Paul T. Shipale
There is a new trend in post-colonial Namibia which inspires and propels the publishing of political autobiographies and memoirs by theologians, ex-combatants, politicians, journalists, public servants etc.
Indeed, currently in vogue is the re-writing of the dead and forgotten by either their friends or children. The biography of the late Bishop Peter Tanyengenge Kalangula titled: ‘A Namibian of Stature’, authored by Nelson T. Kalangula, falls in this category as one of the recent writings that are meant to immortalise some people and indicate a growing interest in re-membering the ‘heroic deeds of those who are not pedestalled in the national narrative.
Connected to this deification are the narratives of the controversial former Leaders of Ovamboland, which was turned into a Bantustan or “homeland” and later a second-tier authority in South West Africa for the Ovambo people during the apartheid period. Among those leaders were Uushona yaShiimi, who was the Chief Councilor of Ovamboland from 2 October 1968 to 14 January 1972 and Fillemon Elifas Shuumbwa , Chief Councillor of Ovamboland from 1972 to 1 May 1973, who later became Chief Minister of Ovamboland as a self-rule from 1 May 1973 to 16 August 1975.
Shuumbwa was followed by Cornelius T. Ndjoba , Chief Minister from 16 August 1975 to July 1980 when Ovamboland became a second-tier authority with Ndjoba as the Chairman of the Executive Committee from July 1980 to October 1981 followed by Peter T. Kalangula , who was the Chairman of the Executive Committee from October 1981 to May 1989.
It seems the aforementioned controversial leaders continue to have currency in ‘oppositional narrative’ as all of a sudden there is interest in the ‘oppositional narrative’ which indicates a mere yearning for a reincarnated past which would subvert the present.
Significantly, Bishop Peter T. Kalangula is posthumously portrayed as ‘A Namibian of Stature’“committed to justice, with a leadership and unwavering dedication to the welfare of his community and country.” His role is also portrayed as “A Namibian bishop’s fight for independence, justice and social welfare”, as well as ‘a heroic, charismatic and a judicious figure’ than he had ever been considered in his lifetime.
Indeed, in what is termed ‘a comprehensive review’ of the biography of the late Bishop Peter T. Kalangula that was written on 2 October 2024, Ndumba J. Kamwanyah said that the book “highlights his role in Namibia’s fight for independence and his involvement in Namibia’s liberation struggle”. Kamwanyah further said the biography “explores Peter’s courage, strategic thinking, and leadership, all of which helped shape the country’s path to independence” Kamwanyah added.
The question is; is this assessment accurate or this is just another ‘revisionist and oppositional narrative’ as opposed to ‘patriotic narrative’? Given that Kamwanyah in his review says that “this biography is not just a personal story, it’s also a historical record as it highlights how religious leaders can be powerful advocates for justice and human rights and social change,” once again, I beg the indulgence of the readers to allow me, on one hand, to analyse the hermeneutical re-appraisal of the biography of Bishop Peter T. Kalangula and on the other hand, to look at the role of the African Clergy or the ‘man of the cloth’ in the liberation struggle.
It seems there is a sudden interest and surge in a revisionist historiographic approach which intends to transgress the ‘patriotic’ history’s imaginaries of politics and revolutionary tradition.
With this analysis, I intend to interrogate the evocations of a ‘neutral’ performance of power within the context of conflicting political opposition of those who want to maintain a middle ground and be noted as holding a liminal narrative position, which according to Bhabha (2012), acts to problematise and deconstruct the binary categorisation and representation of political cultures on one hand, and look at the central premise of ‘patriotic’ history and ‘oppositional’ narratives, in the hierachisation of political actors, whereby some were suppressed and written out of the national narrative, on the other hand.
The corollary of this view made some to rewrite and memorialise the performances of their ‘heroes’ so that they become recognised and re-buried at the national shrines. Thus, the national narrative is constantly becoming a site of erasure and validation of prominent figures, which are either added partly because of their personal association to the autobiographical narrators at the expense of others.
In a thesis titled “The politics of narrating the performance of power in selected Zimbabwean Autobiographical writings,” submitted in fulfilment of the requirements in respect of the Master’s Degree in English, in the Department of English in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Free State, in March 2019, Walter Kudzai Barure posits that “over the past six decades, Zimbabwean politics and its trajectories have evolved as a result of nationalism, ethnocentrism,decolonisation, neo-colonialism, neoliberalism, nativism, Afro-radicalism and globalisation. These discourses have made Zimbabwean political actors and their supporters pit against each other on grounds of patriotism, race, gender, political affiliation, ethnicity and hegemonic struggles.”
Barure’s study analyses how these varying positions spurred the (dis)continuities between patriotic and ‘oppositional’ narratives in postcolonial Zimbabwe (specifically post-2000) and explores how the schema of inclusion and exclusion manifest themselves in competing autobiographical narratives within the nation’s complex and contested political space. Furthermore, his dissertation analyses the politics of narrating the self, performativity and power in the autobiographical works of opposition leaders such as Tsvangirai, Msipa and Coltart.
The primary concern of his study was to juxtapose these narratives and highlight salient connections between self and nation, past and the present and, autobiography and postcolonial theory. Indeed, looking, in the Namibian context, at the political autobiographies of those in power and those who were side-lined by ‘patriotic history’ and reading these autobiographies side by side locates the self in historical and aesthetic contexts that illustrate the fault-lines of representation and identity.
Barure’s study mainly refers to postcolonial theories by Bhabha (hybridity, liminality and mimicry) and Mbembe’s (African modes of writing the self) which interrogate the designation and discrimination of identities and the innovative sites of collaboration and contestation. The study also invokes Smith and Watson’s (2001) delineation of autobiographical modes of narration and McAdams’ (2006, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2018) psycho-literary approaches to personal narratives to critically interrogate narrative identity, life-transitions and imaginative acts of writing the self. Such an eclectic approach dispels illusions, self-justifications, myths and subjective generalisations of historical events and performances. A key finding of the study is that postcolonial politics is circumscribed and constituted by metaphors of hybridity, mimicry, liminality and new modes of writing.
The dissertation concludes that ‘oppositional’ narratives appropriate and emulate the performance of power to the extent of being travesty of democracy and suggest that a revisionist and inclusive writing of the nation goes against the grain of discriminatory and demonisation discourses.
We all known that the general characteristics of autobiography are chronicling an event making “history” yet “performing several rhetorical acts” such as justifying perceptions, upholding reputations, disputing the preceding accounts of others, settling scores, conveying cultural information and inventing desirable futures among others (Smith & Watson, 2001: 10). Javangwe (2011: 11) succinctly defines “political (auto)biography as life writing that places the political self at the centre, both as an observing and observing subject.”
According to Bakhtin (1987a: 324) writing is a “literary-verbal performance”, that requires authors to take a position. However, it should be underlined that any form of writing is not a neutral undertaking but a political one in which texts speak and seek to both re-present and fashion ‘reality’ (Wa Thiong’o, 1997; Auerbach, 2003 and Hall, Evans & Nixon, 2013). Similarly, Bluck (2003) and Vambe and Chennells (2009: 1) note that narrating the self is inherently political and at best a performance that is staged in multiple spaces.
Based on the above scholarly views, it goes without saying that the author of the biography Nelson T. Kalangula, who is related to the late Bishop Peter T. Kalangula, is not neutral in his writing but seeks to fashion a certain reality and portray his uncle as a hero. He also seems to mimic the writings of the late Reverend Abel Muzorewa whose transformation into the political terrain is not without plausibility.
Even though, in essence, I subscribe to the Oshiwambo idiom that says; ‘omusi iha popilwa muuwinayi’ or the Shona idiom; wafa wanaka, which literally translates to that we should not speak badly about the dead and their character defects, the same idiom is a quick reminder of a Latin aphorism De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est which translates to ‘of the departed nothing but good should be said’, I should nevertheless say that the late Bishop Kalangula’s deeds cannot be compared to what the late Reverend Abel Muzorewa did initially for the independence of Zimbabwe, although he later became one of those churchman-cum-politicians perceived to be a latter-day turncoat politician and sell-out who ‘dined and wined’ with the white status quo at the expense of the suffering blacks in the 1970s. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer and this newspaper but solely my personal views as a citizen.
