Liberation struggles, solidarity, and failing utopias. A conversation with Henning Melber, anticolonial activist and SWAPO member

Henning Melber (born 1950) is a renowned expert on German-African colonial relations and on memory cultures. In 1974 he became one of the first white members of Namibia's liberation movement, the South-West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO). Due to his activities he was banned from entering Namibia and South Africa till the end of the apartheid regime. This biographical interview gives an account of gaining anticolonial and antiracist consciousness across the long lines of political struggles. Henning reflects on his political upbringing, solidarity actions in West Germany in the 1980s, pedagogy of liberation, and on state capture and kleptocracy in Namibia today.

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SWAPO party logo. Source: Wikipedia.

Franziska Müller (FM): Maybe you could tell us a bit more on what made you come to Windhoek in the 1960s. How did that happen?

Henning Melber (HM): I was born 1950 in Stuttgart, and I spent the first 16 years of my life in Southern Germany. My mother emigrated to then Southwest-Africa, together with my younger brother and me. It was a very special microcosmos of white Germans, many of them coming from farms. But for them, we were not part of the community, we were called “jerries”, which was a kind of derogatory term, meaning those coming from Germany. Already upon arrival, I felt very uncomfortable about the racist divide. This was not exactly rooted in political awareness, but in a commitment to individual freedom and liberties. As for context, the early to mid 1960s were really a kind of a watershed for young people. You had long hair, you had patchwork trousers, you were singing along “Wild Thing” with The Troggs. This was a specific socialization in which we were molded as youngsters. And I think this really had a liberating force for individuals. This led to an aversion and suspicion among the German speakers in Southwest Africa. Those who came from West Germany, well, you can't trust them.

FM: How did you then get into SWAPO?  I imagine that in those days, there wasn't a weekly meeting of the local chapter where you could just attend.

HM: There was no contact with SWAPO yet, there’s way more steps. I went to Munich and did a one year professional training course as a journalist, and then returned to Namibia to become a journalist with the German daily newspaper. Consider being trained in Munich as a journalist in 1971/1972, very important times indeed!

It was actually a total mismatch, being a journalist in Windhoek in a repressive authoritarian state with no freedom of expression and speech. I was fired after three months. Finally I registered with the Free University of Berlin to study political sciences and sociology. Twice a year I returned to Windhoek and got into contact with young Blacks of my age. Looking for contacts was still very difficult, but I managed to get into contact with activists in the SWAPO Youth League. Those were the ones who were confident enough to engage with a young white of their age. In that hierarchical, oppressive system, it's a process of dehumanization for many Blacks, which meant they would not be able to engage in like-minded interactions with whites because of the hierarchy. It's an atmosphere of fear. It's an atmosphere where you disrespect yourself.

So, in 1974, one of them said: “Why are you not yet a member of SWAPO?” And it caught me totally by surprise, because I was indoctrinated like the others by this apartheid regime narrative that SWAPO is a black terrorist movement. Well, I never perceived them as terrorists, but as a Black movement. And it never dawned on me that I could join SWAPO. I looked at him, I guess, rather stupid, and said: “Is that possible?” And he looked back at me, and he was one of the local SWAPO coordinators. Then he put his hand in his pocket, he took out a card, wrote down my name and the date, handed the card over to me, and said: “Yes, it is possible.” That made me a SWAPO member. I still remember it like it was yesterday. It was such a generous gesture that they felt I deserved or earned to be a member of the anticolonial movement.

United Nations Institute for Namibia. Source: United Nations

FM: How can we then imagine your work with SWAPO?

HM: Well, this is a small country, so the word of mouth spread very quickly about the fact that there is, for the first time, a white, who has become a member of SWAPO. At that time, in 1974, the independence of Angola meant Namibians could cross to North Angola and from there to Zambia, where the United Nations Institute for Namibia had just been established. More than 10,000 students and teachers from secondary schools left for exile through Angola. There were worries in SWAPO that if everyone leaves for exile, no one would be left to organize and mobilize at home. So then the idea was to send someone to Namibia in 1975 to explore what possibilities could be created to make it more attractive for students to stay at home and continue learning. Since I was a member of SWAPO, but also the carrier of a West-German passport with a permanent residence permit in Namibia, I was basically the most obvious choice.

My task was to explore and to come up with recommendations on what could be done in Namibia to create conditions at independent schools, which would make some of the students stay instead of leaving for exile. In this small society it was obvious I was followed every day by someone from the State Security. The agreement with the members of the SWAPO Youth League was that they would let me know if it was getting too dangerous. So that time came in mid 1975 and they said: “Maybe it's better you leave now.” They accompanied me to Windhoek airport to make sure that I would embark on the plane, so that there was some witness. It's all these precautious measures you have in that situation. I travelled to South Africa to meet with a member of the African National Congress (ANC), who was a role model for me at that time. But when I returned to Johannesburg airport, the State Security was waiting for me. I was getting quite anxious about something happening and that nobody would know. But they seemed not to be aware that I could speak Afrikaans. I then overheard that they didn't really know what they were looking for, and only later someone explained to me that they were looking for microfilms or microfiche to carry outside of the country. I demanded to speak to the German ambassador. In the end they shuffled me away, and put me on the plane. But my friend was arrested, incarcerated, and interrogated. When he was released again he sent a letter to his brother in Germany, who informed me that they also specifically interrogated him about me. Their questions implied that they suspected my mission was to prepare the local armed struggle in Namibia.

SWAPO/PLAN militia on a post at the Namibian border. Source: UN Photo

I felt very flattered. But then I figured out I did some lectures at a Theological college and there were, for example, questions about the Tupamaros. At that time in the mid 70s I was reading all that stuff, and I shared with them all those details. In all those meetings, you always had someone who reported to the security. I guess that the Tupamaros stuff seemed pretty dangerous to them, because it's about urban struggle and urban guerrilla, and this must have been really intriguing for the security forces. My friend said: “Don't return under any circumstances!”

FM: How did you support Namibian struggles from that distance? I believe there were for instance several anti-apartheid committees in West-Germany in the 1980s?

HM: There was a lot of support. And as I said, being known as a white member of SWAPO made me kind of a special person in those days. It sounds maybe funny, but I was again privileged because people said, oh, there's a white member of SWAPO, we have to support him. I think some of my employment opportunities in academia were simply based on the fact that those who were able to make the decision wanted to provide a safe space for a young, white member of SWAPO, who is not allowed to return home to Namibia. It was just amazing, the degree of recognition in that time. For instance, I was offering a seminar at Free University of Berlin in development sociology, and then in the Berlin Senate a CDU member of the Senate asked whether a terrorist should be allowed to offer a seminar at the university. And the then rector of the university, who was asked to make a statement said that's none of his business. That was the freedom of science and academia in those days.

FM: Quite a difference to what we are experiencing at Free University of Berlin in these days now!

HM: That's exactly why I share all the details, because it was really a different time compared to today. To imagine all the things which are not possible today, in this restrictive atmosphere, with these interventions… It was just the opposite that time.

Anti-apartheid demonstration, Bonn, 1986. Source: Jürgen Seidel/Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation

Well, I was asked by SWAPO to represent them on events. Sometimes this was much to the disappointment of German solidarity groups, because they had asked for a SWAPO representative to inform them on the struggle. And then came someone with a Southern German dialect that did not meet the expectations. They always liked to hug and embrace the black comrades, but they never hugged and embraced me [laughs]. I was just another white.

FM: So that was a form of tokenism, right? And you were not the ideal token.

HM: Yes, exactly.

Again, there came a little bit more into the picture. If there is a white member of a Black liberation movement, which had always been perceived as a black-only movement, this means liberation is not about the pigmentation, it's not about the color of the skin. It's about self-determination. And it doesn't matter if you are Black or white, if you share the same ideals, then you stand together. So that was a kind of maybe a bit psychological function. But I don't want to put too much relevance or emphasis on that. There were others. There was Anton Lubowski, almost my age, two years younger, who joined SWAPO at home in Namibia as a human rights advocate. He was assassinated in September 1989, two months before the elections, due to his political commitment. So he paid the ultimate price. I never was even close to a situation where I would have had to offer any meaningful sacrifices. […]

FM: Maybe you could tell me a bit about how this exile school system worked. It must have been such a tremendous lot of work to set this up to ensure that the next generation of Black Namibians was trained.

HM: Yeah, it was really an uphill battle to accommodate all the students who left into exile with the main expectation not to join the struggle, but to get a meaningful education. And they were, they were in their 1000s to be accommodated in the SWAPO health and education centers in Angola, Southern Angola, and in the Western province of Zambia. It was also one of the first very sobering experiences I had. Coming from a background studying and reading Paulo Freire, and then coming to one of those schools in the refugee camps, with 50 kids sitting on the floor in front of a teacher who acted in an totally authoritarian way, basically the transmission of knowledge was not in any way different from that in apartheid schools, totally authoritarian, totally strict, just memorizing, nothing creative. I was in total shock, until I realized: How could you do it under the given circumstances? How can you deal with it? Especially because most of these teachers were not professionally qualified; they had no pedagogical skills. It was really a necessary lesson to see that the realities on the ground are not the ideal situation you have in mind. If I had been a teacher in one of those schools, I'm sure I would have failed. I would have not been able to translate Freire into a pedagogy of liberation in that situation.

Then, the other thing was that the structures of these camps were also totally authoritarian, and there were male chauvinist. Women were the ones, who did the cooking, the washing, and they were the sexual objects. And while men freely engaged in promiscuity with local women, Namibian women in those camps would have been utterly punished, had they engaged in a relationship with a local man. They basically were the property of the comrades. I put it in rather drastic terms, but I think that is very close to what the reality was. So all this glorification of struggle days, you know… forget about it.

FM: I think it's very important to look at these blind spots, because as you say, this is very often forgotten, be it in the political left in the West or in these situations. So was there something like a SWAPO women's movement?

HM: There was a SWAPO women's movement, but it was not a feminist movement. They were not in any way emancipatory oriented and that's also very telling regarding the new president-elect for Namibia, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah. She is of that second struggle generation and a very traditional woman. She is homophobic, she is for strict control of abortion, she is not in support of reproductive rights. So she is a product of those who left for exile in the mid 70s, exactly the time we were talking about. At 72 years of age, she is illustrating the socialization of women in SWAPO in exile, making her career in the movement, after independence in the cabinet and being in the SWAPO leadership. The few women who were more aware about gender-specific discrimination, they were ousted.

FM: It’s good to also have this kind of bigger picture. But, looking back at the 1970s, I'm also fascinated how it was all possible to create these movements in very practical terms. I mean, how did you coordinate? From my position in the digital age that looks like a kind of miracle.

HM: All the exile structures and the organizational administration took place initially in Zambia and then increasingly in Angola. And then you had the United Nations Institute for Namibia, and you had the United Nations Council for Namibia offering significant material support to the movement. You had friendly ties, mainly with the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and some other Eastern European countries, and not least Cuba, to some extent, also China. There were, for example, medical doctors or teachers from the GDR in the SWAPO camps, not many, but a few. So then you had people training the security of the movement.

FM: How did it happen that United Nations set up an individual institute supporting Namibian struggles? Also, I find it tremendously exciting how the United Nations Institute for Namibia was also somehow connected to the Irish Republican Army and Irish liberation.

HM: Namibia has always been a special case in the history of the United Nations. This relates to the transfer of power to South Africa after the Treaty of Versailles, when the German colonies were subdivided among the other colonial powers after World War One. Southwest-Africa then was handed over to the British crown. The British Crown then delegated the administration to the Union of South Africa, so South Africa occupied and administered Southwest-Africa. Yet, the occupation of South Africa was considered to be illegal in terms of international law because it violated the mandate. That led to the establishment of a United Nations Council for Namibia which then institutionalized the United Nations Institute for Namibia to train young Namibians in preparation of independence so that they were competent enough to take over the administration of a Southern state.

FM: Would you say that paid off? Did the people who were trained at the institute later became leading figures during and after liberation?

HM: As ever so often and also in this case, the training qualified them for a range of other tasks. You have this phenomenon elsewhere that they are trained for a specific purpose, but then they are so qualified that they can take whatever they want. There was no obligation. So most of them made a career in SWAPO or in state-owned enterprises, but they did not want to go as public servants into a position which was considered to be of lower status.

FM: So I guess for you some of the high political moments in the 1990s were also moments which were somehow on the brink of disappointment, or at least ambivalence?

HM: I call my experiences since 1990 the limits of liberation. SWAPO…. and I say this in the sense of identifying with SWAPO… We did not live up to the promises we made. Our slogan was: Solidarity, Freedom, Justice! Witnessing Namibia since independence, this is a pact among elites, meaning the old white elite remain privileged, and in return, have no objections that a new black elite joins them. But the majority of the population remains as poor as they were before. Namibia, together with South Africa, is the most unequal country in the world. We drafted a fantastic constitution with all the civil rights, with all the basic premises for egalitarian society. So there's a huge discrepancy between what we proclaimed and what harsh social realities are.

FM: This has happened ever so often to liberation movements once they come become institutionalized, be it in Namibia or in South Africa or in Mexico. Do you see any kind of change in the younger generation? What is their perspective on these struggles, is a kind of a new social movement forming?

HM: The demographic change will take its toll on the former liberation movements as governments, and we can witness it in all the cases. The so-called “born free generation” is no longer impressed by the heroic narrative of the liberation movements. Their answer is: You cannot liberate us from anything. We were born into a democratic Namibia or a democratic South Africa. We measure you against your governance and against your delivery, or actually against the lack of delivery while unemployment is rising. You even have very disappointed elderly Black people in South Africa and Namibia who, out of their frustration, sometimes say we were better off under apartheid. I'm not sure if that is true, but when I hear that, for me this is the ultimate defeat.

We violated human rights, and we were not standing up and taking responsibility for it. We were always claiming the moral high grounds, but we abandoned them because we were not actually dealing with our own human rights violations. There was never a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Namibia. The mindset of those who continue to occupy power has not fundamentally changed. It remains to a large extent authoritarian. It is guided by suspicion following the slogan: If you are not with us, you are against us. This polarization continues, and this is where the toxic element of a liberation struggle survives. If you seriously want to defeat a system which is based on sheer brute violence and violation of human rights, on repression, you face the risk that during the struggle, you become more and more equal in your mindset to those you are fighting.

FM: What could be immunizations against that? In these kind of struggles, I can fully understand that violence is necessary at some point. Are there ways to not be captured by this authoritarian mindset?

HM: The only way out is to self critically reflect on the limitations. If you read the chapter on the pitfalls of national consciousness in “The wretched of the Earth” by Frantz Fanon, he points out how liberation movements may turn into oppressors. Read Pepetela’s novel “Mayombe” on the anticolonial struggle at the Cabinda front in Angola. It is exactly those processes that show how authoritarian mindsets infiltrate the liberation gospel and basically turn the liberation into another form of oppression, not necessarily identical with the oppression you fight against. I mean, I still defend as an achievement what we have managed with independence, but it came at a very high price, and many people pay this price. I think of Albert Camus, who realized the toxic elements of the resistance. So there would be individual examples in the literature where you can see people can reflect about it, and they can diagnose what is going on and basically step out of it. So it doesn't mean we are predetermined. We don't have to end up like that. But when you think about this in the bigger context of a movement, of an organization with internal factional fights – and there were many liberation movements where internal killings took place over the control over their organization – then you can see that it's not the genuine fundamental alternative to the systems you are fighting against. That is basically one of the saddest, most tragic byproducts of those social processes of transformation, that they come with huge limitations.