BLACK RULE PROSPECTS NAMIBIA’S GERMANS WORRIED ABOUT TERRITORY’S FUTURE

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33750, 24 January 1975, Page 12

BLACK RULE PROSPECTS NAMIBIA’S GERMANS WORRIED ABOUT TERRITORY’S FUTURE

(By

JOHN BORRELL,

cf the Observer Foreign News Service, in Windhoek)

Nurtured by nearly 30 years of German colonialism and a further half century of South African colonialism South-West Africas deeply conservative German community faces with concern the growing possibility that the territory will become independent under a black government.

Traditionally South-West Africa’s 23,000 Germans have been solidly conservative — in many cases even to the right of the Afrikaners from South Africa who have for decades dominated the political life Of this former German colony and mandated territory (which is called Namibia by file United Nations). For although an integral part of the 90,000-strong white population of the territory, the Germans have always maintained a distinctive community based on customs, language and a political philosophy which has more in common with the Kaiser’s Germany than the present Federal Republic.

“Even now most Germans here would feel -more at home under Bismarck than Schmidt.” said a Lutheran pastor just out from Munich. “They have their roots in Germany’s colonial era and they still think like nine-teenth-century colonialists.” South-West Africa’s Germans have for decades voted almost universally for the Nationalist Party, which holds all 19 seats in the territory’s legislative assembly and which faithfully endorses Pretoria’s apartheid policies. But the Germans have not been politically ac-

tive, preferring, as the Lutheran minister put it, to allow the Afrikaners to wave the political flag of white supremacy while they make money.

There are, for example, only two German-speakers in the 19-member Parliament and yet Germans make up more than a quarter of the territory’s total white minority population. Perhaps the most conservative of the German institutions is the all-white German Evangelical Lutheran Church (D.E.L.K.) which has consistently resisted the idea of federation with the other two multi-racial Lutheran churches. Church position Resistance to federation from D.E.L.K’s all-white German laity reached a climax in 1971 when the other two churches, the United Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Ovambo-Kavango Church, demanded human rights for the indigenous people in a celebrated open letter to the South African Prime Minister, Mr John Vorster.. The two multi-racial and largely missionary-orientated German churches were vilified by D.E.L.K’s white congregations as a threat to the Government’s separate development (apartheid) policies and the white man’s security and D.E.L.K’s clergy had to call a halt to the discussions on federation.

Many of D.E.L.K’s clergy, particularly the younger men recently out from Germany, are deeply disappointed by this attitude. At least half a dozen young pastors have resigned and gone home in disgust in the last three years.

The Church defends its position by simply stating that the Church is the people who belong to it. "Pastors are like politicians.” said a pastor from the D.E.L.K. in Windhoek. “Politicians can only move as fast as the electorate will allow and we can only introduce changes that are acceptable to our congregations.” Most of the Germans in South-West Africa are descendants of the German settlers who came to Africa during Germany’s 30-year colonial rule which ended after its defeat in the First World War. All but a handful stayed on when the territory was given to South Africa under a League of Nations mandate in 1920 and their number has been boosted by a slow trickle of immigrants from Germany. For the most part the Germans now lead comfortable middle-class lives from the wealth of their farms or business and professional occupations. according to the German consulate in y/indhoek, about 30 per cent of the territory’s Germans are farmers, while the remainder are mainly business or professional people. Economic interests A large number of them would probably stay on even if South-West Africa was handed over to the black majority. ’’There are really no poor Germans so one would expect most of, them to stay even under a black government — if for no other reason than to protect their economic interests,” said a German consular source. But if they were forced to leave or simply found living under a black government

too disagreeable, most Germans would go to South Africa rather than return to Germany.

“I was born in South-West Africa and I understand Africa far better than I understand Europe. So if it ever got impossible to live here I d go down to South Africa and start again,” says Hans Becker, a Windhoek businessman.

“South Africa is the backdoor for most of my congregation," said the Lutheran pastor from Munich. “If South-West Africa became independent under a black government most Germans would stay on but if their interests were seriously affected they’d pack up and leave for South Africa. But, like the rest of the whites in South-West Africa, the Germans are hoping that a black government will not be in power for many years. They are pinning their hop&s on either continued South African control or, in the event of Pretoria granting it independence, some kind of federal solution which will leave the whites on top for some time to come. A federal solution of the sort currently so popular in South Africa’s ruling circles would in effect be a continuation of the territory’s separate development policies and the whites, a<s the second largest ethnic group in the country, could retain political power. It would mean that all the territory’s ethnic groups would send representatives to a central parliament on * tribal basis. As South-West Africa’s tribes are deeply divided this could enable the whites to retain their position for some time to come.

Like most other whites, the Germans justify continuing white hegemony by arguing that independence on a one-man, one-vote basis would only lead to domination by the Ovambo tribe, who comprise nearly half the total population. Most Germans rule out the possibility of a Rho-desia-like unilateral declaration of independence should Pretoria decide to grant independence on a one-man one-vote basis. "That’s just not on,” says Becker. "If we don’t like what is happening we” protest politically but that’s all. And if we lose we’ll just accept it and try to make the best of living under a black government.” — O.F.N.S. copyright