Theo-Ben Gurirab: In his own words (Part II)

This is the second installment of the transcript of an interview recorded by the late Theo-Ben Gurirab for the United Nations in 1999. Gurirab had just become president of the United States. A General Assembly at the time of the interview

Jean Krasno (JK): In 1988, there were many negotiations outside Namibia to try to reach an agreement on the withdrawal of Cuban troops who had been linked to the whole process under the Reagan administration. While this was going very positively, in Namibia it seemed quite different. There was a lot of trouble. The students had boycotted, starting in the north and spreading all over the country, not just the students, but the workers, and everyone else. What was the connection or disconnect between what was going on outside and what was going on inside?
Theo-Ben Gurirab (TG): There was always a connection between what was going on outside. Freedom is one. The people have clearly emerged not only as self-liberators in doing some of the things you said despite the repression and militarization of the country by Apartheid forces. Despite all the attempts made by the apartheid regime and its apologists abroad to say that Moscow controls SWAPO and that Sam Nujoma is on the outside. They are the bad guys. There are other SWAPO people in the interior of the country and they are the kind ones. Despite this, SWAPO was one of them. The Namibian people, whenever we publicly tried to dig a gap between those of us and those who were in the interior, showed that we were one people. Attempts included the installation of fake internal governments. The last one was installed in 1985 during the period you're talking about, from 1985 to 1989, when we started to go back there. It was the government in Namibia, apparently headed by blacks, by Namibians, some of them who were former freedom fighters like the friend you mentioned and d & rsquo; Others who had become members of this government. It was a way of confronting the international community and the UN with an accomplice done, that is to say that the Namibian people decided internally to opt [[] for this. If SWAPO and those who were outside wanted to join this thing that is accepted by the Namibian people, they are welcome, but the days of armed struggle, a military solution, are over. In a way, to give some legitimacy to this phony effort of South Africa, the Reagan administration in the 1980s by Chester Crocker tried to tie the independence of the Namibia to the presence of Cubans in Angola, a dual policy of so-called constructive engagement. "You do not have to hit the South Africans overhead, you should talk to them," not a stick, but only a carrot, and a larger carrot to that. Meanwhile, to get out the Cubans, there would be a dialogue with South Africa, a constructive engagement with South Africa. If the Cubans leave, it would expose the weakness of the Angolan government that supports SWAPO. This would expose and weaken SWAPO as well. It was the strategy but it did not work. There has never been a division on the issue of freedom, self-determination and independence between Namibians at home and Namibians in exile.

JK: OK, let me see if I can understand that correctly. It had to be shown that inside Namibia, there was solidarity with SWAPO and regardless of the negotiations going on outside. Because while they were going on, it was not entirely clear how they would be solved. So, was there coordination by the SWOAP leadership to maintain this pressure in Namibia?
TG: Yes, but in fact, it was not just the leaders of SWAPO. Resistance to the home, which we used to call the first front, the natural resistance of the Namibian people, we linked it to the German occupation earlier. It was actually church leaders who had publicly taken a stand against the illegal occupation of South Africa and condemned Western countries for aiding and abetting Africa. South or turned our backs on us. It was about young people and students boycotting schools and others who were fighting the army and the police. It included women, women's organizations. We had different ways to help women in the interior of the country. We had a SWAPO women's council on the outside. Those who had leaders inside. When they victimized these people, we had ways to send money to them. In particular, church leaders had the opportunity to come out to attend church meetings that took place in the United States, Geneva, and elsewhere. And we used to meet them.

JK: The Shejavalis
TG: Before him too, Shejavali was one of them. Dumeni was another. There was the bishop, the old man who oddly resembled the father of Dr. Martin Luther King

JK: Was he the bishop before Dumeni?
TG: Yes, Bishop Auala. His students used to go out and we met them, Reverend Kameeta, who is now our vice-president. So these people were able to go out. From time to time, a student is out. There were many ways to communicate. We also had our friends from outside Europe and the United States, in Canada, people who were not necessarily visible as leaders of the liberation support groups, the anti-apartheid movement and others who were behind us. They would go on as academics, say all the good things to the reporters that the regime would like them to say. They could go and stay for two or three weeks, go around and play ball with the army and the police, take out information and send us information. JK: The boycotts of 1988, if I am right, started spontaneously with the rape of a girl in a school.
TG: Yes, but in fact, it was something that was happening since the 1970s, a whole generation of people. The first mbad student uprising began in 1974-75, with the collapse of the fascist regime in Portugal and the independence of Angola. It started a big wave; thousands of young people had left the country, but this tradition had remained. The more militarized the country, the more students refused. Because schools have been taken across the country; also in the north they were taken by the army. It was the soldiers who became teachers and who taught children armed with AK-47 and other machine guns wearing uniforms, military fatigues. They taught the children and the students refused. Some were killed. It was not spontaneous in the sense that it happened. These were manifestations of political education and campaigning that took place since the formation of SWAPO. It was spontaneous in the sense that the students were expressing their opposition to the South African presence across the country.

JK: Did the students understand the negotiations going on outside?
TG: Very clearly, very clearly. [19659003] JK: They knew that what they were doing was putting additional pressure on outside negotiations.
TG: They understood that we had defined the fight on three fronts. We have called the first front of political resistance or national resistance the first front. It is the Namibian people themselves who reject colonialism and apartheid and claim freedom and independence. We were a contingent of these people on the outside. The resistance of the peoples was the first front. The second front was the diplomatic front. The continuation of the second front was creating links with the UN, with international organizations, sympathetic parliamentarians, church leaders, support groups for liberation. The second front is to explain the aspirations of our people to our friends – the internationalist forces we have called – that we were able to get help, including weapons. With that we launched the third front, that is the armed struggle. The goal was always people. However, many were outside, we were a small fraction of those who were inside. The real resistance was in the interior of the country.
JK: We will now pick up where we left off. There are three other areas I wanted to talk to you about. I will name the three now so that we can think of them. I would like to have your interpretation of what happened on the first of April in the North. I would also like to talk to you about security issues in 1989 in Namibia in general. And the other part I would like to talk to you about is that many people say that once GANUAT established in Namibia, it was a piece of cake. Independence was going to happen and it was not a difficult operation. I just wanted you to give me your interpretation, whether it's really a fair evaluation. Let's start with your point of view on April first; what happened on the first of April?
TG: A combination of things, everyone is in one way or another responsible for the tragedy of April first. First of all, throughout the 435 negotiations that preceded the adoption of 435, but which we call 435 negotiations, there was this controversial issue that could not be solved and which was really touched the very heart of the conflict between the two and the conflict. the two parties who signed the ceasefire agreement in the end, namely South Africa and SWAPO. The problem is the confinement of forces. The language is "the imprisonment of the forces at the base". South Africa argued that SWAPO terrorists do not have military bases in the interior of the country. They did it deliberately. That's what it really meant. "They do not have military bases and you should not tell the negotiators, the Five, the front line states and so on, you should not try to give SWAPO an advantage to erect. military bases inside the country, to have presently, they are coming to Namibia and are carrying out terrorist activities and they are coming back in. They are not really here. "OK, that was their badertion. Therefore, South Africa objected to SWAPO receiving military bases in the interior of the country. Such was the contention of South Africa.
We said, "We are a guerrilla army. We are not a conventional army. We do not operate out of structures. A guerrilla army operates in small units and we are everywhere in the country. "The South African government itself virtually every week, by the signature of the Foreign Minister of South Africa, would write – and that's something that's in the file; you can check in. the framework of this study – and to complain about SWAPO's activities in the interior of the country, about the incidents that occurred in the interior of the country, so South Africa was aware of our guerrilla armies do not operate from the bases, so it was necessary for the United Nations, the Western Contact Group and the front-line states to ensure that the SWAPO military units were in the country, in their country, in Namibia, once the ceasefire before the date of the announcement of the cease-fire, should be informed by ways that we knew how to gather at two or three, depending on how much we had, the places and be confined to the ba This argument has not been resolved. Now 435 was adopted in 1978. It was not implemented until 1989. So, during this period, so much had changed. In fact, we had more people in the interior of the country than in 1978. Western countries have the feeling, and wrongly, that they have solved this problem. How? In the negotiations on the coupling, Angolans and Cubans and South Africans agreed to sign a protocol, the Protocol of Brazzaville, which was modified by the Geneva Protocol in August 1988, under which the Angolan Government The Cubans and their Soviet friends set out to clear an area in the 16th parallel. To the south, there would be no military activities of SWAPO. Having done so, the United Nations and Western countries have wrongly interpreted this situation as meaning that Angolans, Cubans and Soviets would take care of SW APO. They bought the South African argument that we were not in the interior of the country. From time to time, we would go there and lead activities and come back.

JK: Did the SWAPO representatives agree?
TG: No, we were not there. I will come to that. We did not participate. We rejected the link and we did not participate. Even if we hang out to talk to our friends. It was part of a package and brought out a specific aspect related to Namibia. It was a larger ensemble that led to an agreement on the fate of Cubans and to some things that Angolans and South Africa would do, and so on. This question was suspended. We had discussions with Angolans and Cubans to ask them, "What does it mean, you signed this, you are a sovereign state, but what do you mean? should withdraw our troops who are inside Namibia through this area which has now been accepted as a forbidden zone in Angola.What we can not do.We have forces as you know at the moment. Inside, in the country, what are we doing with them? We can not walk with these forces. "So this thing remained unresolved. But once the agreement was signed by these countries, the date set here for December 22, 1988, which is unfortunately linked to the tragic crash on
Lockerbie, Scotland. Commissioner for Namibia, a Swedish, Karlsson Bernt, was also on this plane. He was on his way to attend this meeting. Somehow, mysteriously, the South African Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Defense and the delegation who were going to that meeting and who were supposed to be on that plane changed aircraft. It's a mystery why they've changed it.
Whatever it is, there was a euphoria, a grand ceremony, here right next [to the president of the GA’s office] in the ECOSOC room. The agreement was signed and set the date of the first of April as the "D" day for the start of implementation. In this excitement, UN members began to send their officials and we signed the ceasefire. We had our troops in the interior of the country. It is the fault of the United Nations and those who advised them that they should have ensured that SWAPO and South Africa had reached an agreement and badumed the responsibility of not not violate the terms of the ceasefire or if they were going to develop something that even if the SWAPO forces had no place to go. They did not need to call them bases, we said. In Zimbabwe, they have been called gathering points. Somewhere where we could call our comrades, who were armed people. You do not want to have this situation when you are going to have an election. We have simply said that you should provide us with a place where we will ask our comrades to gather without fear of being attacked by South Africans. This had not been done. So when people badumed that the problem had been solved, it was not solved. We are also blamed because we have not done enough, SWAPO, to inform not only people in the interior of the country – there were many people in the interior of the country and they knew how to take care of them as they had done over the years – but those who were in the southern part of Angola, who had retreated because of the fight that were en route; the message did not reach them correctly. Some of them unfortunately found themselves in this tragedy. So everyone has a responsibility. It 's nothing happened that we can say that it was this holiday or the other. Unfortunately, when the event took place, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher, was in Zimbabwe. She went to Namibia. I think it was agreed that the South African Minister of Foreign Affairs would have gone to Windhoek and that both would have had talks with the current President, President Ahtisaari, who, according to some, has panicked because the mission was going to collapse. He sought advice, or permission, if he could ask the South Africans, because the UN had no troops there, to deal with the situation. The Security Council said yes. The South Africans said "Halaluya" and released their arsenal. This is the tragedy of April 1st.

JK: I understand that Manacle Goulding had a meeting with Sam Nujoma about two weeks before the first of April, during which they discussed this issue. Marrack Goulding had explained to Sam Nujoma the interpretation that the UN had agreed that the staging areas would not be settled in Namibia.
TG: Yes, that's right. I know that Goulding is a wonderful professional.
But this question has never been solved. This has never been solved. There is not a person from the UN who can look you in the face and say that this issue has been solved. This has never been solved. It was simply left hanging. The commitment we had made that I had forgotten to mention is that after these countries had signed the Brazzaville Agreement and the Geneva Protocol, the Angolan government asked SWAPO , in the light of this agreement or protocol, to accept this protocol and would therefore not take any new initiatives in this area which, as I said, was announced as a prohibited area. To that extent, we accepted the Brazzaville-Geneva Protocol. This is a revisionist explanation. I myself had a discussion with the first Commander Prem Chand in the delegates lounge a few days before he left. And I raised this issue, and that the question remained unresolved. "How are you going to do it? Now you are going to Namibia, you are going to start setting up your mission.This problem is still not solved.How are you going to do it?" He said, "Well I was not there when the negotiations took place. "I said the question was resolved." I said, "I tell you that this has not been solved. I think that the United Nations was mistaken that the indirect negotiations on the coupling and our acceptance of the Protocol of Brazzaville had been solved this problem, but as far as the negotiations in which I participated, this question Had never been resolved.