Namibia Colonial ResistanceThe first five years of the South African mandate marked the development of the Namibia Colonial Resistance. Between 1920 and 1925 resistance against colonial rule assumed a variety of forms unparalleled in Namibian history. The Bondelswarts rebelled in 1922 and the Rehoboth Basters with the Herero, Damara and Nama allies in 1925. Further smaller scale outbursts of violence erupted in other parts of the territory, and rumours of a general black rising were rife amongst both black and white communities. Even the San people who were usually isolated from other black communities by their nomadic existence in marginal parts of the territory resorted to stock theft and banditry on an unusual scale, becoming embroiled in skirmishes with the police and administrative officials.
The Namibia Garvey IdeologyThe Garvey ideology that was built upon a notion of Negro Consciousness had a widespread appeal among the various ethnic groups in central Namibia. Part of its attraction lay in its offer of an alternative identity for the various people of Namibia, an identity which to a large part emerged out of an aspiration for self determination. In this it formed a basis for Black Nationalism in Namibia and the Namibia Colonial Resistance.The majority of this group returned to West Africa after the occupation of Namibia by South African forces, but a number who were working in Luderitz stayed behind. While they intermarried with the local people, the West Africans formed a distinctive segment of the Namibian population. As a group they had higher level of education and greater urban and industrial skills tan the local population. The resistance movements of this phase of Namibia history have received little attention from researchers. However, what was noteworthy about this phase of Namibia Colonial Resistance was not only in its intensity and scale, but the qualitative changes in the prevailing forms of social consciousness and political mobilisation. The early 1920s saw for the first time concerted efforts to transcend the narrow communal divisions of pre-colonial Namibia and to forge a new popular unity by means of innovative ideologies and organisational structures. The first formal connection between Namibia and the Garveyist organisation occurred in 1919 when the UNIA sent commissioners to the Versailles Peace Conference in an unsuccessful attempt to influence the plans being framed for the former German colonies. In 1922 a UNIA delegation was sent to Geneva to petition the League of Nations to turn the former German colonies over to black leadership. The League was also urged to appint a black representative to the permanent Mandates Commission. Another petition relating to the mandates was issued by Garvey in 1928 but enjoyed as little success as the first attempt. Although Garvey’s ambitions for the former German colonies failed to have any impact on the international status of the colonies, the ideas propagated by his organisation were of considerable significance to political developments in Namibia. In fact, Garveyism and its various mutant versions provided the first coherent ideological framework within which the various Namibian communities could unite in their efforts to organise the Namibia colonial resistance. Two members of the UNIA executive that were not of Namibian origin are Fritz Headly, the president of the organisation and chief stevedore at the Luderitz docks, and John Clue who owned a café in the black township of Luderitz. Both men were described as West Indians. The Namibian members of UNIA and ICU later broke away from these organisations, and formed South West African National Congress (SWANC). The reasons given was that the two organisations were dominated by West African and South African blacks respectively. By January 1922, the Windhoek branch was established and the executive of the branch had already come under the control of local black leaders. These included Hosea Kutako, who was later to emerge as the dominant figure in Herero politics and one of the most powerful Namibian leaders until the formation of the nationalist organisations in the late 1950s. Aaron John Mungunda, the brother of Kutako, Traugott Maharero, the Herero leader of Okahandja and Nikanor Hoveka who later became the headman of Epukiro Reserve, Alpheus Harasemab and Franz Hoisemab, Solomon Monguya, Clements Kapuuo, the father of Clements Kapuuuo who was to become leader of the powerful Herero tribal grouping after the death of Kutakoo. The West Africans and West Indians continued to play a role in the two branches and where self conscious of its advantage in terms of western education. The predominantly local leaders were hampered by want of education in regard to which they seem ambitious. By 1924 both the branches of ICU and UNIA had died out and it was only SWANC that occasionally held meetings. It is not known how long SWANC survived but it is believed to have lasted beyond 1925. Essentially, there were major sets of factors which accounted for the failure of this first phase of popular Namibia Colonial Resistance: the fragmented nature of the Namibian social formation; the composition and nature of political organisations established during this period and the preponderant power of the colonial state.
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