One Namibia, One Nation? The Case Of The Caprivi Revisited

AUGUST 2 2009 marks a decade since a failed secessionist rebellion in the Caprivi caused havoc.

The spectre was over within a few days, during which the security organs of the state, in a heavy-handed clampdown on those suspected to have sympathies with the rebels, regained control. But the country was bruised: for the first time since its Independence a state of emergency and curfew had been declared. When law and order was restored, 14 people were reported to have lost their lives. The shock, outrage and anger by both political office bearers and the wider public over this inconceivable challenge to the national and territorial integrity of Namibia ebbed away only after months. Ten years later, there seems to exist a general amnesia on what happened and a disinterest in the fate of those since then incarcerated for a high treason trial which drags on seemingly endlessly. Invisibly, the ghosts are haunting a nation, beyond whose surface simmers the inability to deal with such a challenge in a way, which would seek to address if not to eradicate the root causes. Instead, Namibia holds the almost unnoticed sad record of the longest serving political prisoners in SADC, locked away without conviction of any crime. In the meantime as many of them have died in custody as the number killed during the rebel attacks.As Amnesty International observed in a damning report already in 2003, at least 70 of the accused qualify as prisoners of conscience, arrested because of ‘their actual or perceived non-violent support for the political opposition in the region, their ethnic identity or their membership of certain organisations.’ In a press release it called on the Namibian authorities ‘to immediately and unconditionally release all prisoners of conscience and ensure that the remaining defendants are tried in a fair manner’. Since then for the more than 100 still awaiting a verdict, the ordeal is far from over. What are the reasons for such harsh and unforgiving treatment? The almost 30 years of organised liberation struggle for Namibia’s Independence under Swapo cultivated as an antithesis to the divide and rule of the Apartheid system the slogan of ‘One Namibia, One Nation’. With Article 2 (‘Endangering the Territorial Integrity of Namibia’) of Revolutionary Decree No. 1/77: Crimes Against the Namibian People’s Revolution, Swapo’s Central Committee adopted on September 24, 1977 an uncompromising position: ‘Any act aimed at detaching parts of Namibian territory by force or in any other manner contrary to decisions of the United Nations Organisation, decisions of the Organisation of African Unity, decisions of the Swapo movement and/or decisions of the established Namibian State shall constitute a felony.’This signalled, similar to other neighbouring countries, a commitment by the leadership to a unitary state. With Independence in 1990, ‘One Namibia, One Nation’ was constitutionally enshrined with the protection of the territorial integrity of the country while at the same time was officially supplemented by the slogan ‘Unity in Diversity’. It accepted and recognised the factual existence of historically shaped ethnic-regionally based cultural identities as much as the need for a policy of reconciliation among and between different groups and socio-economic classes within a deeply divided society. Despite the creation of these formal frameworks it might however still be too early to give a valid answer to the question as to what extent the two potentially conflicting paradigms can be in harmonised with the other in everyday social and political realities. The Caprivi separatist movement was as a challenge, which has been met with such a degree of uncompromising execution of state power, that it seems still a long way until deviating views touching on fundamental principles might be tolerated within the public sphere. The secessionist coup attempt was indeed high treason and the acts of violence were beyond any doubt serious crimes. But the pursuance of justice is not necessarily identical with the fiercest punishment of suspected perpetrators, who are supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Even more so, if they are accused and punished for sharing a common political desire but have committed no other criminal acts. The character of a nation-state formula based on exclusivity draws increasingly more internalised as well as external borderlines with the tendency not to integrate but to separate. The subsequent process of deterioration is not an encouraging sign concerning the learning abilities of post-colonial systems of power and rule. Their structures, still reflecting a heritage for which the colonial foreign rule has to bear considerable responsibility, show also in the case of Namibia once more the limits to an imposed concept of nation building, both from the point of view of centralised state authorities and from the perspective on the ground. In an interview in June 1996, the late Cedric Mutabelezi, coming from the Caprivi region and then serving as the curator of anthropology at the National Museum of Namibia in Windhoek, gave the following local perspective: ‘The people in Caprivi were originally from Zambia but now they are Namibians. Many such people exist and they will not care about nationalism except that they have to care about the laws of the country in which they live. As for the people in pure rural areas, nationalism is not of a big concern since there usually is no contact with others. They care more about the region in which they are living.’ Such locally rooted identity expresses in the first place, that the people want to live in peace. But the indifference towards a nation state concept might offer a fertile ground for agitation, manipulation and ultimately mobilisation among those, who at best feel neglected by the remote central authorities and their local state agencies, and at worst threatened and under siege. This is no justification for the separatist aims of the Caprivi Liberation Movement (CLM) and the devastating results of the attacks undertaken by its armed wing. But it should offer enough reason to explore further what contributing factors ultimately supported the rebel initiative. As in many other cases, the growing concerns over securing a living and the feeling of marginalisation confronted with the influx of people from other neighbouring regions might certainly have been factors which could easily have been exploited by those with ulterior motives. Ironically, only a few weeks prior to the attack on Katima Mulilo, an empirical survey on Namibia’s political culture produced the highest degree of identification with the executive organs of the state among the respondents in the Caprivi. The exceptional score of a mean 72.3% in the confidence and trust index (compared to a national average of 59.6%), ‘viewed all institutions, with the exception of the opposition parties, in a very positive light’, as the authors of a book chapter on Namibia’s emerging culture summarised in 2000. This is even more so remarkable, since the Caprivi region then ranked with a Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.517 lowest among all 13 regions in Namibia (which had an average HDI of 0.648).The perceived threat among the local residents in the East Caprivi coming from the central authorities and their representatives was a fertile breeding ground open for manipulation and exploitation. By reducing the matter to a mere issue of maintaining law and order, consolidating its own political control over the state organs and institutions and resorting to rigorous punishment of the suspected perpetrators, the government failed to explore the deeper root causes from a truly nation building perspective. The decision to ban, on 1 September 2006, the United Democratic Party (UDP), which as political organisation in the East Caprivi promoted self-rule, shows the tendency to seek elimination of political challenges through declaring them illegal. In other democracies, political wings of secessionist regional movements (even those operating with militant wings executing violence) are allowed to fully participate in the political contestation of votes as long as the political party itself is not involved in any criminal acts violating the laws. This is an approach, which as some of the examples show, ultimately manages to integrate.In marked contrast to the Namibian authorities, the independent public intellectual Alexactus Kaure courageously opinionated in The Namibian on 20 February 2009 a more enlightened view: ‘Shouldn’t we perhaps cast a long gaze beyond the law to argue that this is not a legal but a political problem although it has been ignored in mainstream philosophical and political discourse in Namibia?’ he suggests. Referring to the forthcoming parliamentary and presidential elections towards the end of this year, he argues further, ‘this might be an opportune moment for President Pohamba to make that hard decision by granting a pardon to these men who, after all, have spent years in jail without a conviction’. As he concedes, this might be an unpopular decision unlikely to happen, even though he received of lately some unexpected moderate indirect support from the Swapo Youth League’s Secretary Elijah Ngurare. In a ‘Letter from the Caprivi Region’ published in New Era (17 July 2009), he suggested – though somewhat reluctantly and undecided if and to what extent this should indeed be implemented – that, ‘the crime of secession is intolerable, but the discussion for seeking remedy should be encouraged’. Seemingly afraid of his own courage, he hastens to continue blaming the secessionist elements and neighbouring Botswana for not showing sufficient remorse to justify a forgiving attitude. Unfortunately it seems likely that appeals for seeking a political solution instead of a fierce legal persecution of all suspected to sympathise with Caprivian autonomy are likely to fall on deaf ears. The article none the less ends with sharing the advice by Thandika Mkandawire. As this internationally renowned African scholar argued (with no direct reference but a lot of relevance to the Caprivi case) in an essay on African rebel movements in ‘The Journal of Modern African Studies’ in 2002: ‘incoherent as the rebels’ objectives may sound, they reflect a serious urban malaise that should not be lightly dismissed by reducing the members of these movements to simple criminals. These rebels … are unlikely to attract analyses that seek to understand the sources of their grievances. The temptation is to dismiss their political motivations. But we must not lose sight of the political factors behind such conflicts. The view that these conflicts are merely driven by greed is not only cynical, but can only lead to fatal political blindness.’ * Dr. Henning Melber is Executive Director of The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala/Sweden. He has been the Director of The Namibian Economic Policy research Unit (Nepru) between 1992 and 2000.This text is dedicated to the memory of Hoster Bebi (first born to the Mafwe Chief Boniface Bebi Mamili) and Aldenia Chaka. Both from the Caprivi region, they lost their young lives travelling from Windhoek back home in 2000 and 2007 respectively while employed at Nepru as loyal colleagues and true Namibians.