German pastor gives up fight for Dan

Press, 19 July 1983, Page 21

German pastor gives up fight for Dan

From DENIS HERBSTEIN in London

When Kurt Seemuller, a Lutheran pastor, and his wife Segred, adopted a week-old boy in their native West Germany they did not realise the trouble he would cause. For Dan was dark-skinned, and although the Seemullers did not know the identity of his parents, they assumed he was the child of a black American soldier and a German woman. Pastor Seemuller was then posted by his Evangelical Lutheran Church to Otjiwarongo, a small town in the north of Namibia (formerly South-West Africa). “My church board out there inquired about Dan and were assured by the administrator-general, Judge Steyn, that the political climate had changed and there would be no problem about him going to a white school.”

However, when the Seemullers tried to enrol Dan at the kindergarten in the local white State school, where tuition is given in German, he was refused because of his colour.

“I was told that the political climate had changed again,” Pastor Seemuller says. “There had been elections for the white legislature and the party which won had ‘keep our schools white’ as a plank in its platform.”

Pastor Seemuller went to see the leading white politician, Dirk Mudge, who said he could do nothing. “My church board wrote a detailed letter to the new adminis-trator-general (equivalent of a British colonial governor), who replied briefly, also saying he did not have the power. “Finally, the matter went to Mr Pretorious, of the white Nationalist Party, and he said ‘no.’ Even intervention by the German embassy failed to persuade the authorities.”

So Dan stayed at home and was given lessons by his parents. The family, too, was isolated by its neighbours, though some members of Seemuller’s mainly German congregation sent their children around to play with Dan. All the while Dan’s older sister and brother were at the local white primary school.

“We have a normal climate in our family,” says the pastor. “My eldest son, Dirk, who is 12, was angry about the treatment of his brother.”

As Dan approached the age of six, his parents tried to enrol him at the same state primary school,

the only others in the town being for Damara or Herero race groups. Apart from other considerations, Dan spoke only German. His parents were advised to send Dan as a boarder to the German school in Windhoek, 150 miles away, one of the rare racially-mixed education institutions in Namibia. Pastor Seemuller maintains that the Namibian Government broke the law. “The law states that a child should go to the school of his mother’s ethnic group. Dan’s natural mother was white. And he has a German passport. “Dan couldn’t understand it,” says his father. “Then came the day when we made him a mask for the carnival. He looked at himself in the mirror and said: ‘Now I am white, I can play with the other children.’ That decided us to go home.” The Seemullers returned to Saulgau, south-western Germany, earlier this month. Dan is in the local kindergarten. “He is very interested to play with the other children,” says his father, who is now looking for a congregation in Germany. Copyright — London Observer Service.