Namibia owes Helao Joseph Shityuwete more than a state funeral at Pioniers Park.
It owes him an honest explanation.
The controversy surrounding the decision not to bury one of the country’s most enduring liberation struggle veterans at Heroes’ Acre has moved beyond a question of where one man should be buried. It has become a question about who decides who is a hero, what criteria are applied, whether those criteria are consistently applied, and whether those entrusted with making such decisions have the courage to defend them publicly.
At the centre of this troubling episode is one obvious question: Who exactly is the committee that decided that Helao Shityuwete did not qualify for Heroes’ Acre?
Namibians deserve to know.
If a committee was responsible for advising the President on Shityuwete’s burial and status, its members should not now disappear behind the walls of officialdom. They should come forward and explain the reasoning behind their recommendation. They should tell the nation what criteria were applied, what evidence was considered and, most importantly, what Shityuwete lacked that would have qualified him for the highest national honour.
Because if 18 years of imprisonment on Robben Island, participation in the liberation struggle, political mobilisation, involvement in the armed struggle, years of sacrifice and subsequent service to independent Namibia do not constitute sufficient grounds for Heroes’ Acre, then what more could Helao Shityuwete possibly have done?
Should he have died in prison?
Should he have been executed by the apartheid regime?
Should he have returned from Robben Island carrying more scars?
Should he have become a president or Cabinet minister?
Or must a freedom fighter first occupy high political office before his sacrifices become sufficiently heroic?
These are not frivolous questions. They go to the very heart of what Heroes’ Acre is supposed to represent.
There is now a growing public perception that President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah was badly advised in this matter. The President may ultimately have made the decision, but presidents rely on advice. And when that advice produces a decision that leaves a substantial section of the public bewildered and angry, those who provided it cannot simply retreat into silence.
The outrage is telling.
It is not merely the outrage of political activists or members of one particular organisation. It reflects a much broader discomfort among Namibians who struggle to reconcile the treatment of Shityuwete with the sacrifices he made.
The President should therefore not be left to carry the political consequences of what appears, at least from the public reaction, to have been an extraordinarily questionable recommendation.
If the committee stands by its position, let its members defend it.
Tell us why.
Tell us what criteria were used.
Tell us how those criteria were applied.
And tell us whether the same standard would be applied to every other liberation veteran.
Silence is not an answer.
This becomes even more difficult to understand when viewed against Namibia’s continuing efforts to repatriate and rebury liberation struggle veterans and other historical figures. The country has spent considerable resources and political energy bringing Namibians home so that they can be accorded the dignity denied to them during the colonial and apartheid eras.
Yet, barely have we completed one ceremony of remembrance before another controversy emerges over whether someone who actually endured the struggle belongs among the nation’s heroes.
What, then, is the purpose of Heroes’ Day?
Every August, Namibia solemnly remembers those who sacrificed their lives and freedom for independence. Schoolchildren are taught about courage, sacrifice and patriotism. Political leaders deliver speeches invoking the names of those who fought for freedom.
But remembrance cannot simply be ceremonial.
A nation cannot spend one day celebrating its heroes and the rest of the year creating bureaucratic hurdles for their recognition.
Heroes’ Day becomes hollow if the country cannot recognise obvious heroes when they are still alive—or at the very least, when they die.
Shityuwete was not merely a politician who happened to live during the liberation struggle. He was imprisoned for 18 years by an apartheid regime that considered him dangerous enough to lock away on Robben Island. He endured conditions designed to break political prisoners. He emerged, continued his education and returned to serve the country after independence.
He also documented his experiences and worked to preserve the history and welfare of fellow Robben Island prisoners.
If such a life does not meet the threshold for Heroes’ Acre, the nation has a right to ask whether the threshold itself has become distorted.
Heroes’ Acre must never become an extension of political hierarchy, where proximity to power, political office or official recognition determines historical importance.
Nor should the designation of national hero become a favour bestowed through opaque processes.
There must be transparent, principled and publicly defensible criteria.
And those criteria must be applied consistently.
If Namibia is prepared to exhume and rebury its heroes decades after their deaths, then surely it can also ensure that those decisions are made correctly the first time. Families should not have to endure the indignity and emotional trauma of watching their loved ones’ status debated only after they are gone.
Helao Shityuwete deserved better.
The issue is therefore no longer simply where he was buried. It is whether Namibia is becoming a country that remembers its heroes through speeches, ceremonies and monuments while failing to recognise the substance of their sacrifice.
That would be the ultimate betrayal.
If Heroes’ Acre is truly a national shrine to those who sacrificed for Namibia, then the country must be able to explain why Helao Shityuwete did not belong there.
The committee owes the nation an answer. The President deserves to know whether she was properly advised. And Namibians deserve to know whether Heroes’ Acre still means what they have been told it means.
