Chapters in Books (UNP)

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Browsing Chapters in Books (UNP) by Author "Akawa, Martha"

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    The gendered politics of the SWAPO camps during the Namibian liberation struggle
    (University of Namibia Press, 2015) Akawa, Martha
    This chapter looks at the sexual politics of the SWAPO camps (civilian and military) in Angola and Zambia.1 Its purpose is to explore issues around allegations of sexual abuse and unwelcome sexual advances, and issues of sexuality, against the backdrop of SWAPO’s policy on gender equality. Did these allegations undermine the goals and objectives of the leadership, particularly the women’s leadership that had gender equality and women’s emancipation as one of its main goals? The chapter will also seek to question whether a rhetorical commitment to equality was translated into practical equality in terms of the political structures and socio-economic power relationships in the camps. SWAPO made a clear and a firm ideological commitment in publications and speeches that, in the liberation struggle, women were equal to men and that equality between men and women was a central principle of the party. Iina Soiri has argued that the rhetoric of sexual emancipation became more pronounced from the mid-1970s because of a combination of factors. The United Nations announced that the International Decade for Women would take place between 1975 and 1985 and, in 1976, SWAPO adopted a more radical ‘Political Programme’ based on the principles of ‘scientific socialism’ (Soiri, 1996, pp. 67, 85).
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    Waking the dead: Civilian casualties in the Namibian liberation struggle
    (University of Namibia Press, 2015) Silvester, Jeremy; Akawa, Martha
    One day in early January 1984, an old Ford truck set out from Ruacana. Twenty-five workers stood crowded in the back. After travelling just five kilometres from the small town the truck drove over a double landmine. The explosion left a huge crater in the ground and immediately killed ten of the people in the truck, whilst another six were severely injured, losing hands, arms and legs. None of the names of those who had died were provided in the press coverage of the incident. On 23 January 1988, four young people were driving a Toyota Hilux van near their home when a unit of the Koevoet paramilitary police unit opened fire on their vehicle riddling it with bullets and totally destroying it. Cornelius Nghipukuula, aged 27, was killed immediately and two of the other occupants were wounded. The three survivors were told to report to the police station the next day to pay a R100 fine as an ‘admission of guilt’ for driving during a curfew. These were just two incidents amongst many that occurred during the Namibian war of independence in which the casualties were not soldiers, but civilians. Yet the absence of the names of those killed in one of the largest landmine explosions that took place during the war seems symptomatic of the way in which civilian victims of the war remain unrecognised in accounts of the liberation struggle.