Open letter to fellow Namibians (Part 2)

This open letter is a follow- up to the one that was published last week (New Era, 12 April 2023). In this second open letter, I want to focus on the milestones that can bring us together.

A few weeks ago, the Brave Warriors, against all the odds, beat the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon, by 2-1 in South Africa. A day or so prior to that, our national soccer team had forced the great Indomitable Lions to a one-all draw in their own backyard. The two backto-back score lines suggest that this was obviously no fluke at all.

The two teams are poles apart in terms of CAF rankings (Cameroon is ranked at number seven in Africa, while Namibia is ranked at the 31st position). I understand that that historic win against one of Africa’s respected soccer powerhouses was enough to qualify our boys for the 2024 Africa Cup of Nations finals.

The point is, does any proud Namibian who loves soccer, care as to which ethnic group Peter Shalulile, who scored in both matches, belong? What is important is that he helped our national team to qualify for that historic tournament. However, he was able to score because of a team effort; and the team is composed of players from different ethnic groups.

Last year, our two girls, Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi captured our imagination and won our hearts with their sterling performance at the Olympic Games and elsewhere. Their collective performance seemed to have “an emotional healing effect” on a nation that was recovering from the devastating effects of Covid-19.

Paradoxically, Covid-19 also served as a unifying factor because I have never seen Namibians stood together the way we did during that difficult period; which, in one of my essays, I refer to as “the winter of our sorrows”.

Our hopes have equally been blasted by the World Athletics Board’s ruling on the alleged high testosterone levels in the bodies of Mboma and Masilingi, which will disqualify them from competing in some of the competitions. Does it matter to any Namibian as to which regions our two golden girls hail from?

Our Frank Fredericks, in his heyday as an internationally- acclaimed sprinter, put Namibia’s name on the world map in a spectacular way. The same can be said about our Michelle McLean, who in 1992 was crowned Miss Universe. And this was, by any stretch of the imagination, no mean achievement at all, because apart from South Africa and Botswana, Namibia is the only third African country to have won that beauty contest.

When these two stars captured the attention of the international media and our imagination and admiration, I do not think that their ethnicity and race crossed the mind of any Namibian.

In my previous writings, I made reference to stories of ordinary people who, in their own small way, were contributing to national unity. There was the story of a Himba man in an Opuuo supermarket who was speaking to a teller in Otjiherero, while the latter was responding in Oshiwambo. They were conversing in the two languages without blinking an eye; and the heavens did not fall. I just stood there and watched in amazement.

I was also told of an Omuherero teacher who was teaching Oshindonga to Oshiwambo native speakers at Mweshipandeka High School in the Oshana region.

Need I mention the young female teller I met at Shoprite in Grootfontein, whose first language was Orukwangari but who was equally at home in Afrikaans, Oshiwambo, Damara-Nama, Otjiherero and of course English.

About a month ago I wrote a tribute to honour a deceased Christian female friend, Priscilla Ngairo. She was Damara but married to an Omuherero husband and their children would speak Damara-Nama to their mother and Otjiherero to the father and they (the children) would shuttle between the two languages when talking to each other.

As a national social cohesion activist, I am also a great admirer of Oshimbwiti. This is the slang that is spoken by Aawambo town dwellers who have, historically, been living in towns like Windhoek, Okahandja, Grootfontein, Swakopmund etc. This group has, over the years, developed a unique urban culture and a slang that is a mixture of Oshiwambo, Otjiherero, Afrikaans and even English. For lack of a better word, I refer to this slang as Oshimbwiti; and if the the word is perhaps offensive, then I duly apologise. Over the years I have discovered that this is one group that mixes easily with any other group.

I have written an essay, titled: ‘Afrikaans, the Language We Love to Hate’. In that essay, I argue that contrary to what many people say, that we should not have anything to do with Afrikaans because it is the language of the former oppressor, Afrikaans has resurfaced as a street language, chiefly being employed by young black Namibians.

Apart from the Afrikaans people, the Coloureds and Basters who use Afrikaans as their first language, many Damara-Nama people that I know, also use Afrikaans as their second language. I think in our deep search for a national identity and a possible lingua franca, we need to re-visit Afrikaans as a language. Please note that I am saying we need to re-visit Afrikaans, I am not saying we should adopt it.

If West Africans could “tame” or Africanise English to develop pidgin English and AfricanAmericans did the same to create Ebonics, which is a slang of their own, what would prevent us to do the same with Afrikaans?

I hope that the flagging of the above milestones will invite inputs on the Great Debate of our times: our seemingly elusive, if fragile, national identity. The recent ethnic bad feelings over the last few weeks are a rude awakening to the fact that ethnicity and race are issues we can no longer afford to shy away from discussing; how I wish that it was otherwise.