Liberation in Postcolonial Southern Africa: a Historical Ethnography of SWAPO's Exile Camps, Cambridge

Journal of Namibian Studies, 20 (2016): 125 – 128 ISSN: 2197-5523 (online) Review : Christian A. Williams, National arbitrarily detain and torture ‘spies’. Liberation in Postcolonial Southern SWAPO’s exile leadership was authori- Africa: A Historical Ethnography of tarian and secretive, bordering on the SWAPO’s Exile Camps, Cambridge, conspiratorial. Indeed, the witchcraft Cambridge University Press, 2015. analogy that Williams invokes is in- structive in explaining how the irrational behaviour of its functionaries was Christian Williams has produced a com- fuelled by paranoia. prehensive study of the SWAPO camps established in the ‘Frontline States’ Such behaviour produced a catalogue of during the course of the struggle for human rights abuses in the camps. Namibia’s independence. His purview Granted recognition by the international spans a period of 25 years from the community as the “sole and authentic establishment of SWAPO’s first camp for representative” of the Namibian people Namibian exiles in Kongwa in a remote on account of its principled opposition region in Tanzania as early as 1964, to the apartheid regime, SWAPO mobi- through to a string of camps in Zambia lized the language of humanitarianism and Angola during the 1970s and and human rights in justifying its 1980s. The earliest residents of these actions. Thus (so the argument went) sites were political refugees and PLAN “supporting SWAPO was critical to recruits, but once the war against the supporting human rights, because occupying South African forces was SWAPO represented the Namibian stepped up, their numbers were swelled people, whose rights had been violated by civilians, including women and by colonialism and apartheid. Thus children, fleeing the colony. accusations of abuses committed by SWAPO in its camps were, in fact, a Notwithstanding the changing demo- threat to human rights because they graphics of SWAPO’s camps, their daily undermined the movement capable of routines were still modelled on military protecting these rights by liberating bases. Those with rank enforced a code Namibia from colonial rule” (p. 154). of discipline and meted out punishment Hence the perverse logic used to to those who would not submit to their defend SWAPO’s torture and other authority – while often flouting the rules abuses amounted to a cynical manipu- themselves. There were recurrent ten- lation of human rights discourse. And sions between military personnel and (so the argument continued) if there political commissars, between officers were to be some measure of account- and rank-and-file soldiers, between ability it should be postponed until such members of different ethnic groups, time as SWAPO came to power (p. 171). between early PLAN recruits and later Yet, such a day of reckoning had been ones, as well as frequent abuse of postponed indefinitely. Williams con- women. Suspicions of enemy infiltration tends that, like the other Southern of the camps ratcheted up the tensions African liberation movements, SWAPO and the commanders responded by created a putative nation in exile that instructing security detachments to “perpetrated abuses on their own Copyright © 2016 Otjivanda Presse.Essen ISSN 1863-5954 (print) ISSN 2197-5523 (online) members and have effaced these an extensive body of oral testimony abuses through histories articulated by from not only detainees but also from national elites” (p. 228). On this score other SWAPO exiles with different kinds he is only partly correct as the ANC did, of experiences, Williams insists that the at least, appoint its own commissions to gaps in the national narrative are investigate human rights abuses in its mirrored in the extant historiography camps and subsequently admitted a and that he wishes to he avoid the degree of culpability before the TRC. reductionism of both. But his attempt to Williams would no doubt take issue with complicate the histories of the camps my summary inasmuch as it places far only goes so far. For, in the final analy- too much emphasis on the SWAPO sis, his own narrative is constructed in camps as being mired in crisis. While he response to both SWAPO’s official is critical of SWAPO’s conduct, he seeks national narrative, as well as that to provide a more richly textured ver- articulated by the historiography that is sion of life in the camps. Thus he critical of this narrative. In other words, positions his work slightly at odds with Williams cannot entirely escape the need scholars such as Dobell, Leys and Saul, to position his account against the and Hunter who frame the history of backdrop of the primary narratives. camps in terms of ‘crisis’, abuse and This same quandary is evident in his torture. 1 Williams reckons that they treatment of Cassinga in Chapter 2. neglect the experience of everyday life Williams charges that I hold that there or the quotidian. Indeed, he claims that are no narratives that compete with even the counter-narratives articulated SWAPO’s dominant discourse about by members of the Breaking the Wall of Cassinga in postcolonial Namibia (p. 52, Silence Movement (BWS) “has tended note 71).2 Admittedly, I make only to focus on a narrow range of years and passing reference to survivors’ stories experiences, mirrored in a critical and then to those that conform with the historiography that makes use of many SWAPO story (e.g. Namhila). And I of the same sources” (p. 195). By would concede that the testimonies of adopting what he calls an historical survivors that tell another story have ethnographic approach that draws on undoubtedly been marginalised. Vilho’s Shigwedha’s unpublished PhD thesis attests to this. 3 Shigwedha has made a 1 Lauren Dobell, “Silence in Context: Truth and/or Reconciliation in Namibia”, Journal of Southern valiant attempt to rescue the voices of African Studies , 23 (2), 1997: 371-382; Colin Leys and John S. Saul, “SWAPO: The Politics of Exile”, in: Colin Leys and John S. Saul, (eds.), 2 Williams cites my “Conflicting Memories, Namibia’s Liberation Struggle: The Two-Edged Competing Narratives and Complicating Histories: Sword , London, Currey, 1994; Justine Hunter, Revisiting the Cassinga Controversy”, Journal of “No Man’s Land of Time: Reflections on the Namibian Studies , 6, 2009: 7-26. Politics of Memory and Forgetting in Namibia”, 3 Vilho Shigweda, Enduring Suffering: The in: Gary Baines and Peter Vale, (eds.), Beyond Cassinga Massacre of Namibian Exiles in 1978 the Border War: New Perspectives on Southern and the Conflicts between Survivors’ Memories Africa’s Late-Cold War Conflicts , Pretoria, Unisa and Testimonies , PhD thesis, Cape Town, Press, 2008. University of the Western Cape, 2011. 126 such survivors from the condescension expressed by representatives of periph- of memory (to corrupt EP Thompson’s eral communities. However, Williams well-worn adage). The survivor (or sur- dismisses the view that Namibians are vivors’) narrative(s) have not been able engaged in “reconciliation by silence” or allowed to take hold in public con- (p. 212) in favour of one that sciousness; they are not likely to usurp recognises that they are speaking the narrative which remains the among themselves. He contends that preserve of SWAPO in Namibia. Indeed, “to render those whose histories have SWAPO claims to speak for the dead, been excluded from an accepted those who have become the martyrs of national narrative as ‘victims’ and to nationalist iconography. But they reduce their histories to ‘silence’ divests effectively silence the survivors whose marginalised subjects of the agency that stories do not conform with SWAPO’s they assert through narrating their ex- privileged narrative. By way of contrast, periences to others” (p. 212). Although the SADF story is managed by the self- such stories might not be officially styled ‘veterans of Cassinga’ in an acknowledged, does he rule out the attempt to avoid being labelled perpe- possibility that the voicing of counter- trators of a massacre. This would narratives will provide opportunities for suggest that the political elites in post- dialogue among Namibians? apartheid South Africa do not exercise To my mind, Williams’ major contribution quite the same degree of influence in to Namibian historiography is his thesis fashioning public memory as does the that the existence of SWAPO’s camps ruling party in postcolonial Namibia. played a formative role in creating the Still, Williams is quite right to point out nation in utero. Unfortunately, the that dissident Namibian voices that have camp’s part in building an embryonic expressed dissatisfaction with the nation was, at best, contradictory and, cover-up of the treatment of SWAPO’s at worst, counter-productive. Camps detainees have not been silenced as were sites of liberating practices where much as marginalised. This is exempli- residents imagined a postcolonial future fied by his account of the funeral oration (p. 219) but paradoxically also sites of for Emil Appolus, an erstwhile SWAPO oppression. Camps were sites where leader who had cut his ties with the SWAPO administered to the needs of party, given by Immanuel Hinda in the prospective citizens but they were also presence of dignitaries. Although her the models for the abuse of power speech was delivered at the very end of through spy accusations and other un- the proceedings, this stalwart of the democratic practices. Williams adduces struggle audaciously suggested that evidence to show that conflicts accen- Lubango ‘spies’ should occupy a similar tuated factional and ethnic tensions, place to Cassinga ‘refugees’ in the and that hierarchies that emerged in the national narrative (p. 204). It is no camps have been perpetuated in doubt relatively easy for SWAPO to postcolonial Namibia, thereby under- dismiss such discordant notes heard on mining democratic governance and official occasions when they are social transformation (p. 223). And, I 127 would wish to add, such behaviours have yet to be unlearned.

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