Listening to the silent majority

[10]

I was transcribing the tape-recording with Willie Ramoshaba in Windhoek, South West Africa, when I came across a report in The Namibian.^9. I single this item out, because it had become clear to me that politicians, striving for power, were misleading voters in Windhoek, as they are likely to do anywhere in the world. The caption of the report read, ‘SWAPO lights election torch.’ The article opened with the following lines. ‘Vote for SWAPO, vote for freedom! A SWAPO victory means progress and prosperity!’ Some 2 000 Namibians had packed the Katurara Community Hall celebrating SWAPO's 29th anniversary. Jerry Ekandjo, SWAPO's Secretary for Information, attended the meeting. He was working to collect votes, so he did not intend passing on genuine information. After all, what was a vote for SWAPO going to mean in practice? Voting for SWAPO simply meant voting for a one-party Marxist

9. By Mbatjiua Ngavirue, April 21, 1989, p 5

[p. 12]

state in the way their socialist brothers had similarly monopolized the power of state in Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and so on.

Blacks all over Africa should have known by now what the cry of Uhuru meant in practice: liberation followed by chaos. Africa today counts 11 military dictatorships and 28 socialist or communist one-party regimes. ‘One man, one vote’ has not worked anywhere in Africa, with the exception of perhaps Botswana and Senegal. ‘One man, one vote’ usually means, after a single election, starvation, unprecedented poverty, empty shelves in shops, bloodshed and civil war, coup d'etats galore, and even widespread epidemics and hunger for millions. Yet here was Jerry Ekandjo making unrealistic and hypocritical promises to the unsuspecting masses in South West Africa, who are liable to discover reality after they unwittingly voted the enemies of ‘one man, one vote’ into power.