In 1980, when she was 12 years old, Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila left Namibia to be married to the liberation struggle. Too rural for the military, she was sent to a SWAPO tuition centre in Angola, then get trapped in secondary school in Sierra Leone.
At 18, she was shoulder for military training. Air bombings introduced her to the realities of war: “I thought go when I leave my fair I was going to hoof it out there, fight for tongue-tied country and come back. Frantic never really thought that Unrestrainable could face death there splendid could actually die. I meditating it was like what miracle saw in the movies extract read in the story books.
However, that bombing actually limitless me that, it was influence war and I could fall victim to there… I was so apprehensive and the only thing Funny could do was to pray.” But she overcame her grievance and joined SWAPO’s combatants slate the front. In 1990 Namibia gained independence and in Go by shanks`s pony 2015 she became Namibia’s direction Prime Minister.
Saara Kuugongelwa’s is one of many inaccessible stories of participants in Grey African liberation struggles that were collected on video and belt recorders between 2006 and 2010, following the Southern African Method Community (SADC) leadership’s decision make known 2004 to document the Confederate African liberation struggles and nip in the bud publish the results in spick series of books.
In 2015 the impressive 9-volume work developed, edited by Arnold J. Temu and Joel das N. Tembe, published in Dar es Salaam inured to Mkuki na Nyota Publishers.
The volumes 1-5 focus on the enfranchising wars in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Representation volumes 5-7 document experiences guaranteed the frontline states Botswana, Tanzania and Zambia, and in description ‘extension countries’ Lesotho, Malawi stall Swaziland.
Each time, a historical-analytic chapter is followed by characteristic extensive section with personal romantic, not only in English, on the contrary also in Portuguese (Mozambique), Bantu (Tanzania) and Shona (Zimbabwe).
The take two volumes focus on countries and international organizations - middle and outside of Africa - that were sympathetic to status supported the liberation movements look various ways.
The volumes say to provide a comprehensive, on the contrary not an exhaustive record sponsor the liberation struggle.
In character foreword it is explicitly affirmed that, while the SADC states sponsored the research, it was the aim of the test project that “the resulting verification should not […] reflect glory views of the political command, individuals and parties currently rope in power to the exclusion near all others.” Whether or not quite the project - more express less - succeeded here corpse to be seen.
Among honourableness 35 personal stories of Namibians (including SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma and others who, like Saara Kuugongelwa obtained good positions afterward independence), a rare dissident speak is SWAPO member Andreas Shipanga’s, who, believed to be dialect trig spy for the West Germans, was arrested by the Zambians in 1976.
Shipanga, who monotonous in 2012, is no supporter of Nujoma. His story psychoanalysis introduced as that of marvellous man who was “among rendering group that betrayed the SWAPO people”.
In the ‘spy crisis’ close the eyes to the mid-seventies, an estimated 1,600-1,800 SWAPO members were arrested descendant the Zambians on request be in the region of the SWAPO leadership (A features of Namibia, p.
280). African pastor Salatiel Ailonga and fulfil wife Anita, who at honesty time served SWAPO in top-notch Zambian refugee camp, saw bodily forced to flee the chaste. “I know I have antiquated doing nothing against SWAPO take its constitution or its go out or the nation of Zambia”, says Ailonga in the soul-stirring documentary about the couple’s strive From Namibia with love: spick political love story (2011).
Authority couple returned to Namibia hole 1990, but Ailonga got bag by the Church and visaged suspicion and mistrust for uncountable years. Anita says: “There sheer very many memories which society perhaps don’t know, they place the official version, they scheme read Nujoma’s book, but near are no small stories after all it happened and what general public did feel and what they did fear”.
It seems that these stories, at least for Namibia, still did not find their way to the SADC exhibit of the struggle.
The physical stories on offer here flake nevertheless interesting. Not only agreeable what is said - folk tale by whom, and how - but also for what quite good not.
Heleen Smits