members to the new party. Unknown to Kozo, Kerina later persuaded Nujoma to leave SWANU and convert OPO into a national organisation, the South West African People's Organisation(SWAPO), in 1960. Hans was shocked when he learned this because it was obvious to him that without the various ethnic groups even beginning to discuss the issues of common concern, "a tug of war" for 'national' leadership was being set in motion with the Ovambos supporting SWAPO and the Hereros and others attaching themselves to SWANU. Ironically, Kozo's and Kerina's contacts back home found that they could do without their services and cut them off from the affairs of SWAPO and SWANU in the succeeding years. Hans then took up his scholarship at the University of Oslo and became involved in the formation of an anti-apartheid organisation linked to the international movement. He kept up contact with the home front, urging through family connections that the Basters foster unity among the different ethnic groups. The Basters helped form a National Convention in November 1970- the first time that the different ethnic groups, together with representatives of SWAPO and SWANU, came together to discuss their future. This attempt at unity however, failed. Some years before, in 1962, SWAPO had decided to launch the armed struggle, which differentiated it from SWANU. Hans does not explain SWAPO's reasons for this decision nor any evidence that the people of Namibia were consulted and prepared for a guerrilla war. In 1963 SWAPO was granted recognition by the newly formed Liberation Committee (LC) of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) as "the sole and authentic liberation movement of Namibia". The self appointed junta ruling the organisation spurned further attempts by other organisations to unite. Impoverished Hans had been opposed to armed struggle because he believed that the majority of the people, confined as they were to impoverished reservations and isolated from one another, were in no position to tackle the far better trained and equipped South African army. He decided to get closer to the struggle in Africa and on a visit to Zambia and other African countries he was persuaded to join SWAPO. He had married Edel, a teacher in Norway in 1966 and sometime after his
page 38 of the scan
38 return from Zambia she was able to obtain a post in Zambia as a development expert. Hans, together with their two young sons, was able to accompany her to Lusaka, Lusaka was the headquarters in exile of SWAPO and here Hans experienced the upheavals resulting from the policies pursued by the junta ruling SWAPO. In 1966 the organisation sent armed fighters into Namibia to crushing defeat. On the home front, there was a successful nationwide strike of Ovambo workers. The internal leaders of the struggle were rounded up and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment on Robben Island. This struggle then withered because of lack of leadership as well as the policy pursued by the SWAPO junta focusing almost exclusively on the armed struggle. Hans witnessed the hostility displayed by the leadership to the young SWAPO recruits for the armed struggle. Confined to a camp outside Lusaka, when the leadership visited they demanded to know when they would return home to be involved in the armed struggle. They Following a meeting in 1975 between President Kaunda of Zambia and Vorster, the then leader of the racist regime in South Africa, Kaunda ordered SWAPO forces in Zambia to be disarmed and confined to base. In the tense situation which followed, Hans sent a letter to the SWAPO leadership expressing his concern at the lack of information given to the party's rank and file. At about the same time the SWAPO Youth League (SYL) voiced their disquiet about reports that their guerrillas at the front had been starved and sent on missions against the enemy unarmed. Kaunda was supporting Unita in the Angolan civil war and SWAPO could no longer count on the support of Unita, who were allied to South Africa. The leadership of SWAPO faced strident attacks by guerrillas and the youth, who were demanding the convening of a party congress to legitimate the exercise of power. The junta turned to the Zambian authorities to arrest Shipanga, an executive member of SWAPO and eight others. Forty two guerrillas were spirited off into the unknown. Shortly afterwards the Zambian police raided Hans and Edel's house taking away papers and documents and threatening him with arrest. Hans was advised by a Norwegian diplomat, among others, to leave Zambia. He took the advice and flew Here he learned about a letter written on behalf of SWAPO guerrillas interned by the Zambian government who had been starved, three killed and thirteen wounded by their Zambian guards. He tried to get representatives of Scandinavian governments, church officials and the solidarity movement to confront the SWAPO leadership about the plight of these prisoners, mostly without success. They were too committed to SWAPO. Hans's doubts about the wisdom of the armed struggle resurfaced. However, his alternative of an anti-apartheid struggle wedded to persuading external powers to disinvest from Namibia was not a real solution, leaving the task of liberation to pressure from forces outside the country. A BBC report based on the testimony of four escaped SWAPO prisoners exposed the conditions in the camps in Zambia. This led to the release of a large number of them including Shipanga. Hans remained estranged and isolated from the movement because of his stand against There had been no love lost between Neto, the Leader of the MPLA in Angola and Nujoma. Pressure from the SYL forced Nujoma to help repair the damaged relations with the MPLA and he and the rest of the junta relocated to Angola. With the breakup of the Portuguese Empire there was no longer a buffer state to protect the whites in South Africa and South West Africa. A decade of armed warfare alternating with diplomacy ensued between Angola, supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union and the South African racist regime supported by the US, which ended with freedom for the Namibian people and the withdrawal of Cuban troops During this period the unaccountable leadership of SWAPO, supported by the OAU, and the Soviet Union continued to send guerrillas "recruited mainly from one ethnic group for political reasons into Namibia and it spread fear even among the people it claimed to represent" ( Long Road To Liberation p.316). The UN endorsed the armed struggle and granted SWAPO observer status. They were intent on securing the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola. After two failed attempts to negotiate a withdrawal of South African troops from Namibia, a * Culture turning point was reached in 1988 when military engagements initiated by a large force of the Angolan army marching south towards the town of Jamba, the headquarters of UNITA, suffered heavy casualties at the hands of the South Hans' account does not deal with the retreat of the remnants of the Angolan army northwards to Cuito Cuanavale. Here, reinforced by Cuban troops and encircled by the South African army for many months ,they successfully defended the town. Hans gives credibility to the claims of victory in these battles to the South African army by their general Malan. However, the facts on the ground contradict this. Not only did the Angolan army successfully defend Cuito Cuanavale but another Angolan and Cuban force launched an offensive in the southwest near the Namibian border, which turned the According to the Cuban generals who planned the attack, the combined Angolan Cuban force could have marched into Namibia but desisted because all parties were looking for a negotiated settlement, based on the UN Security Council Resolution 435 which led to South Africa's withdrawal from Namibia and the departure of Cuban troops from Angola Namibia held its first democratic elections in November 1989, which SWAPO won. It celebrated its independence in March 1990. The SWAPO government has pursued a neoliberal agenda, facilitating the extraction economy. It has failed to redistribute the land. The class divisions, as in South Africa, are no longer hidden by A capitalist class is developing among black people and the middle class is expanding. The majority of black workers and landless peasants remain poverty stricken. Hans, on his return trips to Namibia has become increasingly disenchanted by what he has seen of the effects of government policies on peoples' lives. He does not mention an alternative political party to the left of SWAPO. The building of such a party to represent the workers and landless peasantry is a huge future holds, the domination of Namibia's important mining industry by multinational companies based in South Africa and the ties established between the workers of the two countries, will ensure that the close relations between Namibia and its big neighbour will continue.
page 39 of the scan
Resistance Books
Books available from Resistance Books, PO Box 62732, London, SW2 9GQ.
BANKOCRACY
Price £15/ 20/$20
of industriERIC TOUSSAIN BANKOCRACY banks after meltdown. the perfect pretexts to enforce austerity measures. This book explores how the crisis developed: the consequences of deregulating the banking system, the logic underpinning private banks' responses, and the crimes they perpetrate daily with the collusion of governments and central banks. This great book with its ugly title tells an ugly tale beautifully. Vast, deep, sweeping and indispensable. - James K. Galbraith, author of Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice: The Destruction of Greece and the Future of Europe. The central theme of this highly informative, lucid, and very careful study is the current financial crisis, which elites present "as the motive justifying the biggest offensive since the Second World War against the economic and social rights of the people of Europe," and of the US as well..... Valuable and impressive. - Noam Chomsky. Banks are at the heart of contemporary capitalism - they are key to financial narkets, generate the bulk of financia rofits, and have enormous influenc on policy making. Eric Toussaint offers us a wide-ranging, informative and sharp outline of their role. And as one would expect from the author, the inalysis is politically committed, while so suggesting concrete measures to deal with the power of banks. - Costas Lapavitsas, former MP for Syriza and Professor at SOAS..
THE FAR RIGHT IN EUROPE Authors include Michael Lowy, Phil Hearse, Adam Fabry and Manuel Kellner. Edited by Fred Leplat Governments Price: £12/€18/$18 alised countries have dramatiTHE cally increased public debt to FAK bail out private RIGHT
IN the financial EUROPE Paying debts and reducing fiscal deficits have become
D BY FRED LEPLAT -migrant ideologies won significant votes in a number of European countries. The National Front topped the poll in France and explicitly Nazi parties won seats in countries like Germany and Greece. This book is survey of the far right in seven countries of Europe with different political histories: Britain, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden. The survey, countries, reveals a disturbing picture of far-right parties, some with a mass base, which have been able to drag the mainstream political parties to the right. This book is a contribution to understand the nature of the far right, and to develop strategies for the left to confront this threat. www.resistancebooks.org
Riddell. * Nearly 70 years after the fall of the Nazi (inc. p&p). regime, the far right and even fascism are again a significant threat in Europe. In the May 2014 European Parliament elections, organisations with a range of fascist, racist and antiby activists and researchers from these
Kincen Manas.ames UNITY AND STRATEGY -Ideas for Revolution With contributions by Daniel Bensaid, Steve Bloom, James Burnham, Duncan Hallas, Tom Kerry, Piers Mostyn, Michel Pablo and John Published by the IIRE and Resistance Books, May 2015. £8 One of the major challenges for socialists is to build an anti-capitalist movement that connects daily struggles to the goal of overthrowing capitalism. Leon Trotsky was a leading Marxist strategic thinker. His answer to this challenge was that socialists should build movements which unite working people around their own needs. In such movements, socialists should urge working people to trust in their own power and formulate goals that break with capitalism. This book contains an updated translation of the founding document of the Fourth International, The Transitional Programme. The book also contains classic and contemporary articles delving into different aspects of revolutionary strategy. Together with The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution, these documents make the book a valuable tool for activists thinking about how to defeat capitalism. UNITY SI STRATEGY http://resistancebooks.org
page 40 of the scan
ST TRIDENT DECISION TIME 2016 27 February 2016 • London CND is calling a national demonstration to protest against Britain's nuclear weapons
system: Trident.
Join us to say NO to government plans to buy a new system at a cost of f100 billion.
Parliament will be voting on this in 2016. So this is urgent - we can't delay.
The majority of the British people, including the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and other parliamentary party leaders, oppose nuclear weapons. They are weapons of mass
destruction that can kill millions. They don't keep us safe and they divert resources from essential spending. Let's get message out loud and clear: we don't want Trident