No Place For Tribe

WE firstly refer to the article ‘A square peg in a round hole? Evaluating the Namibian Afrikaner’ by Yanna Erasmus in The Namibian, December 18 2009. This article was an interview with Koos Pretorius about his views on a traditional authority for Namibian Afrikaners.

The article reflects the disturbing perspectives of Pretorius and highlights again that Afrikanerdom must overcome its racial character before it could be taken seriously.It also confirms once more that Afrikanerdom does not fulfil the (Risorgimento) definition of nationalism due to its racial character; it is not a kind of nationalism but really a form of tribalism. This was expressed in particular in Afrikanerdom’s racialised standardisation of the Afrikaans language, which remains only one (unoriginal) version of this language.The other side of the story is of course that Afrikaners have a proud history of anti-imperialism. Perhaps they must return to their anti-imperialist past to be taken seriously in the nation-building project. Join the Namibian working class in their fight against imperialism. This is the place to be for Afrikaners. The Boer generals fought bravely against British imperialism. We need Afrikaners like Bram Fischer not the ultra-right views of a Koos Pretorius who belongs to the past.Pretorius is a self-appointed and unelected ‘traditional leader’ with an old racialised mentality. This is why he seeks a traditional authority for Afrikaners since these structures are undemocratic and archaic institutions of the past. We certainly are in danger of opening up the Pandora’s box of tribalism even further in this country.The Coloured tribalism of Marson Sharpley (‘The marginalization of Namibia’s Coloureds’, New Era, December 18 2009) is no less lamentable. As Namibians we do not have to accept these tribal identities that were assigned to people by colonialism-apartheid. We have the choice to focus on self-defined and progressive identities, e.g. being a humanist, being a left-wing teacher, being a sport lover, etc. Choices mean mental liberation. If other Namibians have gotten lost in tribal identities it does not mean that the rest of us should as well. Let us rather try to teach about the dangers of tribalism. Let Rwanda serve as a warning. Namibians should reach for higher moral values of unity and common humanity.Besides the shallowness and divisiveness of Sharpley’s Christian fundamentalism, his uncritical acceptance of ‘mixed-race’ should also be challenged. The brilliant biologist, Richard Dawkins, in his latest book, ‘The Greatest Show on Earth – The Evidence for Evolution’ (2009), makes the point that heredity actually leads to increasing variation amongst all humans. Like the human genome project, this most basic principle of heredity shows that a ‘mixed race’ or ‘pure race’ is scientifically impossible:’When you were conceived, what you received from your father was not a substance, to be mixed with what you received from your mother as if mixing blue paint and red paint to make purple. If this were really how heredity worked… we’d all be a middling average, halfway between our two parents. In that case, all variation would rapidly disappear from the population… In fact, of course, anybody can plainly see that there is no such intrinsic tendency for variation to decrease in a population’. (p.29)So, genes do not blend or mix – this contradicts the scientific principles of both heredity and evolution. On the contrary, the natural tendency is for heredity to lead to variation amongst the whole of humanity. Let us stop being victims of the old racist pre-scientific thinking of colonialism-apartheid that wanted to carve reality up into neat categories which do not exist.The excellent article by Alexactus Kaure entitled ‘The politics of tribe and primordial loyalties’ (The Namibian, December 22 2009), emphasised the reality of tribe-based politics in the country, including the political base of Swapo.We simply wish to add that the existence of the tribal authorities is the real foundation of the tribe-based political parties in Namibia. As long as these native authorities exist, political parties in this country would maintain their tribal identities. Nation-building would stay a pipe dream.The fact is that Swapo needs the native authorities to discipline rural people in the context of the economic decline of these areas. The tribal structures counter any qualitative change in the status quo. Tribalism prevents real transformation.In this regard, a most dangerous trend in particularly the police service is to only appoint Oshiwambo-speakers to top positions. This undoubtedly lays the foundation for serious tribal strife and even civil war.Other African countries like Tanzania and Mozambique managed to get rid of their tribal structures. They detribalized the rural areas by taking away the power of the native authorities. We should do the same in this country.Namibia’s nation-building and deracialisation project is in serious jeopardy. Tribalism leads to a dead-end street. Phase out the tribal structures. We should rather aim to scrap the traditional authorities.S. McCarthyWalvis Bay