old one. That has happened time and again around the world.

The Indian psychologist and sociologist Ashis Nandy, one of the founders of critical post-colonial studies, has dealt with this issue in depth. The Intimate Enemy, his book of 1983, discusses how liberators tend to reproduce the past rather than offering genuine alternatives. In this light, the “anti-imperialist” Robert Mugabe turns out to be merely the final executor of the policies of the racist colonists Cecil Rhodes and Ian Smith. Armed combat merely created new repressive institutions of the state for the dominant group within anti-colonial resistance. Former PLO activist Yezid Sayigh argued 1997 in Armed Struggle and the Search for State that this was also happening in the Palestinian liberation movement.

Such power structures often revolve around individual commanders who act to the benefit of their crony supporters. Resistance movements normally adopt rough survival strategies and techniques while fighting an oppressive regime. That culture, unfortunately, takes root and is permanently nurtured. In sum, it becomes questionable whether there is a true difference between the political systems they manage to throw out and what they establish in their place.

In May 1990 Albie Sachs had already spoken of this trend in respect to South Africa. In a lecture at the University of the Western Cape, this South African lawyer, who was crippled by a parcel bomb in Mozambique during his 24-year exile, expressed his doubts about ANC activists being ready for freedom. He worried about the habits they had cultivated. As Sachs put it, the culture and discipline of resistance may have served a survival strategy in the underground, but these skills were certainly not those of free citizens.

Maybe this is why Nelson Mandela became a global icon in his lifetime; the many years he spent in prison kept him away from the daily intrigues and power plays prevalent in an organised liberation movement. Mandela preserved a spirit of human compassion and tolerance that a life of struggle and exile might not have afforded him.

This may sound cynical but might be close to reality. Jacob Zuma, a product of the struggle, cultivates a ‘Zulu warrior culture’. He emerged as a populist alternative to the more intellectual, somewhat aloof Thabo Mbeki, and will probably soon be South Africa’s next president. Zuma has an international reputation for various allegations of corruption, charges of sexual abuse and martial rhetoric (his favourite song is ‘Bring me my machine gun’).

Disappointed by the limits of the liberation they have experienced, many people are looking for substitute saviours. Fortunately, the number of those for whom fundamental values of democracy, liberty and human rights matter more than submissive loyalty to an organisation is growing.

Raymond Suttner is an example. He used to operate underground in South Africa as a member of the ANC, and spent years in solitary confinement as a political prisoner. As a member of parliament and later as ambassador, he represented the ANC government before returning to the academic world from which he originated. In November 2005, he pointed out that ANC ideology and rhetoric do not distinguish between the liberation movement and the people. He thus argues that the liberation movement is a prototype of a state within the state, one that sees itself as the only legitimate source of power.

‘END OF HISTORY’

As we now know, post-colonial life looks a lot like the colonial era did in respect to day-to-day life, the reason being that socialisation factors and attitudes from armed struggle have largely shaped the new political leaders’ understanding of politics, and their idea of how to wield power.

In governmental office, liberation movements tend to mark an ‘end of history’. Any political alternative that does not emerge from within them will not be acceptable. This attitude explains the strong sense of camaraderie between the Mugabe regime and the governments of Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa over many years. Typcially, any political alternative cropping up in these countries as a result of disillusionment with post-colonial life will be discredited as part of an imperialist conspiracy designed to sabotage national independence.

These governments never seem to even consider the possibility that their own shortcomings may be the reason why opposition forces are becoming stronger. Instead, they only think along the militaristic dichotomy of friend/foe, leaving no legitimate alternative to their own hegemony.

At the same time, the sad truth is that the opposition forces that do stand up against such governments tend to only add to the problem, rather than to provide a solution. All too often, they only want to share the spoils of the state apparatus and its bureaucracy among their cronies once they are strong enough to constitute a true power option. Again, the relevant categories of thought are only winners and losers.

Democracy however is about something completely different: compromise, and even the search for consensus, in pursuit of the public good. To achieve that, one does not need military mindsets, but rather a broad political debate.

* Henning Melber is Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala, Sweden. This text was published first in Development and Cooperation, October 2008.

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

In 1980 the Zimbabwean “povo” (people) celebrated a victory over settler colonialism and Western imperialism. We celebrated with them. For us, this was a step closer to Namibian sovereignty, even though the overwhelming victory of ZANU was time-wise a detour on our long road to Independence. The unexpected result had taught Western imperialism a lesson. It shattered its manic assumptions that one could orchestrate and manipulate an election, even if the people are allowed to cast a secret vote at the ballot. Without major intimidation the “povo” used the weapon of an electoral process, by voting for the cock (the symbol for Mugabe’s ZANU), and not the archbishop (Abel Muzorewa, who was considered the blue eyed boy of the West). The people knew what they wanted: a government of their own choice, which they had reasons to believe would represent their interests.

Almost three decades later, 18 years into Namibian Independence, we have to face the sobering realities: Mugabe and his loyal clique in ZANU/PF messed it up. By the end of the 1990s they had lost the “povo.” While they blamed Western imperialism for this, it was in the first place their own elitist neocolonial project, which betrayed the liberation gospel and thereby the people. From the start, the new rulers were not shy of ruthlessly violent practices. Remember the genocidal mass violence in Matabeleland shortly after Independence (“Gukuhurundi”). Tens of thousand innocent people were tortured, maimed, raped, mutilated and slaughtered between 1983 and 1985 by the North Korean trained Fifth Brigade. Only because being Ndebele they were considered guilty of being in support of Josuah Nkomo’s ZAPU, a competing liberation movement finally coerced into the ZANU/PF alliance. With a few exceptions (notably the Catholic church inside Zimbabwe), those who knew remained silent and thereby endorsed if not encouraged the perpetrators to further cultivate their dehumanizing version of “chimurenga” against the people.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/385/49177markofcain.jpgThe farcical run off took place in Zimbabwe, predictably so, in the face of a world opinion dismissing the sham elections and the irrelevant result rightly so already in advance. Mugabe’s legitimacy is one of a dictator, whose power is dependent upon a military junta’s good will. If not for the securocrats and their silent coup after the first round of elections, Zimbabwe would now be governed by political office bearers who would have the legitimacy of a majority of the voters. Even with the state organized terror machinery intimidating the people and forcing them to vote for an unwanted aging despot, his “victory” is nothing but a fallacy and mockery. Shame on SADC, who were willing to witness such a defiance of the people’s will.

Intimidation, repression, physical harm, torture, rape and murder were all part of a so-called election campaign. At the end, the contester - who unlike six years ago in 2002 - could no longer be denied the claim to legitimate political power . Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew for admirably sound ethical and moral reasons. After all, the regime had disclosed its intentions through the systematic use of brute force in ruthless way, To have contested the second round would have been to add further misery, mutilation and death to the long register of human rights violations bordering on crimes against humanity. That would have been an irresponsible symbolic political act.

Henning Melber looks at the possibilities for a people-centred opposition and ultimately a true liberation in Namibia and Zimbabwe, after years of misrule by the liberation movements-turned-ruling parties.

‘There is a need for a healing of the nation. The process of national healing and reconciliation is unlikely to proceed as long as society is still polarised. In addition, without also addressing past crimes, corruption, marginalisation and poverty, it is unlikely that reconciliation can be achieved.’

This insight was contained in the Kenya mission report of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). It was submitted by the APRM panel of eminent persons to the continent’s heads of state at the African Union summit in July 2006.[1] One and a half years later, Kenyan society was traumatised by the worst violence since independence and its people more divided than ever. The (allegedly orchestrated) civil war-like situation erupted over disputed election results. It showed that, beneath the surface of a seemingly peaceful society, deep-rooted antagonisms could be mobilised to unleash blind hatred and massive destruction of property and lives between people who had hitherto lived in relative peace with each other. In such circumstances an assumed socio-political stability proved to be treacherous, fragile, and prone to easy manipulation.

Many societies in Africa are confronted with similar challenges. Since the mid-1990s national reconciliation initiatives have emerged in a series of African countries. These were inspired by the widely praised Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa, which symbolised the country’s collective effort to come to terms with a past that still dominated its present and could have a lasting impact on its future. Despite all its limitations, the TRC has been widely perceived as an encouraging initiative, as a lesson in bringing skeletons out of the closet and dealing publicly with the lasting effects of violence and counter-violence. Far from solving structurally rooted historical legacies and their daily impact on the lives of ordinary citizens, or ending discrimination, or bringing to task many of the perpetrators, it brought to the fore the need to address history in the present.[2] Similar initiatives were taken in other war-torn societies marred by organised repression and mass violence, which had left festering wounds and scars among people now longing for healing and seeking a common future.

Two former settler societies neighbouring South Africa are among the countries whose governments did not follow this trend and refused to seek national reconciliation by means of public debate and transitional forms of justice and reconciliation. Zimbabwe and Namibia achieved their independence through long anti-colonial struggles led by liberation movements. In both cases the final defeat of colonialism was not achieved through the barrel of a gun (although the military dimension had an important role in forcing the colonial power to the negotiating table) but through agreements reached between the parties for change. These provided a transitional framework which limited the space for social transformation and the redistribution of wealth.

As a result of this negotiated decolonisation, the former liberation movements (Zanu PF in Zimbabwe and SWAPO in Namibia) were elected as legitimate governments in 1980 and 1990 respectively and have held absolute political power and control over the state bureaucracy since then (although, as we can currently see in Zimbabwe, not for eternity). In contrast to South Africa’s democratically elected government under the ANC, the Zimbabwean and Namibian political leadership never pursued anything similar to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Instead, they proclaimed national reconciliation as some kind of pragmatic agreement which became effective with independence. Their policy was to leave the past behind, with no public debate or dialogue over the injustices committed (although selective reference to colonial crimes was made when needed and commemorated as part of the liberation gospel).

In both societies the justification for casting this kind of official smokescreen over the colonial past was rooted to some extent in the argument that the repressive machinery of colonial occupation had been staffed and executed by many who at independence could no longer be held accountable. This was either because of an amnesty declared for those on all sides of the conflict, or because some of the worst abusers of human rights had retreated to their British or South African countries of origin. National reconciliation was defined in terms of closing the colonial chapter without seeking justice through institutionalised hearings or other forms of coming to terms with the past. The cleansing process, which to some extent was initiated and implemented in the South African TRC, was conspicuously absent. Not so, however, the collective blame placed on colonialism for all subsequent failures in post-independence nation-building and re-structuring of society, which (despite some relevant aspects) was often used as an excuse to evade responsibility for ‘good governance’.

This seemingly pragmatic (and rather self-righteous) approach denied the need and missed the opportunity to deal with failures in the ranks of the liberation movements themselves. This had never been the main issue in the TRC, but was unavoidably brought to the fore when the excesses of the apartheid regime were laid open. Even though the degree of self-critical examination of human rights violations within the ANC was rather limited (and hampered the final process of publicising the TRC report’s findings), it nevertheless became an issue for which President Nelson Mandela apologised to the victims and their families. Having been imprisoned for almost three decades since the early 1960s, Madiba was a charismatic leader and moral role model who could apologise for failures in the exiled ANC, for which he was obviously not personally responsible, nor perhaps even aware. This sign of remorse and indirect moral responsibility only added to his aura.

In contrast, both Robert Mugabe of Zanu PF and Sam Nujoma of SWAPO were active leaders in exile, deeply involved in internal power struggles. They were not only an integral part of the authoritarian hierarchy but its personification. In ultimate charge of the command structures dominating their liberation movements, they were to some degree personally accountable for the abuses and malpractice within their ranks. As heads of state they were not inclined to address such issues. Instead, past injustices on all sides would be put to rest. By doing so, however, the liberation movements sacrificed the moral high ground they had been able to occupy vis-à-vis the oppressive colonial regimes. Their own failures remained unfinished business and left festering wounds within the new post-colonial societies. The dominant mindsets emerging at independence represented more of an old order than a new one and showed the limits to liberation.[3]

In Zimbabwe, violence within and between the liberation movements escalated soon after independence in organised massacres in Matabeleland (the western part of Zimbabwe occupied mostly by Ndebele-speakers considered in large part to be supporters of the Joshua Nkomo-led ZAPU, which competed with Zanu PF for power). Between early 1983 and late 1986, an estimated 20,000 people were killed in horrific acts of barbarism carried out by the Fifth Brigade of the Zimbabwe National Army, trained by North Korean military advisors. Although known and reported at the time, the massacres went largely ignored, even by the former colonial power. Described by Robert Mugabe as Gukurahundi (‘the rain that washes away the chaff before the summer rains’), this organised mass violence was a defining moment for his regime. The Catholic church in Zimbabwe was a lonely voice in revealing the scale of the atrocities.[4] Since then, the openly violent character of Mugabe’s rule has drawn worldwide attention. However, it only became a concern for the international community (represented by Western countries) when the so-called fast-track land reform process dispossessed most of the commercial farmers and portrayed the conflict (misleadingly so) as one between a remaining white settler minority and the government. This suggests a moral selectivity in Western perceptions, which the populist rhetoric of the despotic regime managed to exploit.

As part of the Namibian independence process, several hundred members of SWAPO in exile, who were accused of being South African agents, were released and repatriated in mid-1989. Known as ‘ex-detainees’, they shared their plight with the Namibian public at home. Since the early 1980s several thousand were thought to have been imprisoned, tortured and raped in camps in southern Angola. Many did not survive the ordeal; others remain missing. Ever since their return, these ex-detainees have asked for rehabilitation and an apology from SWAPO for the human rights violations committed.[5] But the liberation movement in power has applied a policy of denial, on the grounds that this would open wounds and thereby put peace and stability at risk. Moreover, SWAPO argued, the atrocities by the South African regime and its local collaborators would also need to be scrutinised in return, which would undermine national reconciliation. Instead, and similar to the official narratives cultivated by Zanu PF in Zimbabwe, SWAPO started a ‘nation-building project’ guided by what has been termed ‘patriotic history’, which cultivates the gospel of an organisation and its leaders as the morally impeccable liberators of the people.[6]

In both Zimbabwe and Namibia the former liberation movements in political power were also granted the power of defining the national interest. But the political and ideological hegemony assumed at independence is now deteriorating, with governments failing to maintain control over the one-dimensional collective identity constructed and imposed earlier on. This has been evident since the turn of the century in Zimbabwe, with the emergence of the MDC as a meaningful political opposition, suggesting that the liberation gospel has an expiry date. The coerced legitimacy of the government has been eroded, provoking intimidation, an ever-growing culture of fear, and ultimately rule based on state terror. As we know from history, these kinds of dictatorial regimes sooner or later come to an end through the same popular movements that they intimidated and oppressed for so long.

In Namibia, an opposition emerged towards the end of 2007 from within the belly of the beast. Former high-ranking SWAPO officials formed the Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP) to challenge the undisputed dominance of the former liberation movement. The next presidential and parliamentary elections, scheduled for the end of 2009, could result in SWAPO’s loss of its two-thirds majority in parliament, and hence absolute control over the country’s political and legal decision-making process. Nervousness is mounting. Leading office-bearers in the Namibian government warn of a Kenyan situation and blame the new opposition for fuelling ethnic rivalries. This is an argument which resorts to the culture of fear rather than seeks reconciliation and common ground; it names and shames others rather than identifies common denominators as Namibians. Such a knee-jerk response to political challenge also suggests an inability to deal with one’s own shortcomings and failures.

Leaders of the Namibian Lutheran churches have responded to the growing polarisation by means of a pastoral letter read out during sermons on 23 March 2008 and later published. In light of the violence that erupted between the two main rival parties, triggered by a local election campaign, the bishops of the three churches expressed their fear that the country is moving backwards rather than forwards in terms of freedom and democracy. The bishops wrote in their letter of ‘intolerance, verbal and physical attacks and counter attacks’. They warned that ‘failure to redress this situation now can lead to mass loss of lives country wide’. ‘What we say as leaders… is the seed which bears the consequential behaviour for violence and peace… Political opponents are not enemies, but participants in a democratic set-up.’[7] This is the first time since independence that the church has commented on the country’s politics in this way. Alarm bells are ringing, but Namibians still have the opportunity to learn from the sad lessons in Kenya and elsewhere – not least in neighbouring Zimbabwe, which in many respects is so close to home.

*Henning Melber is Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala, Sweden. A son of German immigrants to Namibia, he joined SWAPO in 1974. This text is a contribution to 'New Routes – A Journal of Peace Research and Action' vol. 13, no. 2, 2008, to be published by the Life & Peace Institute.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

For additional votes, please follow this link: