Toivo ya Toivo …gave meaning to the word icon

• GRAHAM HOPWOODIN AN age when the word icon has almost been emptied of meaning due to its overuse, Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, who has died at the age of 92, reminds us of what a true modern icon should be: a person worthy of great respect due to his wisdom, courage and dignity.

Having been instrumental in the founding phases of Swapo and its predecessors, he spent 16 years on Robben Island after being convicted under South Africa’s notorious anti-terrorism law. He went on to become Swapo’s secretary general, and then held the portfolios of mines and energy, labour, and prisons and correctional services after independence.

Ya Toivo was born on 22 August 1924 at Omangundu in the Oshikoto region. He was the secondborn in a family of seven. Like many young boys growing up in the former Ovamboland, he spent much of his childhood looking after his family’s cattle. Access to formal education was limited, although he attended classes at the Onayena church school.

At the age of 15, he started attending the Ongwediva Vocational Training School, where he developed his carpentry skills. In 1942, during World War II, he volunteered to join the Union of South Africa’s army.

He was given the rank of corporal, and served in South Africa and in Namibia. After his discharge from the military, he travelled to Kalkfeld, where he undertook work on Farm Ombona as a contract labourer.

At the age of 20, he decided to go back to school to learn English, and enrolled at St Mary’s Mission School at Odibo. At first, he completed Standard Six before going on to obtain a teaching diploma in 1950. Two teaching stints followed at St Cuthbert’s School at Onamutayi (1950) and then back at Odibo (1951).

Later in 1951, Ya Toivo left to work as a contract labourer in South Africa at a manganese mine before he arrived in Cape Town, where he found employment as a police officer on South Africa’s railways. Although he loved wearing the uniform, he disliked the night shifts and resigned as a result – eventually getting a job in a furniture shop – where he worked from 1954 until his deportation from South Africa in 1958.

Ya Toivo became involved in Cape Town’s political scene from 1954 onwards, taking his Namibian comrades along to gatherings where they exchanged views and discussed strategy with members of South Africa’s Congress of Democrats and the African National Congress.

Inspired by the level of political mobilisation against apartheid in South Africa, he set up the Ovamboland People’s Congress (OPC) consisting of Namibian workers and students in Cape Town. Although the OPC’s initial aim was to end the contract labour system, it was quickly realised their overall goal should be independence for South West Africa.

In 1958, Ya Toivo smuggled a tape protesting against the migrant labour system and the South African occupation of Namibia inside a copy of ‘Treasure Island’ to Mburumba Kerina at the United Nations. The South Africans traced the tape to its source, and Ya Toivo was expelled from South Africa.

On his enforced return to Ovamboland, he was arrested and detained at Ondonga chief Eino Kambonde’s palace in Okaloko for several months. Once free again, Ya Toivo became active in OPC’s successor organisations – the Ovamboland People’s Organisation, and from 1960, the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo).

He served as Swapo regional secretary in Ovamboland until his arrest in 1966. Ya Toivo established a shop at Oluno, but spent much of his time mobilising people across Ovamboland, despite harassment from the police and traditional leaders.

In 1965, Ya Toivo met the first fighters of the SWA Liberation Army (later to become the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia) inside Namibia. Just two weeks after the armed struggle officially commenced on 26 August 1966, he was arrested and detained. He was taken to South Africa, kept in solitary confinement and tortured.

Ya Toivo and 36 fellow Namibians were charged under the Terrorism Act of 1967. On 9 February 1968, the Pretoria Supreme Court sentenced Ya Toivo to 20 years in prison.

His speech from the dock made international headlines, became an inspirational document for those opposing South African rule in Namibia, and a classic of anti-colonial literature. Ya Toivo and his co-accused were sent to Robben Island. He refused to recognise the authority of the South African government, and demanded that the Namibian prisoners serve their sentences in their own country.

Due to his continued defiance, which included at one point punching a warder who was seeking to humiliate him, he was placed in solitary confinement for over a year. He was then kept separate from other Namibians, and served his sentence alongside the ‘Mandela Group’ of prisoners – becoming firm comrades with the likes of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and Ahmed Kathrada.

In the early 1980s in an attempt to ease mounting international pressure over the occupation of Namibia, the South African government decided to release the Namibian detainees on Robben Island. Ya Toivo was released on 1 March 1984 after serving 16 years of his 20-year sentence. Following a brief stay in Namibia, during which Andreas Shipanga, acting for the ‘interim government’, tried in vain to persuade him to join an ‘internal settlement’, he left for exile.

On his arrival in Lusaka, he met Sam Nujoma for the first time, even though the two had been Swapo figureheads for over 20 years. After his arrival in exile, Ya Toivo was appointed to the Swapo politburo and central committee, and became Swapo secretary general.

At independence, Ya Toivo became minister of mines and energy, and was switched in 1999 to the labour portfolio. Three years later, at the age of 78, he was moved to the Ministry of Prisons and Correctional Services. He retired as a minister and MP when the 2000-05 National Assembly wound up its business in early 2005.

He subsequently became involved in charitable work – serving as patron of the Namibia Red Cross Society, and supporting other former Robben Island prisoners through a veterans’ trust.

He leaves behind his wife of 27 years, Vicki Erenstein-Ya Toivo, his twin daughters Mutaleni and Nashikoto, and two adopted sons, Philemon and Isaack.

On 15 March 2005, he delivered his farewell speech in the National Assembly. He urged his fellow MPs to act as “models of public and private conduct to your fellow citizens, particularly the youth”, and added that there was no room in public service for “people who use their positions to enrich themselves”.

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