No street name for Jonker Afrikaner?

WE ARE in full agreement that it is necessary to get rid of all colonial street names and statues in the country. Otto von Bismarck, for example, gave the go-ahead for the first German troops to be sent to Lüderitz, and was of course the chairperson of the monstrous Berlin Conference that carved up Africa.

However, it is relevant to ask what criteria are being used to effect street naming in Namibia. The renaming of Bach Street to Dr Kuaima Riruako Street in Windhoek, for instance, did not make any sense, because Bach was not a coloniser. Thus, Namibians must have a forthright dialogue about which names should be prioritised in order not to continue to distort the history of our country.

Many Namibians confuse Jonker Afrikaner (father) and Jan Jonker Afrikaner (son). This is completely unacceptable, as Jonker Afrikaner was not only the founder of Windhoek, but also the true founding ‘father’ (person) of modern-day Namibia.

Yet, there is not a single street named after him in the capital. On this matter, the white colonial regime and the Swapo regime conspired to maintain the silence about the most important figure of the (original/brown) Afrikaners.

The German colonial regime pretended that they brought civilisation to the country and founded Windhoek as a city. However, they cannot deny that Jonker named Windhoek after his beautiful farm, Wintershoek, in the mountains of the Western Cape, which he had to flee from due to Dutch colonialism.

The white Afrikaners would similarly never admit that they were merely bad imitations of the (original) Afrikaners, who were revolutionaries and brave anti-colonial fighters long before the idea of a white Afrikaner group, and a white Afrikaans language, existed. The slaves of the Cape – including the brown Afrikaners – were undoubtedly the originators of the Afrikaans language.

Some Swapo leaders are hostile to Jonker because of an old grudge about him having confiscated cattle from the Ndonga-speaking group, for which they have still not forgiven him after more than a century.

A figure such as Jonker also dispels the myth that Sam Nujoma is the founding ‘father’ of the Namibian nation, as Jonker engaged in nation-building more than a century before the fake Swapo revolutionaries, who cannot provide the name of a single white soldier whom they killed on the battlefield.

It is also noteworthy that Swapo’s references to Robben Island prisoners pretend that the Ya Toivo group were the first Namibians in that prison, when in fact the (original) Afrikaners were imprisoned there in the late 1800s already. So much for all the lies and falsehoods! Swapo ex-Robben Islanders and their descendants are beneficiaries of resettlement farms, fishing quotas, scholarships for their children, and many more.

Why not the same for the descendants of the brown Afrikaners?

Therefore, not only should Jonker have a huge statue in front of the Windhoek municipality, that anti-colonial fighter should rightly be regarded as the actual founding person of Namibia. A street name would not be enough.

Radical Teachers

Windhoek

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