State funeral for Kooper

STAUNCH petitioner to the United Nations and spiritual leader of the Hoachanas community, Reverend Markus Kooper, will be given a State funeral at Heroes’ Acre in Windhoek next week.

A memorial service will be held in the Parliament Gardens on Wednesday, December 21. Kooper will be buried at the Heroes’ Acre the following day.President Hifikepunye Pohamba has conferred the status of national hero upon Kooper and directed that a State funeral be held in honour of his role in the liberation struggle of Namibia, the Ministry of Information announced on Wednesday.Kooper, who died in the Windhoek Central Hospital last Friday at the age of 87, is survived by his wife, five children and several grand and great-grand children.He was a staunch petitioner to the United Nations in the early 1960s to prevent the incorporation of the then South West Africa as a fifth province of South Africa.Kooper was born at the village of Hoachanas, 140 kilometres north-east of Mariental in the Hardap region, in 1918.He trained to be a teacher at Okahandja from 1939 to 1942 and then taught at elementary schools at Stampriet, Gochas and Hoachanas until 1946.”Reverend Kooper became one of the signatories to the secession document following a split in the Rhenish Mission Church in 1946, an event which sent shock waves throughout the country’s white communities,” the Ministry statement said.”Reverend Kooper and other secessionists joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) and he resigned from teaching and received a scholarship to attend the School of Religion in Wilbeforce in the same year.”But circumstances out of his control apparently forced him to cut his studies short and to return home at the end of 1948.”Back home he became the centrepiece of the harsh apartheid and colonial pressure that was determined since 1923 to relocate the Hoachanas community to another location.”But when the colonial regime failed to relocate the community, the 50 000 hectares of land at Hoachanas was confiscated and reduced to 14 000 hectares in a move to make their lives unbearable,” said the statement, adding that Kooper and the community were determined and committed to hold on to what they considered as their heritage.”Kooper was ordained as a Deacon in 1954 and he became an elder in the AME Church, which was viewed as a Communist church by the white community and a threat to their own existence.”They (white community) saw the forcible removal of Kooper from Hoachanas as the only way to rid the community of the communist influence.”The community was issued with temporary residence permits in 1952 on the pretext that the former German colonial agreement only gave Hoachanas to them as a temporary residence.”Reverend Kooper was told that the German agreement did not grant him the right to live at Hoachanas.He was summoned to appear in the Windhoek High Court to advance reasons to the administrator why he should not be removed from Hoachanas, since he was living there illegally.”He allegedly refused to appear in the High Court and instead collected all the permanent residence permits from the community between 1952 and 1958 and sent them back to the administrator.He was removed at gunpoint with his wife and children from Hoachanas in 1959 and dumped some 300 kilometres from Keetmanshoop.Towards the end of 1959, Kooper left his family and returned to Hoachanas, from where he escaped to Zambia via Botswana early in 1960.”In Zambia, he linked up with the Founding Father of the Nation, Dr Sam Nujoma, the late advocate Jariretundu Kozonguizi, Dr Mburumba Kerina, Speaker of the National Assembly Dr Theo-Ben Gurirab, former Prime Minister Hage Geingob and others to petition the United Nations on the future of South West Africa/Namibia,” the Ministry statement said.Kooper returned to Namibia in 1976 after 16 years as a petitioner to the United Nations and established the AME Private Community School at Hoachanas.He was amongst the 41 men arrested and imprisoned for six months for refusing to register for the ethnic-based census by the Transitional Government in 1981.The late Reverend Kooper served on the Swapo Elders Council and received several awards from the AME Church for relentless sacrifices and achievements in the church.Kooper will be buried at the Heroes’ Acre the following day.President Hifikepunye Pohamba has conferred the status of national hero upon Kooper and directed that a State funeral be held in honour of his role in the liberation struggle of Namibia, the Ministry of Information announced on Wednesday.Kooper, who died in the Windhoek Central Hospital last Friday at the age of 87, is survived by his wife, five children and several grand and great-grand children.He was a staunch petitioner to the United Nations in the early 1960s to prevent the incorporation of the then South West Africa as a fifth province of South Africa.Kooper was born at the village of Hoachanas, 140 kilometres north-east of Mariental in the Hardap region, in 1918.He trained to be a teacher at Okahandja from 1939 to 1942 and then taught at elementary schools at Stampriet, Gochas and Hoachanas until 1946.”Reverend Kooper became one of the signatories to the secession document following a split in the Rhenish Mission Church in 1946, an event which sent shock waves throughout the country’s white communities,” the Ministry statement said.”Reverend Kooper and other secessionists joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) and he resigned from teaching and received a scholarship to attend the School of Religion in Wilbeforce in the same year.”But circumstances out of his control apparently forced him to cut his studies short and to return home at the end of 1948.”Back home he became the centrepiece of the harsh apartheid and colonial pressure that was determined since 1923 to relocate the Hoachanas community to another location.”But when the colonial regime failed to relocate the community, the 50 000 hectares of land at Hoachanas was confiscated and reduced to 14 000 hectares in a move to make their lives unbearable,” said the statement, adding that Kooper and the community were determined and committed to hold on to what they considered as their heritage.”Kooper was ordained as a Deacon in 1954 and he became an elder in the AME Church, which was viewed as a Communist church by the white community and a threat to their own existence.”They (white community) saw the forcible removal of Kooper from Hoachanas as the only way to rid the community of the communist influence.”The community was issued with temporary residence permits in 1952 on the pretext that the former German colonial agreement only gave Hoachanas to them as a temporary residence.”Reverend Kooper was told that the German agreement did not grant him the right to live at Hoachanas.He was summoned to appear in the Windhoek High Court to advance reasons to the administrator why he should not be removed from Hoachanas, since he was living there illegally.”He allegedly refused to appear in the High Court and instead collected all the permanent residence permits from the community between 1952 and 1958 and sent them back to the administrator.He was removed at gunpoint with his wife and children from Hoachanas in 1959 and dumped some 300 kilometres from Keetmanshoop.Towards the end of 1959, Kooper left his family and returned to Hoachanas, from where he escaped to Zambia via Botswana early in 1960.”In Zambia, he linked up with the Founding Father of the Nation, Dr Sam Nujoma, the late advocate Jariretundu Kozonguizi, Dr Mburumba Kerina, Speaker of the National Assembly Dr Theo-Ben Gurirab, former Prime Minister Hage Geingob and others to petition the United Nations on the future of South West Africa/Namibia,” the Ministry statement said.Kooper returned to Namibia in 1976 after 16 years as a petitioner to the United Nations and established the AME Private Community School at Hoachanas.He was amongst the 41 men arrested and imprisoned for six months for refusing to register for the ethnic-based census by the Transitional Government in 1981.The late Reverend Kooper served on the Swapo Elders Coun
cil and received several awards from the AME Church for relentless sacrifices and achievements in the church.