Waking the dead: Civilian casualties in the Namibian liberation struggle
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Date
2012
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of Namibia
Abstract
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.
Description
Keywords
Liberation, Struggle, Civilian, The dead, Evidence, Namibia
Citation
Akawa, M., Silvester, J. 2012. Waking the dead: Civilian casualties in the Namibian liberation struggle. Journol for Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences 1(1):117-128.