Abstract:
Namibia’s settler society has a very weak, indeed almost non-existent tradition of
advocacy of non-racism. Up to the early 1970s, none of the settlers’ political parties
postulated principles of non-racism – that is individually based citizenship and
democratic rights as well as legal, economic and social opportunities irrespective of
apartheid’s racial designations and ascriptions. This is in contrast, for example, to
political parties in ‘white’ South Africa or Zimbabwe (See Hancock, 1980; Marks,
1995; Rich, 1984; Vigne, 1997).2 South African visitors to Windhoek in the early 1960s, whether Ruth First, the radical left-wing journalist and writer or the Vice-President of the South African Liberal Party, Randolph Vigne, were either appalled or expressed grave disillusionment with respect to the prospect of any European non-racial political activity in this South African colony. Ruth First stated in 1963: ‘It remains a frightening fact that not a single white political leader in South West Africa has ever advocated a non-racial democracy’ (1963, p. 54). Two years earlier, Randolph Vigne had summed up his talks in Windhoek with, amongst others, Advocate Israel Goldblatt and African nationalists like Clemens Kapuuo, Levy Nganjone or Zedekia Ngavirue by stating: ‘If Goldblatt is right, and it is an impossibility to build bridges at this stage [in early 1961], the best hope of bringing about a non-racial group inside SWA and avert[ing] a racial clash, is to afford travel and study to some of the young African leaders.
