The 1988 Student Uprising Turns 30

LAST WEEK, continent Africa paused to memorialise the Day of the African Child to honour the 1976 student uprising in South Africa.

It is also a day to raise awareness about the conditions of children in Africa.

Apartheid is what drove these young black South Africans into the streets of Soweto and the surrounding black townships to demand liberating education, decolonisation and freedom.

Twelve years after the Soweto uprising, South West Africa-Namibia would experience a similar fire of the generation. That’s 30 years ago when the class of 1988, under the stewardship of the Namibia National Students’ Organisation (Nanso), directly confronted the colonial administration.

Founded in 1984, Nanso became a formidable thorn in the flesh of the colonial authority as the movement mobilised and organised Namibian students and the general populace against colonialism, foreign domination and the repressive education system.

In columns, students marched throughout Namibia. They sang, danced and toyi-toyed for freedom. They cried and shouted “an injury to one is an injury to all,” and “power is ours.”

In defiance, they battled soldiers, police, the notorious Koevoets and security forces in the streets throughout Namibian towns.

The Ponhofi School in the north became the key rallying point as students demanded the demilitarisation of education and the removal of military bases from schools and the implementation of the UN Resolution 435.

South Africa’s occupation army, the local South West Africa Territorial Force (SWATF), and Koevoet turned education for blacks into a spectre of terror and violence, especially in war zone areas, constantly detaining, torturing and killing students and teachers.

The occupying regime of South Africa not only built military bases on or near schoolgrounds in order to shield themselves from being attacked by the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia – Plan (It was also done to intimidate and instil fear in the students and teachers) but also embedded soldiers to teach or serve as education officials in the black schools or education systems.

Dateline (1988) reported that between 1987 and 1988 more than a dozen schools were destroyed by arson fires or bomb blasts that were widely attributed to the army in retaliation for students’ anti-occupation campaign. At some schools, students were killed or severely wounded after soldiers open fire at their rooms/hostels in retaliation for attacks by the Plan combatants.

It also happened that at schools where the army bases were established, school residents – students, teachers and workers – were caught up in the crossfire between the army and Plan combatants.

That is exactly what happened at Ponhofi in Ohangwena region when two pupils were killed, and seven others injured by the soldiers during an attack on their base by Plan combatants.

In Kavango West, a teacher was beaten to death by the notorious Koevoet before the eyes of his pupils; two pupils from Kandjimi Murangi Secondary School also lost their lives in the crossfire between the army and the Plan combatants in 1984 and 1985, respectively.

In tangible ways, the June 1988 student uprising profoundly changed the socio-political landscape of Namibia. For the first time in the history of the national liberation struggle, Namibian students – tertiary and secondary – openly challenged the colonial regime and everything it stood for. Parents, workers’ unions, teachers and churches also were on the side of the schoolchildren.

The boycotts spread like a wild fire throughout schools – elementary and secondary, including the former academy and colleges of education – in war zone and non-war zone areas.

In Windhoek-Katutura, theirs fell on 6 June when students and teachers were attacked by police and Koevoet contingents armed with whips, clubs, tear gas and rubber bullets. Dateline (1988) reports indicate that eight people were severely injured while about 40 children and adults were arrested, including some Nanso national leaders, CCN and workers’ union activists.

In Kavango where I was as a student at the Rundu Senior Secondary School (RSSS), ours came on 13 June. Due to a heavy military presence, it was tough to campaign for Swapo openly in the Kavango region. But with our boycott that code was broken. By the time the strike was dispersed by Koevoet and police, 26 pupils from Rundu Senior and Rundu Junior had been arrested. Many were injured and others went into hiding or exile.

The 1988 uprising took place at a time when Namibia was tightly in the grip of apartheid. Subsequently, when in November 1988 the Resolution 435 failed to be implemented, a massive number of students skipped the border into exile to join the liberation movement.

Those who stayed behind bravely took on the regime and continued with the cause to organise and rally the Namibian people behind the noble cause of liberation. Viva the class of 1988!

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