Browsing by Author "Silvester, Jeremy"

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    Re-viewing resistance in Namibian history
    (University of Namibia Press, 2015) Silvester, Jeremy
    Over two decades have passed since the last battles of Namibia’s liberation struggle took place in April, 1989 and Namibia finally obtained its independence from South Africa on 21 March, 1990. Today over half of Namibia’s population is under the age of 25.1 When I first taught history at the University of Namibia in the 1990s the majority of my students had strong (and traumatic) childhood memories of the war.2 Today the majority of students at the university are ‘born frees’ who do not remember the independence celebrations of 1990, let alone the long, twenty-three year, guerilla war that preceded it. The majority of the population no longer has strong memories of the liberation struggle, but relies increasingly on the construction of a history of resistance that is reflected in written texts, but more pervasively in the spoken word through public speeches, the radio and TV, in public projects of memorialisation and commemorative public holidays. History was one of the early conscripts to the nationalist struggle with SWAPO’s To Be Born a Nation creating a highly influential narrative that interpreted all acts of resistance to German and South African rule as nationalist. In his Foreword to the publication Prof. Peter Katjavivi highlighted the way in which a ‘history of resistance’ could play a role in nation-building. ‘The title is taken from a saying of the Mozambican liberation struggle – “to die a tribe and be born a nation”. It encapsulates the drive for unity and the bonds forged through common endeavour and sacrifice that are such vital elements of the national liberation struggle’ (SWAPO, 1980, p. iii). The book traced the roots of ‘popular resistance’ as far back as 1670 and the first meeting between indigenous residents and European travellers on the banks of the Kuiseb River (SWAPO, 1980, p. 151). Independence was thus the culmination of over three hundred years of struggle. Whilst the necessity of discipline and unity was evident during the course of a guerilla campaign against a militarily stronger opponent, this reading of the past reduces the dynamics of struggle to a simple dichotomy in which characters are presented as either ‘Freedom Fighters’ or ‘Puppets’. The danger is that agency is reduced and the complex political dynamics around issues such as generational conflict, ethnicity, traditional authorities and gender are ignored (Van Walraven and Abbink, 2003, p. 3). The Archives of Anti-Colonial Resistance and the Liberation Struggle incorporated the nationalist narrative within its lengthy title.
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    The return of the sacred stones of the Ovambo kingdoms: Restitution and the revision of the past
    (University of Namibia, 2020) Silvester, Jeremy
    The discourse of restitution often takes place within the framework of the ‘ethics of collecting’ with a focus on the return of objects violently obtained, which has restricted the debate. This case study of the return of two sacred stones from Finland to Namibia reflects on the cultural impact of their return. Largely Christianized communities re-encountered objects that were sacred and central to earlier belief systems. We argue that the role of the sacred stones changed over time in ways that challenge any assumption of stasis that might be assumed when deploying the concept of ‘tradition’. The return of the two stones provoked renewed interest in pre-Christian rituals but also efforts to strengthen the position of ‘traditional authorities’ in relation to the democratic system of governance in Namibia. The ripples of restitution illustrate the wider importance of the return of cultural artefacts for stimulating contemporary cultural and political debate.
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    The return of the sacred stones of the Ovambo Kingdoms: Restitution and the revision of the past
    (2020) Silvester, Jeremy
    The discourse of restitution often takes place within the framework of the ‘ethics of collecting’ with a focus on the return of objects violently obtained, which has restricted the debate. This case study of the return of two sacred stones from Finland to Namibia reflects on the cultural impact of their return. Largely Christianized communities re-encountered objects that were sacred and central to earlier belief systems. We argue that the role of the sacred stones changed over time in ways that challenge any assumption of stasis that might be assumed when deploying the concept of ‘tradition’. The return of the two stones provoked renewed interest in pre-Christian rituals but also efforts to strengthen the position of ‘traditional authorities’ in relation to the democratic system of governance in Namibia. The ripples of restitution illustrate the wider importance of the return of cultural artefacts for stimulating contemporary cultural and political debate.
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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.
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    Waking the dead: Civilian casualties in the Namibian liberation struggle
    (University of Namibia, 2012) Akawa, Martha; Silvester, Jeremy
    The liberation Struggle is marked by an absence of archival sources. This absence leads to an impossibility of systematic historical analysis of conflicting archival evidence; as a result, history is created with a broad brush on a monumental landscape. In terms of public history, the emphasis has been placed on the memory of the soldiers who died fighting in the liberation struggle. A post-war publication has listed their names, although those who died on Namibian soil remain buried in anonymous graves. The internet provides a virtual graveyard, which attempts to unite all those who died on the South African side during their "Border War'. Such lists suggest that the compilers have been able to enter inaccessible archives and/or contact knowledgeable informants. Yet many of the soldiers who died, on both sides, during the Namibian liberation Struggle died in Southern Angola and the community memory of the war in Namibia is more closely linked to the many incidents in which civilians were killed inside Namibia during the conflict. In Namibia, almost a generation after the end of the war, it remains unknown how many Namibian civilians died during the Namibian Liberation Struggle. Where estimates are provided, the victims are reduced to nameless numbers. The absence of a consolidated archival record of these deaths means that an important dimension of the war remains hidden. This article will present the work that has been done to create an archive of Civilian Casualties of the Namibian liberation Struggle and discuss some of the challenges and difficulties associated with the project. It will argue that combining a range of sources into a new collection of consolidated information on individual deaths can challenge one of the archival absences on the liberation struggle and shape the historiography of the Namibian liberation struggle that is being created by a new generation of Namibian historians.