Remembering Maurus Nekaro: The True Original
By: Ndumba J KamwanyahMAU, or Tjange as we in the Kavango affectionately called him, passed away in his sleep in Eenhana. This I learned through a status update from a Namibian newspaper’s Facebook page. To say that I was shocked and saddened is an understatement.
But my mind immediately travelled back to the Kavango Region. To Rundu. To 1987/89. He was my principal during, perhaps, the most turbulent and challenging years that any Namibian principal has ever known. These were the days when Namibia was still South West Africa. Organised under the umbrella of the Namibian National Student Organisation (Nanso), students boycotted. Students clashed with the colonial security forces. They smashed classroom windows, and everything that was associated with the colonial occupation. They demanded demilitarisation of schools. They demanded English instead of Afrikaans. This was a time that gave birth to Namibia – the last steps to Uhuru as David Lush calls it – the dawning of independence.
In the Kavango Region, an area declared as one of the war zones then, we rose up to defy every authority: Kavango administrators, school authorities, even our parents who knew how merely wearing a Swapo or Nanso T-shirt could get you beaten, broken, or killed. We would not be held back. Even when streets were lined with rows of Koevoet, lines of the SWATF [South West Africa Territory Force], we took to those streets, raised our fists, and shouted at the top of our lungs.
The simple acts of everyday life were no longer simple. The stores, the churches, even the schools were a place for our voices – and a place where we could be beaten down for using our voices. When everywhere you looked could be some kind of battlefield, we needed a refuge, an unshakable elder who we could return to. There was principal Nekaro, right in the middle of it all.
As the principal (at a school that served as the centre of the resistance in the Kavango Region) he was confronted from many directions, mediating varying interests. And wearing several different hats at the same time. We called upon him and some of his colleagues many a time – even late at night – to come meet with students about upcoming actions and school boycotts. They would give us advice – sometimes advice we utterly defied. But all the same, when the next morning came, Mau would brave it all out, standing in front of the staff – some of them white South African soldiers from the 202 Battalion or their wives – knowing all along that at any moment, his students would break from assembly and walk away.
I’ll never forget when Nekaro invited Dr Joseph Diescho to speak at morning assembly. Diescho had not even spoken for a few minutes when a white teacher butted in saying, “Meneer Nekaro, stop hom dis politiek!” We thought, for sure, that the speech would be over. But he did not give an inch. Instead he allowed Diescho (who told the protesting teacher, “Ek kan nie my pligte versuim nie”) to continue unhindered. Amidst boos from all of us, the said teacher, with some of other teachers, walked out in protest.
Nekaro stood firm at every turn, giving voice to our resistance. Even when one of our teachers, Peter Ellison, was banned by the colonial administration and given 24 hours to leave Namibia, Nekaro had Ellison – whom we all knew as ‘Bakabaka’ – addressed all of us before his departure via Botswana.
The 1988 school boycott closed many regional schools, including Rundu Senior Secondary School. More than 20 students – mostly from our schools, Rundu junior and the teachers’ college OSP – had been arrested. Others, like David Ndjamba, were kidnapped from the school hostel. His fate, as well as the fate of Martin Kutenda and Bernadino Dibwere, who both fled to Angola to join Swapo, still remains unknown.
Mau himself would become a victim of daily harassment, arrest and long-term detention, when the colonial security forces learned that so many of us – his former students – had fled into exile to join the liberation movement.
When he died, Mau was the governor of the Kavango Region appointed by President Pohamba in 2010. But he will probably be remembered mostly how he lived and treated people with humility. He is known for what the Vakavango call muntu-namukwawo – one who befriends everyone, regardless of status, culture or background. He loved people, he loved Namibia and he loved Kavango and the Kavango people loved him too. His death is a tragedy for Namibia, Vakavango, and most importantly his family. Goodbye tate Nekaro.
*Ndumba J Kamwanyah is a public policy consultant and an Africa blogger for the Foreign Policy Association. ndumba.kamwanyah@umb.edu; Twitter@ndumbakamwanyah