PAUL SHIPALE
Speaking at the launch of former President Hifikepunye Pohamba’s Autobiography titled ‘The footprints of Hifikepunye Pohamba – Ondjila Eyi A Enda,’ Struggle Veteran Uncle Ben Amathila, a long-time friend and Comrade-in-Arms of former President Pohamba, said ‘through the book, Pohamba tells this story as he experienced it, and even more, as he was part of shaping it’.
“To put the story in perspective, he starts with his family history as far as remembered in Oukwanyama and Oukwangali, and with his grandfather Hamukoto fighting together with King Mandume against Portuguese and British colonists. He tells us his story with characteristic honesty. It is a massive contribution to African historiography,” Amathila said.
Following the title of this article, I beg the indulgence of the readers to allow me not only to look, per se, at the review of the autobiography of former President Pohamba but also to see if such autobiography is part of the African Pioneer Historiography or it simply belongs to what others call ‘Patriotic History’ and ‘Memory Politics’.
Struggle veteran Ben Amathila said, “The road to independence was not a walk in the park. This book is for every Namibian and all Africans, especially young ones and the born-frees. They have the right to complain about how they experience Namibia or Africa today, but they also have the right to know how we as a nation got our freedom and independence of our countries where our youth are not locked up for speaking out against oppression,” he said.
From the onset, I posit that the narrator’s autobiography adds to the African and Namibian historical and biographical texts about the human struggle against oppression. André du Pisani talked about memory politics in a review of the autobiography of the Founding President titled; ‘Where Others Wavered; The Autobiography of Sam Nujoma; My Life in SWAPO and my participation in the liberation struggle of Namibia’.
“The standard assumption is that memory is a source of knowledge about the past. For proponents of this view, the causal links between personal experience and present memories form a bridge to the past. The promise of this view seems great, for there are few other comparable roads to the past. Unfortunately, to regard memory as a source of knowledge is risky. Memories occur in the present, just like archival and other historical documents, and genuine memory is often indistinguishable from mistaken ones or from mere imaginings”, du Pisani wrote.
“A critical reading of ‘Where Others Wavered; The Autobiography of Sam Nujoma; My Life in SWAPO and my participation in the liberation struggle of Namibia’, shows that although memory is an unreliable source of knowledge about the past, its role in self-identity is unquestionable.
What makes a person the same person through life is the accumulated memories he/she carries with him/her. When these are lost, he/she ceases to be that person and becomes someone else” du Pisani added.
du Pisani argues that ‘Where Others Wavered’ signifies a partial act of political recall in the present. At one level, it is an attempt to reclaim and negotiate the past and to instill dignity, hope and human agency despite the vicissitudes of exile life and the humiliation and brutality endured at the hands of the former apartheid regime. On a more philosophical plane, ‘Where Others Wavered’, mirrors Wittgenstein’s assertion that the philosopher’s work “consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose”.
According to du Pisani, in autobiographies where the past is chronicled, memory is given pride of place. In this sense, autobiographies are ‘memory journals’ in their own right. Memory, in the words of Kößler, “is central to the image persons as well as societies construct of them-selves” du Pisani added.
On the other hand, according to Kornelia Kończal & A. Dirk Moses, in their study on “Patriotic History and the (Re)Nationalization of Memory,” “patriotic histories can revolve around both affirmative interpretations of the past and celebration of national achievements. They can also entail explicitly denialist stances against acknowledging responsibility for past atrocities, even to the extent of celebrating perpetrators,” they said.
Kornelia Kończal & A. Dirk Moses posit that “whereas in some cases ‘patriotic history’ takes the shape of a coherent doctrine, in others it remains limited to loosely connected narratives. As such, by disregarding or distorting historical evidence, ‘patriotic history’ promotes mythified, monumental, and moralistic interpretations of the past that posit partisan and authoritarian essentialisms and exceptionalisms” Kornelia Kończal & A. Dirk Moses said. “actual socio-political uses of history remain strikingly nation-centred and one-dimensional” they added.
Contrary to the above views, I argue here that the autobiography of former President Pohamba is an integral part of the African Pioneer Historiography. Indeed, although the narrator is not the first Namibian to have written a memoir of the Namibian liberation struggle, his book has a special importance as the second President of SWAPO Party and of the Republic of Namibia, following in the footsteps of the Founding President Sam Nujoma. This gives his book a special authority as a chronicle of remembrances for particular purposes.
The book is co-written by Prof. Dr Ellen Ndeshi Namhila, published by the Hifikepunye Pohamba Foundation and was printed by John Meinert Printing. It was edited by former President Pohamba’s son, Tulongeni Tutungeni Tudanaukeni Tuhafeni Pohamba and Glenda Younge, with proofreading by Megan Mance and the cover design by Sam van Straaten. The autobiography is now one of the longest memoirs in print by a Namibian (inclusive of the index and appendices, it runs over 428 pages, just shorts of Where Others Wavered which has 476 pages).
Primarily based on the narrator’s own memory, it also draws upon other accounts of the events it describes and provides the much needed information to fill the gap and update the earlier published autobiography of the Founding President and the SWAPO book ‘To Be Born a Nation’. The book begins with vivid accounts of the early days of the narrator’s life. Their ancestors came from Ukwangali in Okavango. Thus, right from the early chapters, the book focuses on the narrator and his family, and for that reason these chapters make for arresting/interesting reading. In them the reader encounters the narrator’s paternal grandmother, Naangume ya Heita ya Hashipala who lived in the neighbourhood of her son Pohamba.
The reader also learns about the narrator’s grandfather who was popularly known as Hamukoto wa Kapa in the Oukwanyama Kingdom and beyond. The narrator extensively talked about his grandfather Hamukoto whose story cannot be fully understood without the knowledge of the history of the Oukwanyama royal family, in particular that of prince Kapa and King Mandume. “Hamukoto was a son of Haileka ya Hamunwe, also a prince from the Evale Kingdom, and Nakandoba, a woman from the Oukwangali Kingdom,” he said.
In the words of the narrator; “It has been told, over the generations, that the Oukwanyama army captured Nakandoba, her baby son, several other people and cattle along the Kavango River. They were taken, as per tradition, to the King of Oukwanyama, who decided on which cattle and eenghwatwe he wished to retain at his palace and which ones he distributed to his warriors and senior counsellors. My great grandmother, Nakandoba and her son, Hamunyela were chosen by the king to remain in his palace. It is yet to be established who the King of Oukwanyama was at the time of Nakandoba’s capture”.
There is also a short descriptive scene or vignette of the narrator’s maternal background which can be traced back to Oukwangali. His mother, Kaupumote, is a daughter of Nghituwamata ya Shanghala and Ndeeshuuda ya Shanghala. Nghituwamata ya Shanghala, the narrator’s mother’s father and Ndeeshuuda ya Shanghala the narrator’s mother’s mother, got married and from this union, the narrator’s mother, Kaupumote Mukwanekamba ya Nghituwamata was born. But the loss of his mother at an early age deprived the narrator of the opportunity to gain a deeper knowledge of his maternal family’s heritage.
The reader also learns that the narrator’s father first had three wives, Mulongeni ya Wezulu, Kaupumote ya Nghituwamata and Nadula ya Shafokutja and by 1948 he had about seven wives. In total they were nine children from his father namely, Ndeshimona sha Pohamba, Ndeulukila ya Pohamba, Ndeutalala ya Pohamba, Nghifinwa ya Pohamba, Hamukoto ya Pohamba, the narrator himself, Ngehanghoshi ya Pohamba, Shikeukeni sha Pohamba and Vahaleni ya Pohamba. His brother Hamukoto ya Pohamba died during the liberation struggle in exile.
To me, the very first chapters are the best summary not only of the book but also of the person himself. The narrator writes in chapter 2 about his childhood saying that “Our house was forever full of people who came to stay or just to visit. My father was a handsome man, tall and well-built, and very principled and orderly. He took no nonsense, yet he attracted people to him… My homestead is full of people too. Many of my children and other relatives all live with me, with their children and their children’s children. My house is teeming with life. Caring for other people was part of my childhood socialisation; it is something that runs in my blood,” the narrator said.
The narrator grew up as a herd boy looking after his parents’ livestock. “At first, I herded goats and cattle with my elder sister and, as I grew older, with my brothers,” the narrator said. “Another important aspect of my childhood was hunting… We started hunting when we were young… Looking after the cattle and becoming a cattle herder was a career my father had chosen for me,” he added.
“Our daily work at ohambo was taking the cattle out to graze in the forest every morning and returning with them every evening, making sure that none went missing. We were ready to protect our cattle at all times against wild animals that may attack them.” We searched the area for the best pasture and dug wells to secure water for cattle… Apart from our primary responsibility toward our cattle, we participated in all the household chores: hoeing, sowing, weeding, harvesting, collecting water, building and maintaining the fence, hunting and, in some cases, pounding mahangu,” the narrator recounted.
I fully concur that the above experiences prepare young men and teach them to become responsible adults later in life as the narrator himself said “These experiences prepared boys for other hardships in life and taught them to be smart and to face challenges.” Little wonder the narrator became the second President of the SWAPO Party and of the Republic of Namibia, following in the footsteps of Founding President Nujoma. Both leaders were cattle herders like the biblical King David who was a shepherd and became king.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer and this newspaper but solely my personal views as a citizen.
