Michael Scott, ‘a troublemaker’ who helped people of Namibia

IT was an honour for me to read the words of a distinguished Namibian, Dr Peter Katjavivi, Ambassador to the EU and the Benelux countries, at the launching of Anne Yates and Lewis Chester’s The Troublemaker, the biography of the Reverend Michael Scott, at St Antony’s College, Oxford on May 4 2006.

Peter, a friend for nearly 40 years, had had to fly to Windhoek for the state funeral of Mose Tjitendero, former Speaker of the Namibian Parliament, who had died a few days before. In his speech Peter appealed to “Namibians and their friends” to record the many untold stories about Michael Scott and his Namibian comrades in the early days of the struggle for Independence.He recalled hearing from his cousin, Gerson Katjiukirue Zaire, how he “managed to transport papers, on horseback, from Chief Hosea Kutako to Michael Scott while the latter camped in the riverbed to the west of the City of Windhoek”.I was in the Katjavivis’ house in Windhoek when Gerson Zaire told this story – and it moves me to remember that the late Mose Tjitendero led our discussion of the events of those days.I recall the part of the story that Peter did not have space for in his speech.Michael Scott’s tent was pitched in the dry riverbed of the Gammans River just outside the Old Location (which, of course, he could not enter without a permit).Those were early days in ‘the struggle’ and Scott’s and the Namibians’ objective was to prevent the incorporation of ‘South West Africa’, as it then was, into the then Union of South Africa, after a rigged referendum.This was 1947 and there was no money for the likes of Michael Scott to do his work against pre-apartheid South Africa, hence the tent, which he lived in for more than two months while petitions were drafted and signatures collected.Scott was already deeply unpopular in white South Africa and a marked man in Windhoek, his every move watched by Special Branch police.They even staked out the river bank and when Gerson Zaire arrived on his horse in the early morning, from the Aminuis Reserve, where Chief Kutako was living, Michael would climb up from the riverbed, greet Gerson Zaire and in a kindly way pat his horse’s side.While doing so he would slide the papers out from under the saddle cloth and slip them into the briefcase he always carried.They would then part, with the police none the wiser.Thus did he put together the petition that, Chiefs Kutako of the Hereros and Samuel Witbooi of the Nama being refused permission to leave the territory, he was to take to the United Nations and, as Ruth First put it, to transform “a tedious legal wrangle with a minor government into a crusade to save a people”.The petition was signed in Windhoek, Gobabis and finally at Okahandja at the unforgettable scene described in Scott’s ‘A Time to Speak’ (1958).This was the annual gathering of the Hereros at the graves of their chiefs, on August 28 1947.Also the date of the launching of the ‘armed struggle’ in 1966: it is now Namibia’s Heroes’ Day.It was on this occasion that Scott recorded Chief Hosea Kutako’s prayer, which included the words: “O Lord help us who roam about.Help us who have been placed in Africa and have no dwelling place of our own.Give us back our dwelling place, O God.”Twenty-three years later the prayer was read from the pulpit of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, by Cecil Day Lewis, the Poet Laureate, at the memorial service Peter and I organised for Chief Kutako, who died that year, 1970, at a very great age.Michael was in Zambia so sadly could not take the service.It took another 20 years for the dispossessed Namibian people to recover, in 1990, ‘a dwelling place of their own’ In his speech at St Antony’s Peter Katjavivi rightly reminded us that the prayer was Kutako’s, not Scott’s, but it was Michael Scott, who together with all his other great services to Namibia, saved Chief Hosea Kutako’s prayer for posterity.In his speech Peter appealed to “Namibians and their friends” to record the many untold stories about Michael Scott and his Namibian comrades in the early days of the struggle for Independence.He recalled hearing from his cousin, Gerson Katjiukirue Zaire, how he “managed to transport papers, on horseback, from Chief Hosea Kutako to Michael Scott while the latter camped in the riverbed to the west of the City of Windhoek”.I was in the Katjavivis’ house in Windhoek when Gerson Zaire told this story – and it moves me to remember that the late Mose Tjitendero led our discussion of the events of those days.I recall the part of the story that Peter did not have space for in his speech.Michael Scott’s tent was pitched in the dry riverbed of the Gammans River just outside the Old Location (which, of course, he could not enter without a permit).Those were early days in ‘the struggle’ and Scott’s and the Namibians’ objective was to prevent the incorporation of ‘South West Africa’, as it then was, into the then Union of South Africa, after a rigged referendum.This was 1947 and there was no money for the likes of Michael Scott to do his work against pre-apartheid South Africa, hence the tent, which he lived in for more than two months while petitions were drafted and signatures collected.Scott was already deeply unpopular in white South Africa and a marked man in Windhoek, his every move watched by Special Branch police.They even staked out the river bank and when Gerson Zaire arrived on his horse in the early morning, from the Aminuis Reserve, where Chief Kutako was living, Michael would climb up from the riverbed, greet Gerson Zaire and in a kindly way pat his horse’s side.While doing so he would slide the papers out from under the saddle cloth and slip them into the briefcase he always carried.They would then part, with the police none the wiser.Thus did he put together the petition that, Chiefs Kutako of the Hereros and Samuel Witbooi of the Nama being refused permission to leave the territory, he was to take to the United Nations and, as Ruth First put it, to transform “a tedious legal wrangle with a minor government into a crusade to save a people”.The petition was signed in Windhoek, Gobabis and finally at Okahandja at the unforgettable scene described in Scott’s ‘A Time to Speak’ (1958).This was the annual gathering of the Hereros at the graves of their chiefs, on August 28 1947.Also the date of the launching of the ‘armed struggle’ in 1966: it is now Namibia’s Heroes’ Day.It was on this occasion that Scott recorded Chief Hosea Kutako’s prayer, which included the words: “O Lord help us who roam about.Help us who have been placed in Africa and have no dwelling place of our own.Give us back our dwelling place, O God.”Twenty-three years later the prayer was read from the pulpit of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, by Cecil Day Lewis, the Poet Laureate, at the memorial service Peter and I organised for Chief Kutako, who died that year, 1970, at a very great age.Michael was in Zambia so sadly could not take the service.It took another 20 years for the dispossessed Namibian people to recover, in 1990, ‘a dwelling place of their own’ In his speech at St Antony’s Peter Katjavivi rightly reminded us that the prayer was Kutako’s, not Scott’s, but it was Michael Scott, who together with all his other great services to Namibia, saved Chief Hosea Kutako’s prayer for posterity.