Beukes – the shoemaker who refused to shut up

THE sort of man who would not shy away from giving the most powerful man in Namibia an angry dressing down on his own turf – that was Hermanus Beukes, a resolute and outspoken opponent of South Africa’s rule over Namibia who died at the age of 91 at Rehoboth last Thursday.

He was also the sort of man who could have a civil political debate over a cup of coffee with the man whose son had just helped kidnap him his political comrades in Botswana. That was the way that some of those who knew Beukes remembered him this week.One of his sons, Hewat Beukes, told The Namibian on Wednesday that, after the United Nations was established, his father had been the first person to petition the world body with arguments that South Africa was not adhering to its obligations in terms of the mandate under which it was governing the then South West Africa.In the ensuing decades, he kept up this campaign of sending petitions to the UN, arguing that South African rule over Namibia was illegal because Pretoria was not adhering to the terms of the mandate, his son remembered.In the process, he helped keep the issue of South Africa’s disputed control over South West Africa on the UN’s agenda, recalled Kenneth Abrahams, one of the late Beukes’s close political associates.Hermanus (‘Maans’) Beukes was born into a politically active family and, in turn, passed this activism on to his children, who were also involved in Namibia’s struggle for Independence.One of his daughters, Anne-Marie Beukes, recalled on Wednesday that Jacobus Beukes, who was also known as Koos Samuel and who was the first petitioner to the forerunner of the UN, the League of Nations, on behalf of the people of Namibia, had been a second cousin of her late father’s father.One of Hermanus Beukes’s sons, Hans Beukes, went to the UN in turn to make the case for Namibian Independence.He addressed the UN General Assembly in 1959, Hewat Beukes relates.Hermanus Beukes died 41 years after he and medical doctor Kenneth Abrahams made headlines across southern Africa and the world.Abrahams recalled this week that Beukes had been instrumental in getting the Rehoboth community to congregate in large numbers at Abrahams’s house at Rehoboth when the South African Police’s Special Branch arrived there in July 1963 to arrest him.Abrahams was eventually smuggled out of the house with Beukes’s help, and took refuge in the veld with Beukes and other armed men from the Rehoboth community for a few days until the order for his arrest had been revoked.At that stage, Abrahams said, he and his neighbour Beukes were both members of Swapo and had, for months, been recruiting people to be sent into exile for military training.About a week after Beukes and the Rehoboth community first came to his aid, Abrahams slipped out of his house under cover of the night and, together with Beukes and then prominent Swapo member Andreas Shipanga, as well as a fellow Rehoboth resident, Paul Smit, headed east, to go into exile via Botswana.It was after they had crossed into Botswana that South African agents kidnapped them and returned them to Namibia, setting off a chain of events that eventually caught the attention of the British government, which protested against the kidnapping of the group.At that stage, Abrahams had been taken to Cape Town, where he was set to be charged with sabotage and faced a certain jail term on Robben Island.While he fought against his arrest in a Cape Town court, Beukes and company were being helped in the Gobabis court by a young advocate called Bryan O’Linn, who exposed the illegal circumstances of their arrests.Embarrassed and under pressure, the South African government finally relented, and the four were released and returned to Botswana.Hermanus Beukes had planned to travel to New York to make his and Namibia’s case at the UN, but he never made it that far.After a stint in a refugee camp in Francistown, he chose to return home.His health had taken a knock, his daughter Anne-Marie says.According to Abrahams, Beukes had, as an Afrikaans-speaker, found it hard to adjust to the foreign environment, had missed his wife and simply missed Rehoboth too much as well.Beukes returned to Rehoboth where he remained as vociferously opposed to South Africa’s rule over Namibia as before.Abrahams said he remembered Beukes as a fearless man, with “total and utter dedication to the struggle for Independence, which overrode everything else in his life”.Added Abrahams:”He always stood for truth and justice and the upliftment of the common man.”Beukes held strong opinions and was prepared to defend them to the death, Abrahams remembers:”He could disagree with you, but not make an enemy of you at the same time.And he loved nothing better than a good argument.”An incident that took place during the kidnapping of the three revealed that quality, Abrahams added.He recalled that the group was delivered to a farm in the Gobabis area where the farmer’s wife received them as if they were neighbours who had dropped in for a chat.They were seated on the stoep of the farmhouse where the farmer’s wife brought them coffee and koeksisters, while the farmer, whose son had helped kidnap them, struck up a conversation with them.Abrahams said he was fuming inside over the injustices that they were experiencing, but Beukes easily slipped into the conversational mood of the setting and promptly struck up a debate with the farmer over the wrongs or merits of apartheid.Anne-Marie Beukes recalled a story of her father having had Namibia’s first Administrator-General, MT Steyn, trembling – probably with fury rather than fear – when he managed to arrange a meeting with South Africa’s top man in Namibia at a same time that one of his sons, Hewat, was being detained without trial at Gobabis.Instead of using his audience with Steyn to plead on behalf of his son, Beukes chose to angrily accuse Steyn that the South Africans had left a trail of blood from the Orange River in the South to the northern border of Namibia ever since they had arrived in South West Africa in 1915.He might not have endeared himself to the AG, but about a week later his son Hewat was released.Like many in his circle, Beukes remained critical and outspoken after Independence.As Abrahams sees it, he too went through a crisis of expectations, disappointed that for most people Independence did not bring very much in a material improvement of their living standards.Still, his primary concern as a political being was for Namibia as a nation.Says Abrahams:”Maans was never a Baster nationalist.He was a Namibian first and foremost.”Beukes, born at Rehoboth on June 20 1913, received only three years of formal schooling and was educated further by his mother.A formative political experience was when, with the Baster community besieged by South African forces in 1925 – who were imposing their authority on Rehoboth – he was called into service to ferry messages on the unfolding crisis to and fro on horseback between Rehoboth and outlying areas.He was widowed in 1984.He had two daughters and eight sons, four sons having died before him.His daughter Anne-Marie is continuing in her father’s footsteps in one respect at least, having taken over his shoemaking business at Rehoboth.Beukes will be buried from Rehoboth’s Evangelical Mission Church at 13h00 tomorrow.That was the way that some of those who knew Beukes remembered him this week.One of his sons, Hewat Beukes, told The Namibian on Wednesday that, after the United Nations was established, his father had been the first person to petition the world body with arguments that South Africa was not adhering to its obligations in terms of the mandate under which it was governing the then South West Africa.In the ensuing decades, he kept up this campaign of sending petitions to the UN, arguing that South African rule over Namibia was illegal because Pretoria was not adhering to the terms of the mandate, his son remembered.In the process, he helped keep the issue of South Africa’s disputed control over South West Africa on the UN’s agenda, recalled Kenneth Abrahams, one of the late Beukes’s close political associates.Hermanus (‘Maans’) Beukes was born into a politically active family and, in turn, passed this activism on to his children, who were also involved in Namibia’s struggle for Independence.One of his daughters, Anne-Marie Beukes, recalled on Wednesday that Jacobus Beukes, who was also known as Koos Samuel and who was the first petitioner to the forerunner of the UN, the League of Nations, on behalf of the people of Namibia, had been a second cousin of her late father’s father.One of Hermanus Beukes’s sons, Hans Beukes, went to the UN in turn to make the case for Namibian Independence.He addressed the UN General Assembly in 1959, Hewat Beukes relates.Hermanus Beukes died 41 years after he and medical doctor Kenneth Abrahams made headlines across southern Africa and the world.Abrahams recalled this week that Beukes had been instrumental in getting the Rehoboth community to congregate in large numbers at Abrahams’s house at Rehoboth when the South African Police’s Special Branch arrived there in July 1963 to arrest him.Abrahams was eventually smuggled out of the house with Beukes’s help, and took refuge in the veld with Beukes and other armed men from the Rehoboth community for a few days until the order for his arrest had been revoked.At that stage, Abrahams said, he and his neighbour Beukes were both members of Swapo and had, for months, been recruiting people to be sent into exile for military training.About a week after Beukes and the Rehoboth community first came to his aid, Abrahams slipped out of his house under cover of the night and, together with Beukes and then prominent Swapo member Andreas Shipanga, as well as a fellow Rehoboth resident, Paul Smit, headed east, to go into exile via Botswana.It was after they had crossed into Botswana that South African agents kidnapped them and returned them to Namibia, setting off a chain of events that eventually caught the attention of the British government, which protested against the kidnapping of the group.At that stage, Abrahams had been taken to Cape Town, where he was set to be charged with sabotage and faced a certain jail term on Robben Island.While he fought against his arrest in a Cape Town court, Beukes and company were being helped in the Gobabis court by a young advocate called Bryan O’Linn, who exposed the illegal circumstances of their arrests.Embarrassed and under pressure, the South African government finally relented, and the four were released and returned to Botswana.Hermanus Beukes had planned to travel to New York to make his and Namibia’s case at the UN, but he never made it that far.After a stint in a refugee camp in Francistown, he chose to return home.His health had taken a knock, his daughter Anne-Marie says.According to Abrahams, Beukes had, as an Afrikaans-speaker, found it hard to adjust to the foreign environment, had missed his wife and simply missed Rehoboth too much as well.Beukes returned to Rehoboth where he remained as vociferously opposed to South Africa’s rule over Namibia as before.Abrahams said he remembered Beukes as a fearless man, with “total and utter dedication to the struggle for Independence, which overrode everything else in his life”.Added Abrahams:”He always stood for truth and justice and the upliftment of the common man.”Beukes held strong opinions and was prepared to defend them to the death, Abrahams remembers:”He could disagree with you, but not make an enemy of you at the same time.And he loved nothing better than a good argument.”An incident that took place during the kidnapping of the three revealed that quality, Abrahams added.He recalled that the group was delivered to a farm in the Gobabis area where the farmer’s wife received them as if they were neighbours who had dropped in for a chat.They were seated on the stoep of the farmhouse where the farmer’s wife brought them coffee and koeksisters, while the farmer, whose son had helped kidnap them, struck up a conversation with them.Abrahams said he was fuming inside over the injustices that they were experiencing, but Beukes easily slipped into the conversational mood of the setting and promptly struck up a debate with the farmer over the wrongs or merits of apartheid.Anne-Marie Beukes recalled a story of her father having had Namibia’s first Administrator-General, MT Steyn, trembling – probably with fury rather than fear – when he managed to arrange a meeting with South Africa’s top man in Namibia at a same time that one of his sons, Hewat, was being detained without trial at Gobabis.Instead of using his audience with Steyn to plead on behalf of his son, Beukes chose to angrily accuse Steyn that the South Africans had left a trail of blood from the Orange River in the South to the northern border of Namibia ever since they had arrived in South West Africa in 1915.He might not have endeared himself to the AG, but about a week later his son Hewat was released.Like many in his circle, Beukes remained critical and outspoken after Independence.As Abrahams sees it, he too went through a crisis of expectations, disappointed that for most people Independence did not bring very much in a material improvement of their living standards.Still, his primary concern as a political being was for Namibia as a nation.Says Abrahams:”Maans was never a Baster nationalist.He was a Namibian first and foremost.”Beukes, born at Rehoboth on June 20 1913, received only three years of formal schooling and was educated further by his mother.A formative political experience was when, with the Baster community besieged by South African forces in 1925 – who were imposing their authority on Rehoboth – he was called into service to ferry messages on the unfolding crisis to and fro on horseback between Rehoboth and outlying areas.He was widowed in 1984.He had two daughters and eight sons, four sons having died before him.His daughter Anne-Marie is continuing in her father’s footsteps in one respect at least, having taken over his shoemaking business at Rehoboth.Beukes will be buried from Rehoboth’s Evangelical Mission Church at 13h00 tomorrow.