Southern African Liberation Movements as Governments and the Limits to Liberation1

This is the slightly revised version of a keynote address presented on 18 May 2009 to the Postgraduate Conference ‘Writing Change: Transitions in African History’ at the University of Sheffield.

When liberation movements take power, their governments are often marked by military mindsets, categorising people as winners and losers, and operating along the lines of command and obedience. Such trends are evident in southern Africa (Melber 2003, 2006). Democratic discourse in search of the common good would look quite different. When analysing the shortcomings of those who obtained political control over societies after a protracted armed struggle against minority settler regimes, however, one also needs to (self-) critically reflect upon those among us who rendered support.

A knee-jerk reaction of ‘tiers-mondisme’ is to show solidarity for the struggle for freedom among the ‘wretched of the earth’. Sometimes, struggles are glorified, as was the case back in the 1960s. Frantz Fanon's book, originally published as Les damnés de la terre at the beginning of the 1960s, was a paradigm (Fanon 2001). His manifesto became a call to battle for the Algerian resistance movement against France, the colonial power.

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the introduction. He was quite selective in his argumentation, tending in parts to glorify violence as an act of emancipation. Indeed, he seemed to see violence as a purifying force that would turn the colonised into full citizens. However, Fanon himself spoke out against excessive post-colonial authoritarianism. In penetrating analyses and withering criticism, he described what he had seen, mainly in West Africa, up to his early death in 1961, particularly in the chapter on ‘The pitfalls of national consciousness’.

Fanon criticised the authoritarian attitudes of the African elite, which usurped young states in the course of decolonisation, and their abuses of power when securing privileges for themselves and turning entire states into instruments of control. However, his early warnings went largely unheeded. It was not until the 1990s, when the shortcomings of revolutionary movements could no longer be ignored, that Fanon's analyses came back to the fore.2

Wounds Old and New

It should be borne in mind that armed resistance was part of the solution in the southern African settler colonies of Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. In the latter three cases it led to negotiations for transitional arrangements under majority rule. The compromises required from all sides contributed to the controlled change. At the same time, this negotiated transition paved the way for a changed control. The newly emerging system took a decidedly patriotic form of writing history and turned the independence struggle soon thereafter into a myth.

It is worth repeating that the unscrupulously violent character of Zimbabwe's ZANU regime had already revealed itself in the early to mid-1980s, when a special unit, through atrocities bordering on genocide, killed an estimated 20,000 people mainly in Matabeleland, where the opposition ZAPU had most of its support. Notably, the only organisation of influence that protested was the local Catholic Church. The rest of the world, including those who had originally shown solidarity, had little to say.

The violence did not stop until the ZAPU agreed to sign a pact with the ruling party. The ZANU basically took them over. None of this hurt the Mugabe Government's bilateral and multilateral standing. When a new opposition party turned out to be a serious competitor, the Chimurenga (‘liberation war’ or ‘revolutionary struggle’ in Shona) became a permanent institution. Violence became the customary response to political protest. As political power shifted away from Mugabe after he lost a referendum in 2000, his regime only became more violent.

The human rights violations of SWAPO have also been downplayed. In the 1980s, the organisation imprisoned thousands of its own members in prisons in southern Angola, accusing them of spying on behalf of South Africa. These people lost their liberty in spite of never having been proven guilty; indeed, they were not even brought to trial. Many of them did not survive the torture. Those released are scorned even today (Saul and Leys 2003). With the newly established political opposition party, the Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP), which had its formative stages inside SWAPO, politically motivated violence has entered the public sphere and seems to be increasing ahead of the parliamentary and presidential elections at the end of 2009. The new opposition was denied the right to campaign freely when SWAPO, in an initial response to the new challenge, declared certain areas in the public sphere as its sole property, where nobody else was entitled to campaign. However, the RDP is not a truly meaningful political alternative; coming mainly from ‘the belly of the beast’, its main protagonists have been in the leadership of SWAPO for decades, and promise rather more of the same than something else. It is nonetheless revealing that SWAPO feels the urge to respond in such a way.

It could have been different in South Africa. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission installed by the ANC Government talked also about human rights violations committed by ANC members and inside the ANC. However, the final report containing these findings was never published in its original form. So far, ANC omissions have not been discussed openly. With the internal divisions between the camps of Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma and the new breakaway party COPE, the authoritarian tendencies have increased. It remains to be seen how permissive the political culture of the dominant party is since it has lost its two-thirds majority in the April 2009 elections.

Victims as Perpetrators

There is nothing new about military movements that are supposedly justified in ethical and moral terms losing their legitimacy quickly. Since the French Revolution, liberators have often turned into oppressors, victims into perpetrators. It is not unusual for a new regime to quickly resemble an old one. That has happened again and again throughout the world.

The Indian psychologist and sociologist Ashis Nandy (1984) discusses how liberators tend to reproduce the past rather than offer true alternatives. In this light, the ‘anti-imperialist’ Robert Mugabe turns out to be merely the final executor of the policies of the racist colonists Cecil Rhodes and Ian Smith. Armed combat merely created new repressive institutions of the state for the dominant group within anti-colonial resistance. Former PLO activist Yezid Sayigh (1977) argued that this was also happening in the Palestinian liberation movement.

Such power structures often revolve around individual commanders who act to the benefit of their crony supporters. Resistance movements normally adopt rough survival strategies and techniques while fighting an oppressive regime. Unfortunately, that culture takes root and is permanently nurtured. To summarise, it becomes questionable whether there is a true difference between the political systems they manage to throw out and what they establish in their place.

In May 1990, Albie Sachs spoke of this trend in respect of South Africa. In a lecture at the University of the Western Cape, this South African lawyer, who was crippled by a parcel bomb in Mozambique during his 24-year exile (and appointed to the Constitutional Court of South Africa in 1994 by Nelson Mandela), expressed his doubts about ANC activists being ready for freedom. He worried about the habits they had cultivated. As Sachs said, the culture and discipline of resistance may have served as a survival strategy in the underground, but these skills were certainly not those of free citizens.

Maybe this is why Nelson Mandela became a global icon in his lifetime: the many years he spent in prison kept him away from the daily intrigues and power plays prevalent in an organised liberation movement. Mandela preserved a spirit of human compassion and tolerance that a life of struggle and exile might not have afforded him.

This may sound cynical, but might be close to reality. Jacob Zuma, a product of the struggle, cultivates a ‘Zulu warrior culture’. He emerged as a populist alternative to the more intellectual, somewhat aloof Thabo Mbeki, finally in May 2009 to become South Africa's president. Zuma has an international reputation for various allegations of corruption, charges of sexual abuse and martial rhetoric. (His favourite song is ‘Bring me my machine gun’ – interestingly, it was activated more deliberately in public arenas after Zuma's rape trial, and bears a clearly sexist connotation, representing the male chauvinistic dominance in the society.)

Disappointed by the limits of the liberation they have experienced, many people are looking for substitute saviours. In their desire for salvation and an end to their misery, they turn either to religion or political prophets, who in demagogic fashion use militant and revolutionary rhetoric to cover up their reactionary, counter-revolutionary politics of greed and loot. Fortunately, the number is growing of those to whom fundamental values of democracy, liberty, human rights, and not least efforts towards more socio-economic equality by means of redistributive policies, matter more than submissive loyalty to an organisation and its abuse by parasitic new elites.3

Raymond Suttner is an example. He used to operate underground in South Africa as a member of the ANC, and spent years in solitary confinement as a political prisoner. As a member of parliament and later as ambassador, he represented the ANC Government before returning to the academic world from which he had come. He pointed out that ANC ideology and rhetoric do not distinguish between the liberation movement and the people. He thus argues that the liberation movement is a prototype of a state within the state – one that sees itself as the only legitimate source of power (Suttner 2006). But he also carefully seeks to explain how underground structures created a notion of ‘family’, which cloaked individual, independent-minded thinking guided by maybe dissenting moral values, under a collective which used democratic centralism as a guiding principle to ensure maximum discipline and loyalty as a prerequisite for the survival and ultimate victory (Suttner 2008).

‘End of History’

As we now know, post-colonial realities look much like those in the colonial era with regard to day-to-day life.4 The reason is that socialisation factors and attitudes from the armed struggle have largely shaped the new political leaders’ understanding of politics – and their idea of how to wield power.5

In governmental office, liberation movements tend to mark an ‘end of history’. Any political alternative that does not emerge from within them will not be acceptable. This attitude explains the strong sense of camaraderie between the Mugabe regime and the governments of Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa over many years. Typically, any political alternative occurring in these countries as a result of disillusionment with post-colonial life will be discredited as part of an imperialist conspiracy designed to sabotage national independence.

These governments never seem to even consider the possibility that their own shortcomings may be the reason why opposition forces are becoming stronger. Instead, they only think along the militaristic dichotomy of friend/foe, leaving no legitimate alternative to their own hegemony. Among each other they have entered regional alliances, which imply the backing of each other in times of challenging political alternatives. The prolonged support to Zimbabwe's regime under pressure is just the most obvious case in point.

At the same time, the sad truth is that the opposition forces that do stand up against such governments tend to only add to the problem, rather than to provide a solution. All too often, they only want to share the spoils of the state apparatus and its bureaucracy among their cronies once they are strong enough to constitute a true power option. Again, the relevant categories of thought are only winners and losers. However, democracy is about something completely different: compromise, and even search for consensus, in pursuit of the public good. To achieve that, one does not need military mindsets, but rather a broad political debate.

Namibia and South Africa at the Crossroads?

The degree of aggressive polarisation emerging under former liberation movements challenged by new political opposition parties (even more so when this opposition comes from within the belly of the beast, i.e. from dissenting comrades turning into ‘traitors’ by establishing new parties) is a feature characterising Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa in similar ways. The outburst this provokes was illustrated maybe most spectacularly in Namibia in a political rally held by the SWAPO Party Youth League on 18 October 2008 in Katutura. The Youth League's president repeated the demand that all higher ranking positions in the state apparatus and the state-owned enterprises ought to be filled only with reliable SWAPO members and stated: ‘We have a political religion called SWAPO and the political heaven is SWAPO, and the political hell is where all the other political parties are’. As a special guest, the leader of a delegation from the South African ANC Youth League demanded with reference to opposition parties: ‘Destroy these political cockroaches, they are in your kitchen’.6 Everyone with a basic knowledge of recent history and in particular the genocide in Rwanda can only shudder in disgust at such horrific hate language. People who had expected that those who have to guard the public interest, preach reconciliation and watch jealously over peace and stability in the country would dismiss such scandalous statements in no uncertain terms were bitterly disappointed.

The escalating political differences were by no means confined to a rhetorical warfare: they culminated during campaigns on the ground for local or regional elections in massive physical violence between the followers of the two contesting parties. Police had to intervene on several occasions to restore law and order by use of force. Politically motivated violence became the new order of the day.

SWAPO founding member Andimba Toivo ya Toivo showed the wisdom of a true leader. Toivo ya Toivo, with an impeccable track record of political integrity, had played a crucial role in initiating the anti-colonial military resistance and sacrificed almost 20 years of his life as a political prisoner on Robben Island, later serving as a minister in three cabinets from Independence until his retirement in 2005. In an unprecedented initiative, Toivo ya Toivo published an open appeal for tolerance and respect:

We are living in new times that require new ways of conducting political struggle. The formation of new parties and the exchange of differing opinions in the political arena is a normal occurrence in the life of a democracy. The flourishing of new ideas can only contribute to the vitality and development of our nation. The present should be a battle of ideas and not of swords, and the battle should be conducted with respect for our fellow human beings. (Toivo ya Toivo 2008 )

Unfortunately, Toivo ya Toivo remained a rare voice of reason within the party's establishment. Instead of seeking a common understanding with the competing internal political forces, the alliance between the erstwhile liberation movements in southern Africa seems to be the unifying identity. It allows those in power to consider the new era – as mentioned earlier – as ‘the end of history’, i.e. a sufficient claim to serve unlimited time as rulers in office on behalf of the victorious liberation movement. Jacob Zuma, then president of the South African ANC, visited Namibia on 8 December to meet with President Hifikepunye Pohamba and the former President Sam Nujoma. A joint communiqué released after the visit stated:

It was noted that there is a recurring reactionary debate around the need to reduce the dominance of former liberation movements on the African continent. In this regard the emergence of counter-revolutionary forces to reverse the social, political and economical gains that have been made under the leadership of our liberation movements was discussed.7

In his ‘Letter from the President’, published by the weekly electronic circular ‘ANC Today’, Jacob Zuma after his return summarised and repeated part of the deliberations as follows:

Ruling parties often go through certain challenges after the first decade, when the interests of different strands within the broad liberation movement begin to diverge. People begin to explore other avenues, especially when they feel they are losing control and influence within the movement. The interests of people outside the movement, locally or internationally would also come into play. … Political analysts and all who claim to know Africans better than they know themselves tell us that it is good for Africa and democracy if the majority of former liberation movements was reduced. How do we as former liberation movements ensure that we do not steer away from our mandate of serving the poor and all our people, in the current climate of counter-revolution? (Zuma 2008 )

The answer to Zuma's question could actually be an easy one – namely by simply showing that the former liberation movements continue to provide the best policy choices for the majority of the people. In contrast to this ‘exit option’, which is rather a window of opportunity, views such as those expressed by Zuma and his comrades seem to suggest that there is no inclination in any circumstances to vacate the centres of political power once occupied, even if an electorate – as in the case of Zimbabwe – would vote for a political alternative. A democratic process with such a result would be considered as tantamount to an illegitimate regime change initiated by externally influenced and (mis-) guided elements willing to sabotage the project for social, economic and political emancipation, over which the erstwhile liberation movements claim to hold a monopoly.

Seen from this perspective, any attacks on the liberation movement in power are acts of blasphemy and are dismissed as imperialist conspiracy. The articulation of political opposition is seen as a reason to marginalise, exclude and coerce those with dissenting views and considered a legitimate response by those in power. Instead, they could opt for a better policy, convincing the people that they deserve to remain in political control by means of obtaining the majority of votes in free and fair elections, as a result of sound policy in the interests of the people and an electoral campaign without restraint or repression.

A Namibian Deputy Minister shared his ‘Reflections on Political Violence’ in the state-owned daily newspaper towards the end of 2008. He claimed a right to self-defence in response to unwanted attacks by political enemies and their allies (who are suspected in anybody not sharing the self-righteous propaganda of the party hardliners), and stated in conclusion:

The SWAPO Party shall prevail against the onslaught and all tactics designed by the perpetrators of various methods of violent political abuses being meted against our party and its leadership. We, the people of Namibia, shall win this war, the SWAPO Party shall win this war, and Namibia shall forever remain peaceful. (Kazenambo 2008 )

What the Deputy Minister overlooks is that you cannot win a war and at the same time remain forever peaceful. The choice is rather between wanting to win a war and wanting peace.

The Party as the Family and its Leader the Father Figure: Sam Nujoma at 80

On 12 May 2009 Sam Nujoma turned 80. As the outstanding Namibian leader for half of a century, he personifies like no one else in the country's contemporary history the patriarch heading the family. This analogy not only corresponds with the title ‘Founding Father of the Republic of Namibia’, as conferred upon him by Parliament after his retirement as head of state. It also links to the distinct notion of family ascribed to the liberation movement.

Raymond Suttner deals with this in depth in his study, ‘The ANC Underground in South Africa to 1976’. The liberation organisation represented a distinct notion of family (Suttner 2008, p. 142). There was a general suppression of ‘the personal’ in favour of ‘the collective’. Individual judgment (and thereby autonomy) was substituted by a collective decision from the leadership (Suttner 2008, p. 146). Such ‘warrior culture, the militarist tradition’, according to Suttner (p. 119), ‘entailed not only heroic acts but also many cases of abuse and power’ – not least over women.

Suttner based his study on interviews with activists both in exile and on the home front. He concludes: ‘Any involvement in a revolution has an impact on conceptions of the personal. Given the overriding demands for sacrifice and loyalty to something greater than oneself, it leads invariably to a negation of intimacy’ (Suttner 2008, p. 138). From there, it is only a small step towards the later process of ‘Zumafication’, which Suttner also treats in subsequent writings (2009). Put differently, the intimacy of the family was replaced by the leader maximo as the alter ego.

Not surprisingly, Sam Nujoma, as the political father figure of Namibian independence (mothers are conspicuously absent), personifies such a role model in a particularly pronounced fashion. He prefers posing as the military (rather than a diplomatic) figurehead and displays the virtues of an uncompromising man, with the emphasis firmly on man rather than human. Testimony to this is the memorial sculpture cast in stone and metal at the Heroes’ Acre, built on the outskirts of Windhoek 10 years into Independence and similar to the one in Harare by the same North Korean company. The cultivation of the military liberation gospel is revealing. The massively oversized statue of the ‘Unknown Soldier’ as well as the physiognomy of the leader in the relief leaves no doubt as to the intended connotation. Subtleties were never a virtue of Namibian political culture.

Just as enlightening as this monumental symbolism is the content of Nujoma's autobiography Where Others Wavered, which served as screenplay for the hitherto most expensive film by far, financed by Namibian taxpayers’ money (not just for local producers but for Hollywood professionals). Significantly, a quote from the struggle days was chosen as the programmatic title of Nujoma's life history, which ends with Independence, although published almost a decade into the sovereign republic (Nujoma 2001).8 The leitmotiv says it all: ‘When the history of a free and independent Namibia is written one day, SWAPO will go down as having stood firm where others have wavered: that it sacrificed for the sacred cause of liberation where others have compromised’.9

An in-depth, exclusive interview with Nujoma in the magazine New Africa confirms this particular liberation perspective.10 When asked why, as his biography claims, he had sent all three of his sons into battle, he answered, ‘The struggle was supposed to be fought by all Namibians’. When the interviewer enquired what would have happened if they had all been killed, Nujoma responded, ‘Well, but the liberation of our country was supposed to be done by all Namibians irrespective of birth’.

The combat mindset leaves neither room for doubts nor for true mourning. The interviewer refers to the Cassinga massacre, in which the South African army bombarded a refugee camp in southern Angola in the late 1970s, as ‘a very emotional event’. In response, Nujoma offers a vivid description of the gruesome attack:

On 4 May 1978, the Boers sent a wave of Buccaneer aircraft over Cassinga. The first bombs they dropped were filled with poisoned gas, biological weapons that destroyed the oxygen in the air and made our people collapse. The Boers then sent a second wave of Mirage jetfighters to strafe the camp and set it ablaze. They then sent yet a third wave of helicopters that dropped paratroopers into the camp. They proceeded to shoot and bayonet our people who had not already died from the bombing. As you correctly stated, they killed more than 1000 and injured many more. They even took some of our people away.

Again, there is no indication of empathy. But the interviewer continues: ‘When something like this happened during the struggle, how did you feel? Did you cry? Have you ever cried?’ Nujoma's full response was:

Well, we were then in New York negotiating with the apartheid regime and the Western Contact Group made up of Canada and Germany (as non-members of the Security Council) and France, Britain and the US (as members). So we just walked out of the discussion and returned to Africa. We reorganised ourselves and intensified the armed struggle.

It was as if the struggle was a technical matter, mere surgery, which involved no human beings and was executed by inanimate dummies. The rhetoric of liberation can be rather invasive. It has its framework set in the paradigm of victory and/or defeat, and leaves no room for empathy, not to mention grief and tears. This was possibly – and sadly so – even necessary to stand any chance of survival and ultimately become successful in ‘the struggle against the Boers’. Such testimony might also offer some insight into the process of how victims, as liberators, might turn into perpetrators when in control and wielding power. They gave away their humanity and in return expect unconditional loyalty by others to a type of struggle which remains an ever-lasting act of patriotism and service.

Such a mindset leaves no space for retirement. One can leave office, but still remain a leader with responsibilities. It may well be that such first generation anti-colonialists are necessary, even though they at the same time reflect the limits to liberation and the price at which national sovereignty comes to many among the people.

Formal self-determination in a sovereign state does not equate individual liberty and freedom (not to mention social equality in economic terms). But this has shifted the struggle for true emancipation. We owe it to people such as Sam Nujoma in this world that we have reached this next, much less violent, phase of fighting for rights. They sacrificed their humanity for others – but expected others to sacrifice theirs too. Will history absolve them?

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Henning Melber

As a son of German immigrants, he joined SWAPO in Namibia in 1974.

Notes

This is the slightly revised version of a keynote address presented on 18 May 2009 to the Postgraduate Conference ‘Writing Change: Transitions in African History’ at the University of Sheffield.

Fanon's analysis is of course, like this article, not confined to the African continent when it deals with mindsets abusing access to power and privilege. The excessive income of managers and bankers in Wall Street and elsewhere, but also the recent scandal among political office bearers in public service in the UK, demonstrate rather spectacularly that the symptom of greed is a global attitude among elites and is certainly not limited to Africa.

It would be an interesting study to explore further why among those ‘dissidents’ openly and publicly dissociating themselves to date from the new kleptocracies, are over-proportional numbers of so-called ‘petty bourgeois white, left intellectuals’ formerly associated with ‘the struggle’ – although their categorisation might suggest an initial and preliminary explanation in terms of their class origins and corresponding socialisation, which might provide at least in part an answer.

However, this painful diagnosis by no means implies any nostalgia for the anything but ‘good’ old days; it rather implies disillusionment over the non-delivery of those now in political power.

This statement deliberately ignores the class nature of the socio-political agenda and its actors and implementing agencies as much as the global limiting factors for the implementation of alternatives to the dominant reproduction of social inequalities (Saul 2008). This does of course not mean that these limitations would not exist (see for Namibian class interests in elite politics inter alia some of the contributions to Melber 2007). But it would go beyond the focus of this presentation to explore the external limitations and class character of internal politics. The global constraints should, after all, also not serve as an excuse for the policy failures discussed, which Saul (2008, pp. 147–179) had qualified in a similar perspective to mine as ‘The Strange Death of Liberated Southern Africa’.

Both quotes in Brigitte Weidlich's article, ‘Namibia: “Everybody in Govt Must Be Swapo…”‘, The Namibian, Windhoek, 20 October 2008.

Joint communiqué issued by SWAPO and the ANC, issued by the African National Congress, Windhoek, 9 December 2008.

For a comprehensive and critical analysis, see Saunders (2003) and du Pisani (2007).

First quoted in a brochure ‘SWAPO Information on SWAPO: An Historical Profile’, Lusaka 1978.

‘Namibia Special Report’, New African, no. 423 (November 2003). Since this was a supplement of an advertorial type (and hence its publication paid by the Namibian taxpayers), it can be assumed that it had a semi-official status and was certainly published with the approval of the Namibian president, reflecting his views.