Ex-NP stalwart Van Zijl dies

ONE of the leading figures in the former National Party of South West Africa, Eben van Zijl, died at Swakopmund this week.

Van Zijl – a prominent conservative political figure in Namibia before Independence whose political career ended after he failed to be elected to Namibia’s first National Assembly – died on Tuesday, at the age of 77.
Having studied law at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, Van Zijl practised as an advocate in Windhoek from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s.
He was elected to the all-white South West Africa Legislative Assembly as a member for the National Party – which at that stage was implementing apartheid as its main policy – in 1964, and remained a member of that assembly until he retired from politics in 1981.
In the meantime, Van Zijl had risen to a senior leadership position in the NP, and was regarded as a strong candidate to take over the leadership of the party.
Former NP leader Kosie Pretorius, who went on to serve as a member of Namibia’s National Assembly for 15 years since Independence, however ended up being elected as NP leader over Van Zijl in 1981.
Van Zijl made a return to politics two years after his first retirement, becoming an NP delegate to the Multi-Party Conference in 1983. He served as a Minister in the Cabinet of the controversial Transitional Government of pre-Independence Namibia between 1985 and late 1986, when he and other NP members, at the time regarded as part of a more enlightened faction of the politically conservative party, founded a new, supposedly non-political grouping, Action National Settlement (ANS).
In early 1989, in the run-up to Namibia’s United Nations-supervised Independence elections in November that year, ANS joined two other political parties, including the Moses Katjiuongua-led Swanu, in a political alliance, the National Patriotic Front of Namibia, that took part in those elections.
With the NPF winning only one seat in independent Namibia’s first Parliament, Van Zijl faded away from the political scene.
He continued farming at his farm, Den Haag, in the Summerdown area north of Gobabis, until his death.
Extending his condolences to Van Zijl’s family yesterday, Katjiuongua recalled him as a man who had an impressive intellect, and also as ‘a very proud man,’ who ‘liked to stick to his guns’.
‘Eben was a very stubborn fellow, but very open-hearted,’ Katjiuongua said, remarking that when Van Zijl disagreed with someone he would not hide it.
Van Zijl had been part of the Afrikaner culture of his time, but he could also be accommodating to other people’s cultures, Katjiuongua said.
As a politician, he could be ‘foxy’, making his opponents think that he had given in to a compromise, only for them to realise later that he had backed them into a corner, Katjiuongua also remarked.
During the time that they were both members of the Transitional Government in the mid-1980s, working together was difficult at times, ‘but at the end of the day we pulled together’, Katjiuongua said.
‘Working with him was both climbing a mountain, and a pleasure,’ he said.
Pretorius – a former close colleague turned political competitor and sparring partner of Van Zijl – said yesterday he had the highest regard for Van Zijl’s legal knowledge, analytical abilities and skills as a public speaker.
Van Zijl had been a jurist par excellence, and also ‘one of the best speakers, off the cuff, that we had in the old SWA,’ Pretorius said. ‘I’ve said to many people I would rather have him on my side than against me,’ Pretorius said.
It was a pity that his political career had come to the end that it did and that he was lost to public life after Independence, he commented.