23.02.2015

25 years of independence – “One Namibia One Nation”

In March 2015 Namibia is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the independence from South Africa and the end of the apartheid. Since then the country has been ranking among the best-placed countries in Africa with regard to good governance. On November 28th 2014 the fifth election of parliament and president since the independence took place. Dominating again was the former liberation movement SWAPO (South-West Africa People’s Organisation) with its leading candidate Hage Geingob. That was also a topic with the UEM at their partnership seminar Namibia and the following conference as to the studies concerning the role of the relationships between the churches of Southern Africa and Germany.

Fair Distribution

In his opening speech in front of 50 participants Prof. Dr. Henning Melber, director emeritus of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala, commented on the actual situation in Namibia with regard to the political and socio-economic developments. Doing so he appreciated the success, but put a lot of critical questions, too. “Nowadays we cannot be proud of having a good standing by African standards. Do Africans then deserve less justice and good governance than others?” In his very focus was the question of fair distribution of income. Resulting from his personal biography and history – he and his family moved to Namibia, when he was 16, and Melber himself has been member of the SWAPO since 1974 – he succeeded in drawing an informative picture.

Experiences from Namibia

As well as Rev. Dieter Albat, born as the son of a missionary in Namibia in 1954, and Siegfried Schmid, who was in Namibia from 1962 till 1974 with the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft, Melber could inform about his own experiences in Apartheid-Namibia in an expert discussion. It was clearly recognizable which stress they had to suffer from, when e.g. children of missionaries were scolded as "Kaffir-boetie", which means “ mate of a black person”, or when the attitude as to apartheid brought trouble within the families themselves. And again and again the question: Where do I belong to?

Discussion About Apartheid Has Changed Churches

At the conference Dr. Hanns Lessing, chairman of the studying process as to the role of relationships between churches of Southern Africa and Germany, said: "The engagement with the apartheid in South Africa and Namibia has changed the German churches. Up to the 1980s there was severe discussion if political partisanship for suppressed people and the engagement for human rights corresponds with the self-image of the Protestant Church." He added, that such confidence had become self-evident nowadays. But many questions were still unsettled after the first free elections in South Africa and 25 years after the independence of Namibia. 24 churches in Namibia, South Africa and Germany have therefore established a studying process to cooperatively account for their history being burdened with many conflicts and to put important, still unsolved questions on the agenda again. The conference introduced into studying process 2 by means of typical examples and especially dealt with the questions that were controversially discussed within the UEM.

"When Do You Tell The Truth?"

In the centre there were the debates which were caused by the publication of violations of the human rights by SWAPO. Among others this was effected by Reverend Siegfried Groth, former leader of the department of human rights of UEM. Prof. Dr. Henning Melber introduced into the ethical and consistently prevailing question: “When do you tell the truth?” Changes of the West-German Protestantism in the course of boycotting the apartheid regime, described by the Sebastian Tripp, historian at the Ruhr-University, were on the agenda, too. In working groups and during the discussions the participants asked themselves over and over, what significance history has for today's relationships and how partnership groups and European partners can effectively support efforts aiming at Lutheran unity in Southern Africa. The results were resumed in a letter to the Evangelical Church in Germany. The congress had been organised by the, the Archives and Museum Foundation of the UEM, Centre for Mission and Leadership Studies of the UEM and Dr. Hanns Lessing, chairman of the study process.