Namibia and Palestine: A Retrospective Reflection

WHY Namibia, why Palestine? And why now? I’m sure that’s the immediate question that comes to mind when reading this headline. This is understandable. I however, urge all of us to dig deep into our historical imagination – to reflect a bit.

November is an important month on Namibia’s political calendar. This is the month when Namibians usually go to the polls to elect their new representatives after every five years. It’s an element of sovereignty.For Palestinians it’s a different story. For them November is the month when the lights went out and darkness fell. This is the month when the symbol of Palestinian nationalism and Palestinian struggle passed away. PLO President Yasser Arafat left us on November 11 2004. And Palestinians and supporters of their struggle worldwide are marking the fifth anniversary of his death this month. Unfortunately there was hardly any mention of this in the Namibian press.But let me state the obvious here. Arafat meant different things to different people and at different times – even among the Palestinians themselves. He was understandably hated by some and, of course, revered by many. But the simple fact is that he was one of the towering figures of the 20th century struggles for independence, liberation and justice.One cannot write the history of the Palestinian people and their struggle without his name looming large on those pages. He was an embodiment of that struggle, a unifying figure and thus a prominent face of Palestinian opposition to Israeli occupation. Although he died before achieving his goal of an independent state, Arafat managed to preserve Palestinian national identity during decades without statehood. He was also one of the most easily recognisable historical personalities of our time. You meet or see him once and that picture gets stuck in you mind. He was one of those people who would stand out from the rest like Fidel Castro, Mahatma Gandhi, Sam Nujoma, Nelson Mandela, Princes Diana, Margaret Thatcher, Kenneth Kaunda etc. A number of Namibians have met Arafat in person, especially the older generation during the dark days of exile politics. I count myself fortunate because I also met him in Cairo during my student days in Egypt in the 80s. I also had the opportunity to meet and interact with many other Palestinian exiles in Egypt who were either studying or simply living there.Other Namibians might have also seen Arafat in person. He was here on March 21 1990 to grace our most important moment – Namibian Independence. It was because of March 21 that Namibians are once again going to the polls to vote in order to re-affirm that they are still in charge of their own destiny. I’m sure Arafat must have been a happy man on that day to see another oppressed people being freed from colonial oppression and attaining statehood. And I’m also sure that in the back of his mind he must have been thinking ‘my people will also be free one day and have their own independent state’. They still don’t have one, and instead remain a people scattered all over the world and in refugee camps. So, Arafat must be turning in his grave this month as he will every November until there is an independent Palestinian state – free from the brutal Israeli occupation and daily harassment.We Namibians have to support that struggle. The Palestinian people need us now. We shouldn’t forget that we are products of international solidarity. In fact there is no other country in the world that benefited so much from international solidarity as Namibia, whether on the battlefront or on the social and diplomatic fronts.Therefore we shouldn’t behave as if it is business as usual. We are actually sabotaging the Palestinian liberation struggle by maintaining economic and diplomatic ties with the Israeli state – the very state occupying and oppressing Palestinians. We are allowing Israeli companies to exploit Namibian minerals such as diamonds. We have turned our diamonds into blood diamonds because Lev Leviev Diamonds is one of the largest taxpayers in Israel and a benefactor of Jewish activities worldwide and we are thus indirectly supporting that occupation. It appears that we have put profit before principles just as we have done with China in the case of Tibet. Remember how the South African government denied the Dalai Lama a visa to attend a peace conference in SA because their handlers – the Chinese – wouldn’t take kindly to such behaviour? Likewise the Swapo leadership is now drunk from the love of money and in the process has jettisoned all moral political principles. Namibians fought for justice, so why can’t we help others achieve and enjoy the same instead of barricading ourselves behind lousy excuses and outdated notions like national self interest – itself the lowest human denominator?As things are now, we must support the two-state solution – Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace. This is the option that our Government, in conjunction with other countries, have to actively pursue and not just talk about it when our leaders meet a Palestinian delegation or when begging for petro-dollars from the Arabs.