Registratur AA. 3: Guide to the SWAPO collection in the Namibia archives of the Basler Afrika Bibliographien

Basler Afrika Bibliographien

Posters in Action: Visuality in the Making of an African Nation

Giorgio Miescher

This book is a long-overdue history of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and the rise of the Africanist ideology in South Africa. From its formation in 1959, the PAC underground inside South Africa and in exile shaped the dynamics of the anti-apartheid movement and liberation struggle by framing alternative ideologies. Kwandiwe Kondlo analyses the radical traditions, the structural contradictions and the internal conflicts of this rival to the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa's dominant liberation organisation. The contributions of some of the PAC leaders, including Robert Sobukhwe, Potlake Kitchener Leballo, Vusumzi Make and John Nyathi Pokela, are reconstructed as are the PAC's experiences in exile and the strategies pursued by its military wing, the Azanian People's Liberation Party (APLA). The role of the PAC in the power-sharing negotiations leading to the historic 1994 elections in South Africa round off the narrative. The PAC story is a highly controversial one, as the perspectives are wide and various. This book seeks to present a balanced picture which includes diverse views in a comprehensive narrative.

In the Twilight of the Revolution. the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (South Africa) 1959-1994

History

Kondlo, Kwandiwe

Africa

This book publishes Martin Legassick's influential doctoral thesis on the preindustrial South African frontier zone of Transorangia. The impressive formation of the Griqua states in the first half of the nineteenth century outside the borders of the Cape Colony and their relations with Sotho-Tswana polities, frontiersmen, missionaries and the British administration of the Cape take centre stage in the analysis. The Griqua, of mixed settler and indigenous descent, secured hegemony in a frontier of complex partnerships and power struggles. The author's subsequent critique of the "frontier tradition" in South African historiography drew on the insights he had gained in writing this dissertation. It served to initiate the debate about the importance of the precolonial frontier situation in South Africa for the establishment of ideas of race, the development of racial prejudice and, implicitly, the creation of segregationist and apartheid systems. Today, the constructed histories of "Griqua" and other categories of indigeneity have re emerged in South Africa as influential tools of political mobilisation and claims on resources.

The Politics of a South African Frontier. the Griqua, the Sotho-Tswana and the Missionaries, 1780-1840

Legassick, Martin Chatfield

"Caprivi, the remote and narrow Namibian strip of land encapsulated by neighbouring Angola, Zambia and Botswana, has a contested colonial and postcolonial history. Bennett Kangumu traces the politics of its people in this complex borderlands since the late 19th century. Neglected by German and South African colonial administrations, its inhabitants were often pushed towards neighbouring territories though not being an integral part of them. At the same time, South African apartheid and homeland politics emphasised the ethnization of local identities. Becoming a strategic location in the ensuing liberation wars of the late 20th century, its history is often one of conquest and resistance, plunder, betrayal and rivalry. Kangumu shows how the inhabitants of Caprivi responded in various ways, notably in the form of regional nationalism when the Caprivi African National Union (CANU) was formed in the early 1960s. The Union's merger with the dominant Namibian liberation movement, SWAPO, was a claim to end seperation and isolation, which, however, flarred up again in post-colonial Namibia."

Contesting Caprivi. a History of Colonial Isolation and Regional Nationalism in Namibia

Kangumu, Bennett

Women's contributions against apartheid under the auspices of the Namibian liberation movement SWAPO and their personal experiences in exile take center stage in this study. Male and female leadership structures in exile are analysed whilst the sexual politics in the refugee camps and the public imagery of female representation in SWAPO's nationalism receive special attention. The party's public pronouncements of women empowerment and gender equality are compared to the actual implementations of gender politics during and after the liberation struggle.

The Gender Politics of the Namibian Liberation Struggle

Akawa, Martha

This book deals with colonialism on a Namibian periphery and considers both the German colonial period as well as South African rule in the country. The marginality of the Kaoko region within this colonial topography of power is analysed as a dynamic and fractured feature where power relations and constellations remained highly contested. The dynamics of gender within a regional society constituted of men and women, African and European, receive special attention within frameworks engaging with colonial photography, oral histories and gendered visions.

Gender and Colonialism. a History of Kaoko in North-Western Namibia 1870s-1950s

Rizzo, Lorena

The role played by Botswana in various southern African liberation struggles has previously been neglected in historical studies. The country's politics of support and mobilisation early on in Namibia's struggle for independence from South Africa proved crucial for the formative period of both nation states. Botswana's difficult and contradictory position as neighbour of the South African apartheid state and colonial power in Namibia are carefully dealt with, as are the challenges faced by the fragile Namibian refugee networks and liberation movements, SWANU and SWAPO, operating in Botswana for decades. 'The Inevitable Pipeline into Exile' deals with a crucial phase of nationalism and transnational politics during the period of southern African decolonisation at the height of South Africa's diplomatic and military aggression throughout the region.

The Inevitable Pipeline Into Exile. Botswana's Role in the Namibian Liberation Struggle

Mu Ller, Johann Alexander

Taking the history of trade and of traders as its subject matter, this book offers the first economic history of northern Namibia during the twentieth century. It traces Namibia's way from a rural, largely self-relying society into a globalised economy of consumption. This transformation built on colonial economic activities, but it was crucially shaped by local traders, a new social elite emerging during the 1950s and 1960s. Becoming a trader was one of the few possibilities for black Namibians to gain monetary income at home. It was a pathway out of migrant labour, to new status in the local society and often to prosperity. Politically, most traders occupied a middle ground: content of their own social position, but intent on political emancipation from colonial rule. Economically, their energy and business acumen transformed northern Namibia into an increasingly urban consumer society. The development path they chose, however, depended too much on the colonial reserve economy to remain sustainable after 1990. Their legacy still shapes spatial and social structures in northern Namibia, but most traders' businesses have today closed down. By telling the history of the rise and decline of traders and trade in northern Namibia, this book is thus also a reflection on the conundrums of economic development under conditions of structural inequality.

Traders and Trade in Colonial Ovamboland, 1925-1990. Elite Formation and the Politics of Consumption Under Indirect Rule and Apartheid

Dobler, Gregor

Reference

My family did the unthinkable: after getting away with ‘playing white’ for some years, we went one step further and ‘jumped the colour line’. By various obscure and not well-documented processes, we changed our ‘racial classification’ from ‘coloured’ – as defined by the apartheid policy of the day –to that of ‘white’. We juggled colour … The price we paid was anguish, constant fear of detectionand a sacrifice of family connectedness. The decades-long process of becoming completely comfortable with my ultimate identity was psychologically so unnerving that I have only recently feltfree to talk about it. This is certainly the first time I ever write about it. Ulla Dentlinger’s life history begins in poor, rural apartheid Namibia of the early 1950s. Growing up in the Rehoboth Baster territory, she early on discovers that her parents are not prone to reminisce about their family’s past. The most mundane information about their background is guarded much like a state secret. As a child, she begins to panic at being asked the question so normal to others: Where are you from? Only in later years it dawns on her that she had to be a ‘Coloured’. The sense of conflict increases immeasurably. By then she is growing up in apartheid South Africa, but now in a ‘white’ suburb of Cape Town. She goes to a ‚white‘ school and bears herself in a German fashion. She and her family had, in fact, jumped the colour line. Returning to southern Africa from the United States in the 1990s, she now openly pursues investigations into her family background. In this book, Ulla Dentlinger portrays her wider family – some who simply ignored ‘race’ and colour, others who opposed it and those who dodged or tolerated it. Their intimate, painful or straight-forward stories and recollections lead her to the emotional realization of the wealth of her heritage and its final acceptance.

Where are you from?: 'Playing White' under Apartheid (Lives Legacies Legends)

Biographies & Memoirs

Dentlinger, Ulla

Community & Culture

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