Namibia’s Workers Spearheaded Its Fight for Independence – Part 2

The grievances that had been instrumental in the formation of the national liberation movement continued to instigate revolt and protest.

The new upsurge started with demonstrations of high school students in August 1971.

When student leaders were expelled from schools in the country’s north and took up contract employment, they joined with labour and Swapo activists to mobilise against the contract labour system under the slogan ‘Odalate Naiteke’ (‘Break the wire’) – in other words, break the contract system that tied the workers to their bosses like a wire.

This slogan linked the resentment of the contract labour system to the demands for liberation. In December 1971, the strike broke out largely spontaneously.

Although mobilising had laid the groundwork, walkouts happened without a hierarchical leadership, and workers refused to identify individual leaders. Instead, they expressed their demands collectively in mass meetings.

The strike started in the fish canning factories at Walvis Bay, where 3 200 contract workers were employed.

Connections were built between different centres of contract labour. An ultimatum was set for 12 December.

At a Sunday afternoon mass meeting in Windhoek, the workers decided that they would not go to work the next day. On Monday, 13 December, none of the Ovambo workers in Windhoek left the compound.

Across Namibia, 16 000 contract workers went on strike to protest the system.

Two days later, the authorities deported the striking workers to Owambo. This enforced deportation was turned into a tactical opportunity on the part of the workers, who immediately organised a strike committee.

On 10 January 1972, they held a mass meeting attended by 3 500 in the rural north, where the expelled workers characterised the contract system as a form of slavery, because blacks were ‘bought’ by the South West Africa Native Labour Association (Swanla) and compelled to live in ‘jail-like’ compounds.

Their demands included the abolition of the contract labour system, the freedom to select the place and type of employment, higher wages, and permission to bring their families with them.

In large-scale solidarity protests, high school students from across Namibia demanded an end to the South African occupation of their country.

The response of the authorities was mixed. There were some partial attempts to address the workers’ grievances with the abolition of Swanla, to be replaced with a system of tribal labour bureaus.

However, the colonial regime also cracked down on the unrest with measures that severely restricted political expression and mobilisation.

By May 1972, 267 people in Owambo had been detained under emergency regulations. In Windhoek, so-called ringleaders of the strike were charged with ‘intimidating’ the workers to stay away from work, although the state’s case eventually collapsed.

The massive strike of 1971 to 1972 was a turning point of Namibian anti-colonial resistance politics.

The workers’ calls for the abolition of the contract labour system and an end to controls over movement constituted a fundamental challenge to the oppressive, state-administered labour regime and apartheid colonialism.

After a decade of enforced acquiescence, the alliance of workers and students wanted more than limited improvements.

In Owambo, resistance against contract labour broadened into a generalised revolt.

Returned workers and other local residents cut and flattened more than 100km of the border fence between Namibia and Angola.

A campaign targeted the government’s cattle vaccination points, many of which were burned down.

People suspected that the vaccinations administered by the colonial apartheid state actually killed their animals rather than protecting them from disease.

In the aftermath of the unrest, hundreds of young activists left for exile to escape repression. Among them was Namibia’s current president, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, who had been arrested and spent her 21st birthday in prison.

COMMUNITY MOBILISATION AND UNIONS

In contrast with the experience of South Africa, the upsurge of collective labour action did not lead to the formation of trade unions.

The National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW), which had officially been launched in 1970, remained dormant, existing mostly in official pronunciations of the exiled Swapo leadership.

Most workers in Namibia were not organised, although reportedly remnants of underground NUNW structures did function.

However, mobilisation in the mid-1980s gave rise to a powerful (though eventually rather short-lived) labour movement.

The new movement was initiated not by workers in the mining or manufacturing industries, but by community activists and the Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN), who played a key role in social movement politics at the time.

In late 1984, community organisers, led by social workers Rosa Namises and Lindi Kazombaue, initiated the Workers’ Action Committee (WAC).

Namises and Kazombaue were working with the social welfare unit of the Roman Catholic Church in Windhoek, where they had found themselves inundated by workers complaining about problems in the workplace.

Grievances included low wages, unfair dismissal, and no leave arrangements, as well as their broader living conditions and inadequate provision of housing and transportation.

The two organisers consulted with church and trade union activists in South Africa, whom they knew through personal connections. In a first step, they organised a workshop with a South African activist who was experienced in trade unionism to discuss how best to address the workers’ plight.

This meeting took place in early 1985 and was attended by almost 100 people.
From that point, the WAC was founded with the original aim to collect information and educate workers about their rights.

The activists regarded this as a community programme rather than an exercise in orthodox trade union politics.

The formation received strong backing about a year later when many of the Namibian political prisoners on Robben Island were released and returned to Namibia.

In cooperation with the Swapo Youth League, they set up a workers’ steering committee in early 1986, which worked toward the establishment of a trade union movement.

The first new union, Namibian Food and Allied Workers Union was established in September 1986.

Two months later, the Mineworkers Union of Namibia (MUN) followed, and the NUNW was reconstituted in April 1987.

The community focus of the labour-organising activities soon merged with – if it was not overtaken by – a nationalist approach.

When about 10 000 workers turned out for a massive May Day rally in 1987, the nationalist politics of the ‘Robben Islanders’ had become central to the unions.

Ben Ulenga, a released Robben Island prisoner, was the secretary general of the MUN and a key player in the formation of the new unions.

He emphasised the nationalist orientation of the new unions, saying “the Namibian workers were born with colonialism and the resolution of their problems could come about with the resolution of the colonial problem”.

AFTER INDEPENDENCE

While Ulenga and his comrades conceded that the workers’ struggle would have to go on beyond independence, mobilisation quickly declined after the South African withdrawal was completed in 1990.

This came as part of the general demise of formerly vibrant social movement politics that had played a central role during the final years of the liberation struggle.

Tensions between Swapo, which now became the ruling party, and the organisations of workers, students, and women were an important factor behind this development.

Co-optation further weakened the labour movement as leading activists were recruited into senior positions in politics and the civil service.

Ulenga, for instance, served as a deputy minister and ambassador before he eventually resigned from Swapo in 1998 and cofounded a new opposition party, the Congress of Democrats (COD).

Dwindling financial support was also important, since international donors now channelled their funds to support the new government.

These were among the significant reasons behind the faltering of the NUNW trade unions in the years after independence.

– Heike Becker is an anthropologist whose works include ‘Namibian Women’s Movement 1980 to 1992: From Anti-Colonial Resistance to Reconstruction’.

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