Ottilie Abrahams Ottilie Abrahams SWAPO-Student and SWAPO-Democrats in Sweden-Namibia National Front Director of the Jakob Morenga Tutorial College (Windhoek, 16 March 1995) Tor Sellstr6rm How do you see the development of the liberation movement in Namibia and the relations with the Nordic countries? Ottilie Abrahams: Namibia has a history of groups like SWAPO and SWANU working together. For example, already at the time when my husband was arrested by the South African police in Rehoboth, SWAPO and SWANU stood ready to go as one body to defend him. Even in exile, SWAPO and SWANU always worked together. If SWANU people arrived in a place where they did not have a representative, they were taken in by the SWAPO people. In the late 1960s, we held talks with SWANU. That was when Moses Katjiuongua and Fanuel Kozonguizi were in Dar es Salaam. We held talks on forming one body. We felt that we were getting very far. Then we met OAU, because we knew what their concept of 'sole authenticity' would do. We asked OAU specifically not to give money either to SWAPO or to SWANU, but to give it to an organization. The name was SWANLIF, South West African National Liberation Front We already knew in 1963 that donors were going to use the question of funding to alienate the two groups. There were certain political groups in certain countries which were supposed to be the sole liberators of those countries, and we opposed that view from the start. TS: Was that view the policy of the OAU Liberation Committee? OA: Yes. We said that it was a violation of the democratic rights of the people. We foresaw that they would create demagogue people who wanted to colonize the struggle so that any input which was not in line with the 'sole authentic party' immediately would be stifled. In spite of the oppression, those of us who had stayed in South Africa were brought up in a very democratic tradition in the NonEuropean Unity Movement (NEUM). You could get up when a leader spoke, ask about anything and tell him that you did not agree with him. In the Cape Peninsula Students' Union we were taught to fight ideas with ideas. We always thought critically. If we agree with you, we do not care whether you are the President or not If we disagreed, we would say so. We always felt that if people basically were loyal to the party, but had different ideas on how to get to the goal, it was an enrichment. When we went to Dar es Salaam in 1963that is, when we went into exile we came to a place where people were beginning to talk about the 'sole and authentic' leaders of the revolution. The concept was imposed by people from outside. First by OAU. The donorsfor their own reasons-then decided that they were going to reinforce the idea. But we felt that it was suppressing any opposition. We felt that if you belong to a party and you see that something is wrong, you have to have the right to criticize and to propose an alternative. But whenever you did that you were put in a prison camp because you were opposing the leaders. I am myself suspended from SWAPO until this day. The reason was 'disrespecting the leadership' when I was Secretary for Education and part of the Executive Committee. My upbringing was politically different. If there was something that I wanted to say, I said it, because you wanted to go with your party. But this business of 'sole and authentic' began to mean that the only opinion that was relevant was the opinion that agreed with what the leaders said. TS: But you were in favour of one strong Namibian liberation movement? OA: When one speaks about a movement one does not speak about one party. A liberation movement includes all groups, whether they are church groups, women groups or political parties. They are moving towards a common goal. That is what I understand by a liberation movement, and that is why we got on so well when we formed SWANLIF. That did not mean that SWAPO or SWANU should dismantle, but that we should meet on issues of common concern and speak with one voice. We said so in the meeting with OAU: 'We have formed this organization and this is what we stand for.' We gave them copies of docu- Lberation in Southern Africa -Regional and Swedish Voices ments where we said: 'Please, do not give money to one or the other. Give the money to the movement. Then we can decide how much we are going to use for what item. Each party will have its own share to do with it as it pleases.' After I spoke they got up and said: 'How do we know that you are not forming SWANLIF to get our money?' As naive as I was, I got up and said: 'Look, we were sent out of the country to get this organization going. We are South West Africans and we will do it with or without your help.' And when we left the meeting, the money was immediately given to SWAPO. End of story. This is what the donors subsequently have also done. We regarded this as interference in the affairs of another country, whether we were free or not. One day when I am old I want to write a book on the birth of the concept of sole authenticity. This is where it started. It is important, because it boosted certain organizations to such an extent that they became little Hiders. Already in those years we fought SIDA and all those people, saying: 'You are creating a problem for us which will cause the death of many, many people.' TS: In Sweden, the decision to support SWAPO was taken a couple of years later. At the beginning of the 1960s, there was a close relationship with SWANU. OA: But after the invention of sole authenticity the others were dropped. Because the elite in Africa said so. All of us had to fall into place with that! The reason why I am delivering this point is that I feel that there is a direct link between that problem and the position of the opposition today. Itis like a snowball. You, the authentic party, get the money. Because of that you can get more organizers and because you have more organizers you can get more people. The thing snow-balls! Where we are now, the snowball is so big that everybody else is insignificant. The problems are going to be felt in Naiibia, as they have been felt in other countries. This is where it comes from. Right from the start. If you were a person who disagreed, you went to the camps. Later on you went to the holes of ANC, SWAPO and other groups. There is a direct line here. Because of that, these parties became more bigotted than they would have been if they had been left on their own. The tradition of democracy-which is a prerequisite for health in any country-has slowly been watered down. If you look at the opposition in Namibia, it consists mostly of people who were not there in the beginning. Apart from people like Moses Katjiuongua and so on, they were not there when we started. They do not have this history of the struggle. They do not have that sense of decorum. As a result, even though people do not want to vote for the party in power, there is no alternative. Because with their support OAU and the donors made sure that there should not be any opposition. TS: In the case of the ruling Nordic Social Democratic Parties, multi-party democracy was, of course, a principle within the Socialist International. It was also a principle supported by the non-socialist, bourgeois parties. When you lived in Sweden, how did they react to your points of view in this context? CA: Precisely, and that is why we kept asking them: 'If democracy is good for you, why is it not good for us?' We asked them! But they said: 'Africa is different.' They just told us that we are different! The other thing they said was that 'we have to mobilize the Swedish society. The things that you are telling us are not im portant and if we must put the whole complexity of the argument in front of the Swedish people, they will not understand it.' I said that I did not know that the Swedes were such idiots. This was the country from which Ingmar Bergman comes. If the Swedes could understand the plays of Ingmar Bergman, surely they could understand the complexities of the African political situation. But they said 'No, you are going to confuse the people.' That was the argument. My opinion, frankly, was that the Swedes knew exactly what we were talking about If you want democracy you can even go to the pre-schools in Sweden. That democracy reinforced the democracy which we learnt in South Africa. It was that reinforcement of democracy that made us create schools like the one where we are sitting now and where the students are running the affairs. All this started in South Africa. It was reinforced in Sweden and is now even found in rural preschools. Not that the Swedes have given one cent to support it. The Norwegians have, but the Swedes have scrupulously avoided giving the Jakob Morenga Tutorial College one cent for the past ten years.