Ruptures and continuities of struggle: social movements and popular struggles in urban Namibia, 1980s (original) (raw)
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Namibia's Moment: Youth and Urban Land Activism
YOUTH, SOCIAL MOVEMENT AND PROTEST IN NAMIBIA I share a brief piece I wrote on the development of a movement of urban youth in Namibia, which took off from a spectacular and audacious occupation of a piece of land in an affluent suburb of Windhoek in November 2014 and challenged the Namibian political establishment and the country's ruling party.
"Youth speaking truth to power": intersectional decolonial activism in Namibia
Dialectical Anthropology, 2022
This article portrays a recent movement towards intersectional activism in urban Namibia. Since 2020, young Namibian activists have come together in campaigns to decolonize public space through removing colonial monuments and renaming streets. These have been linked to enduring structural violence and issues of gender and sexuality, especially queer and women's reproductive rights politics, which have been expressly framed as perpetuated by coloniality. I argue that the Namibian protests amount to new political forms of intersectional decoloniality that challenge the notion of decolonial activism as identity politics. The Namibian case demonstrates that decolonial movements may not only emphatically not be steeped in essentialist politics but also that activists may oppose an identity-based politics which postcolonial ruling elites have promoted. I show that, for the Namibian movements' ideology and practice, a fully intersectional approach has become central. They consciously juxtapose colonial memory with a living vision for the future to confront and situate colonial and apartheid history. Young Namibian activists challenge the intersectional inequalities and injustices, which, they argue, postcolonial Namibia inherited from its colonial-apartheid past: class inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, and gender-based violence.
2004
This article concentrates on the ambiguities and contradictions in the colonial archive on North West Namibia (a region also known as Kaokoland), and on the way these were exploited by the “stubborn traditionalists” inhabiting it. Its aim is to place the emergence of postcolonial identities and subjectivities in the region in an historical perspective. To do so, it takes a look at the depoliticized discourse on livestock and development in which South West African rule framed its politics of identity. This case study investigates how precisely this discourse fuelled political resistance in the region. However, the efforts by elders and so‐called commoners to counter indirect rule and apartheid hardly ever took the form of overt rebellion or explicit political protest. It concerned instead a more subtle and defiant form of counterworks, a very specific local modernity rooted in local subjectivity and experience that happened to be quite efficient.
This article investigates Namibian nationalism over the past century, with special emphasis on the post-1990 period. I point out that, despite some paradoxical moments, as Namibia celebrates her twenty-fifth anniversary of independence, national identity is no longer defined primarily through the common history of the liberation struggle but through the tolerant accommodation, even wholehearted celebration, of cultural difference. This article attempts to understand the shifting politics and aesthetics of Namibian nationalism from two interconnected angles. On the one hand, it takes a historical perspective; it looks into shifting discourses and practices of nationalism over the past century, starting from the anti- colonial resistance at the turn to the 20th century through to the twenty-fifth anniversary of Namibian independence. On the other hand, the article investigates the cultural redefinition of the bonds between the Namibian people(s), which has been a significant aspect of the constructions of postcolonial Namibian nationhood and citizenship. The argument highlights urban social life and cultural expression and the links between everyday life and political mobilization. It thereby emphasizes the nationalist activism of the developing Black urban culture of the post-World War II era and the internal urban social movements of the 1980s.
South African Historical Journal, 2013
is a chapter on national organisation of civics by Jeremy Seekings, one on faith based resistance by Siphamandla Zondi, and also chapters on the Christian Institute, visual artists, the rise and fall of constructive engagement, and liberal opposition to apartheid. Continuing work of the previous volume, Bhekizizwe Peterson raises evocative questions in his chapter on the arts. Zine Magubane provides the first entry into the question of gender in the series. It is not a historical contribution but challenges paradigms that may be dominant in academia, that posit feminism as being incompatible with national liberation. Important as this input is, it does not sit comfortably with the overall conception of the series, which has sought to provide historical accounts of various elements of resistance history, with occasional reference to the role of women. The previous gaps mean that the intervention is not grounded in the SADET history as a whole, but also as a theoretical intervention it is buried within a series, where it will not be easily accessed by those who would challenge or debate its arguments. My impression is that the SADET volumes have been underrated. Considered as a whole they comprise a comprehensive account of the post 1960 period of resistance. Other scholars will draw on this work, as with Gerhart and Glaser, for years to come.
Re-Examining liberation in Namibia
During 2001, the Uppsala-based Nordic Africa Institute (established in 1962 as The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies) initiated a research project on 'Liberation and Democracy in Southern Africa'. 1 It highlights processes of political and economic transformation, or the lack thereof, mainly, but not exclusively, under the liberation movements that seized legitimate political power and have occupied the state apparatus since independence (or, in the case of South Africa, since the first democratic general elections). The research network was initiated to explore the relationship between liberation (in the sense of decolonisation) and social transformation, with particular regard to the political sphere. The aim is to offer grater insights into the scope and limitations of the social emancipation in Southern Africa, and especially into the "democratic notion" of the liberation movements who control power. Their victory over colonialism came at a price-as increasing evidence, including some of the chapters in this volume, suggest-since anticolonial wars were hardly a suitable environment for instilling, cultivating, internalising and implementing democratic values and norms. Within the research network, scholars have since 2001 provided insights into and evidence about Southern African affairs related to a political and human rights culture. A first consultative workshop was organised by The Nordic Africa Institute in December 2001 in local collaboration with the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town. 2 Soon thereafter, the controversies around the presidential elections in Zimbabwe brought some of the network participants together in an effort to cope with their frustrations. 3 A subsequent international conference on '(Re-)Conceptualising Democracy and Liberation in Southern Africa' took place in collaboration with local civil society actors, the Namibia Institute for Democracy (NID) and the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC), in July 2002 in Windhoek. 4 Most of the papers originally submitted to this conference have been published. 5 1. See the first results in the initial stages of conceptualisation, Melber (2001). More details on the project can be obtained from the Institute's web site (www.nai.uu.se). 2. See for a summary, the conference report in News from the Nordic Africa Institute , No. 2/2002. Most presentations to the workshop were published as Discussion Papers (Davids et al. 2002, Neocosmos et al. 2002). 3. The results were published two months after the elections (Melber 2002b). 4. I am grateful to Clement Daniels and Theunis Keulder for their immediate enthusiasm for the joint project and would like to thank Doris Weissnar, Arne Wunder and Charlotta Dohlvik for their unfailing administrative and organisational support. For a conference report, see News of the Nordic Africa Institute , No. 3/2002. 5. An unabridged, detailed discussion and analysis of the impact of the strategy debate around armed struggle in South Africa was published soon after as a separate monograph (Legassick 2002). Most papers on topics other than Namibia have been revised and edited as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies (Vol. 21, No. 2) and are also published in a slightly modified format by the South African Human Sciences Research Council (Limits to Liberation in Southern Africa: The Unfinished Business of Democratic Consolidation , Pretoria 2003). The Namibia chapter (Melber 2003d) was drafted as a separate effort to add the Namibian case to the regional picture. It has been included in a considerably revised version as an introductory chapter in this volume. I wish to express gratitude to the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) for the material assistance rendered to the research project and the publication of its results, and The Nordic Africa Institute for the generous working environment in support of such activities.