‘Letters From America’: Their Role in the Liberation Struggle of Namibia

IN this modern age of computers, e-mails, cellphones, internet, faxes, etc. it’s easy for people to forget the role that a simple ‘letter’ used to play as a means of communication in those early days of human development.

What I’m writing here is based mainly on a conversation I had with Professor Mburumba Kerina. And I thought it worthwhile in view of the ongoing debate about the war veteran issue.But what has a letter got to do with the liberation struggle, one might ask. The simple answer is that a letter was to the Namibian early struggle what the transistor radio was to the Cuban Revolution for example.These letters were written by a group of Namibian political exiles based mainly in the USA and petitioning the case of the then South West Africa (now, of course, Namibia) at the UN General Assembly back in the 1950s and 60s. Perusing some of the collected letters and even envelopes, which are now jealously stored at the National Archives of Namibia, one comes across names such as Mburumba Kerina, Jariretundu Kozonguizi, Rev. Michael Scott, who were then based in New York as some of the writers of most of these letters.Some of the recipients included early nationalists like Toivo ya Toivo, Hosea Kutako, Sam Nujoma, Clemens Kapuuo, Paul Helmut, John Garvey Muundjua and Rev. Hamtumbangela, to name just a few. Their message was simple: organise, organise and organise. These letters therefore provided specific political directives on what should be done and also assured people back home that things were moving in the right direction especially now that the UN had opened the floodgates for petitioners from the then South West Africa to present their case.In fact, in 1956, to be exact, Mburumba Kerina, Jariretundu Kozonguizi and Rev Michael Scott appeared together before the Fourth Committee of the United Nations General Assembly following the favourable Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice at The Hague in 1956, which allowed Namibians to petition the UN General Assembly.The letters provide quite an interesting insight as to how the various political movements such as Swanu and Swapo were formed. Other messages from the petitioners, dealt with issues of national unity and how to mobilise the people at home into a mass movement. Yet others were of specific nature like urging people not to move from the Old Location to present-day Katutura. Others from Kerina, for example, urged Ya Toivo and Nujoma to attack the SA regime openly. Yet others from Kozonguizi to Nujoma were requests for press cuttings from the then Windhoek Advertiser.In short, the letters were the transmission belt between those in exile and those at home – informing each other about developments at home and at the UN. Some of the letters from Namibia, written mainly by the local chiefs such as Hosea Kutako, David Witbooi and Erastus Amgabeb formed the basis and provided the staple food for the petitions to the UN Fourth Committee.Retrospectively, one of the main architects of these letters, Professor Kerina, says the Apartheid operatives/agents actually opened and copied the letters before forwarding them on to their intended recipients because they were later incorporated in the Hall Commission of Inquiry into the 1959 uprising in the Old Location. So, in a sense the SA agents were a step ahead of the liberation movement and their organisers.Other means of communication were also used. For example, in order to popularise OPO internationally, Kerina sent a blank tape and a typewritten speech from New York to Ya Toivo, who was residing in Cape Town at that time, in a copy of a children’s book titled ‘Treasure Island’, through the Chairman of the South African Liberal Party, Patrick Duncan, to be recorded and returned to NY for presentation to the United Nations General Assembly for the purpose of demonstrating to the international community that OPO is not a fiction but a reality in the country.When the recorded tape from Ya Toivo was played at the UN, the South African delegation under the leadership of its Foreign Minister Eric Louw decided to walk out of the Fourth Committee meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. The Ya Toivo tape made him an instant hero and added fuel to former President Sam Nujoma’s political mobilisation in Namibia.These letters read together with the Hall’s Commission of Investigation Report into the 10th December, 1959 uprising and shooting of innocent Namibians were filled with highly confidential information as well as insights about how they laid the initial foundation of OPC/OPO/SWAPO.The various correspondence intercepted by the apartheid security police through the postal service in Windhoek is testimony of the contribution made by those involved in the early period of the country’s independence struggle. At least some of the letters have survived and are kept at the National Archives of Namibia. They also demonstrate the level of political consciousness and sense of national unity that existed at that time, perhaps a far cry from the current political conjuncture prevailing in the country now.

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