Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
“Celebrating a Revolutionary, Honouring an African Icon” has been the theme during the mourning of the passing of the Founding President and Father of the Nation, Dr. Sam Shafiishuna Nujoma.
Indeed, such accolades are befitting of Tatekulu given his dedication to Namibia’s liberation struggle, following in the footsteps of nationalists such as Ovaherero Ombara Otjitambi, Hosea Katjikururume Komombumbi Kutako, and others. Pathfinders and pioneers of the resistance movement who passed on the baton to the Kaukuetus, Nujomas, Garoës, and Beukeses, steering the cause all the way to the country’s freedom and independence on the 21st of March, 1990.
Yours Truly Ideologically, cannot but pause here to reflect on the word revolution. In Namibia, revolution has been used loosely and overused, as it has rarely been spoken. This is evident in the recent passing and remembrance of one of Namibia’s liberation stalwarts. Additionally, the passing of various revolutionaries is noted. Because the revolution in Namibia has been confused with fighting for and/or advocating for freedom and independence. Hence its interchangeable use to mean both political and/or civil rights freedom and aspiration towards the overhauling of the society in terms of its socio-economic, cultural and other attendant edifices.
For Yours Truly Ideologically, being a freedom fighter does not necessarily make one a revolutionary. Equally, agitation for freedom and independence does not necessarily mean agitation and advocacy for a revolution.
Following the 21 days of mourning and interment of Tatekulu at Heroes/Heroines’ Acre ultimately, Namibia may be slowly returning to reality. A reality informed by his revolutionary credentials, true to the theme: “Celebrating a Revolutionary, Honouring an African Icon.’ Although seemingly meant without attaching any real meaning to it. Reducing and relegating it in modern-day elitist political parlance to nothing but fashionable political jargon void of any ideology to distinguish the status quo from a real revolution. This perspective is informed by the knowledge and conviction that Namibia has successfully completed the first phase of her Revolution. Namibia has successfully achieved political independence from capitalist colonialism. While the unpalatable reality is that Namibia has, by any measure and/or imagination, not even started to lay the necessary foundation for the second phase of her revolution. At best as of now, she is stuck in the first phase of her revolution, which is democratisation.
Speaking of revolution, it is thus apparent that democratisation and/or political freedom is and could not have been an end in itself. Instead, it serves as a means to achieve the ultimate goal, which is the Second Phase of the Namibian Revolution. There’s no mistaking that Namibia has yet to embark on the Second Phase of her Revolution, which is about economic emancipation. In a conventional, narrow and rigid nationalistic language and/or meaning or interpretation, as you may wish. Economic emancipation seems to have been taken for granted and seems to continue to be taken for granted in Namibia, as only the engineering and/or facilitation and helping the indigenes to become an integral part of the pertaining mode of production. Which, in the emancipatory disposition of the independence struggle movement, is about the indigenous people determining their own destiny. Once the indigenous people gain political control over the country, they can determine their own destiny. Rarely questioning and reflecting on the desirability of the given and pertaining mode of production.
As long as the previously disadvantaged, and for that matter not all of them, but a few of them, are coopted and/or swallowed and subsumed by the system.
There’s no denying the fact that nominally, notwithstanding that, in one way or the other, there’s some measure of political remote control by former colonisers, Namibians to some degree and extent perceive themselves to be in charge of their own destiny, at least in a political sense. But economically, definitely they are and has since independence not as yet been in charge and control. Because essentially Namibia is still practicing the same mode of production, which is fundamentally capitalist.
The difference between the colonial times and now is that during colonial capitalism, the indigenes were completely alienated and kept on the peripheral margins of the capitalist economy. During which their role was simply serving a subservient role in it. Either as workers, peasants and or other strata considered to be fit for the indigenes. It was grouped into what one can broadly define as the working class or the proletariat in Marxist terms. This class was exclusively comprised of Black individuals. At that time, there were no white workers in Namibia. This is still the case in a politically independent Namibia today.
That is why, at this juncture, when the pioneers of Namibian independence are slowly but naturally retiring, even in eternity for that matter, it is opportune to fulfil their legacy. The goal is for the next generation, whoever and however it may be defined, to start recalibrating on where Namibia is in terms of her revolution. Is she still stuck in the first phase of the revolution? Has she embarked on it? Has the First Phase run its full steam to allow for the Second Phase? And what does the Second Phase of the Namibian Revolution mean and entail? What are the necessary subjective and objective conditions for the Second Phase of the Namibian Revolution? These are the pertinent questions that Namibia and Namibians must sooner rather than later start to introspect and interrogate.
Because the likes of Tatekulu, whom we have just committed to eternal earth, have completed their journey having run their race successfully. Which was about political emancipation. What remains to be done is for those who have assumed power and others to follow suit, with the aim of politically consolidating the initial phase of the Revolution. Despite 35 years of political freedom, as demonstrated by last year’s presidential and national assembly elections, achieving political stability remains a challenging journey. However, political stability should not be viewed as a goal in and of itself, but rather as a means to achieve the desired end. The end being the Second Phase of the Namibian Revolution. That for that matter Namibia and Namibians have as yet to define what it entails and what they perceive the Second Phase of the Namibian Revolution to be.
