Namibia and the Past ~

This week, I also wanted to post about the new Namibian museum which recently opened. It is a huge, beautiful structure, nestled between the Namibian Parliament and the old German “Alte Feste,” which was the former national museum. The museum struck an intense emotional note with me. The exhibitions are bold, stark, passionate, and raw. They depict scenes of bloody battles during the Namibian independence struggle as well as the injustices and grave mistreatment of Namibians by the hands of first the German colonizers and then the South African apartheid regime.

My experience in Namibia has fired, shaped, and formed me. It has been real and painful. The pain of the past and the liberation movement are alive in Namibia. I posted long ago about my friend’s parents who were sent to the U.S. for their safety because they were so active in the independence movement. They could have easily been killed at any time, but it was something that they simply accepted. Like so many great leaders throughout history (I think of MLK Jr), they were simply willing to die for their cause. Their vision for Namibia was far greater than any of them as individuals, and they were willing to die for it. Namibians had had enough oppression, injustice, unfairness. They were willing and ready to die so that their children could enjoy the fruits of freedom, could taste the winds of independence, where they were not judged and mistreated and oppressed just because of the colour of their skin.

People have told me the wildest stories about apartheid. Blacks were not allowed into town after a certain time in the evening, and not at all on the weekend. Inter-racial marriages and dating were illegal. Blacks were not even allowed to buy white bread! As I said previously, the black “Bantu” education system was meant to keep blacks down. This mistreatment lingers in the psyche of black Namibians.

As a Peace Corps volunteer, living with the people together in a rural community has enabled local community members to get to know me, and to help them to dispel some of their misperceptions of the U.S. and of white people in general. That has been a huge, unstated goal of mine – to somehow build bridges where and if and how I can. There are huge gaps in understanding and perception between various groups in Namibia. It will take a lot of time, patience, healing and understanding to move forward and to truly transcend this, and to build the necessary bridges, which will ultimately allow Namibia to develop and progress more fully.

Back to the new Namibian museum. I rushed through the exhibits because it was affecting me so strongly, like so many small, internal assaults – upsetting me in a real and visceral manner. Which is right and good – we should pay tribute to the injustices of the past; we should honor and remember and hope that we learn from the errors of our past.

But then as I left, I stopped by the old museum, which is actually an old German fort. Until just a few months ago, there was a German statue there. It was called the “Reiter Denkmal” and was torn down because Namibians felt it honored the German history too much, which the German history in Namibia includes a lot of dark chapters, including the Genocide of many Herero Namibians. So not only was there a space where this monument used to be, a new one had been erected. If you look closely, the new monument depicts scenes of horror. On the front, there is a bronze cast of some hangings. On the back of the monument, are starving skeletons, which depicts the genocide which took place under German rule. Heavy, heavy stuff. I ran from the horror; I skipped up the steps to take a look at what had happened with the old museum building. It has been pretty much abandoned. But I speak German and I can read the inscription on the door. So strange. Still there, untouched, was a plaque in the German language honoring and remember the German troops that died in Namibia during the wars for independence.

There are always multiple perspectives, many sides to every story. But the day left me feeling heavy, disoriented, happy that we are paying tribute to the past, but sad about all of the injustices. I just pray that there is room for hope, for faith, for a brighter tomorrow.

We have to believe that there is. There is no other way.