National Liberation in Postcolonial Southern Africa: A Historical Ethnography of SWAPO’s Exile Camps by Christian Williams (review)

This “historical ethnography” of dissent and authoritarianism in Namibian exile camps run by swapo (South West African People’s Organisation) across Southern Africa from the 1960s to 1980s and its contemporary implications, combines anthropology with history and exile, human rights, and refugee studies. Williams’ deft meshing of disciplines works, but given that his chief sources are interviews and that he acquired little information from the documentary record (reflecting the paucity or closure of regional postcolonial archives), the result is a certain imbalance.

Williams analyzes the growth of intolerance in case studies of three exile camps—in Tanzania (1960s), Zambia (1970s), and Angola (1980s)—to explicate how authoritarianism that spilled over into serious human rights abuses was incubated in regimented camps run by swapo’s military. He is less concerned with deeper social roots. Nor is he concerned to probe further into the military dimension, even though all armed forces enforce hierarchy. He explains how some swapo officials, many with limited formal education, used fear of “spies” in an era of total and cold war to demonize educated or minority peoples. For accusations that drew from witchcraft beliefs, he usefully applies anthropological studies, though the limited nature of his ethnography makes it difficult to estimate the extent of these beliefs.

Williams’ narrow focus on power and dissent (not evident in the title) misses an opportunity for an in-depth ethnography with more attention to culture, such as exiles’ involvement in music, education, sport, and religion. He does not entirely neglect intellectual aspects, but he could have said more about the channels through which intolerant authoritarianism flowed, such as the “backroom” of swapo writing, broadcasting, and oratory. However, he does provide glimpses of parades, everyday life, and discourses via graphic photographs and especially through the extensive oral interviews with camp inmates—the book’s strength—which span different political views, regions, and ethnicities.

This wide canvas may incline Williams to highlight what he calls the “international system”—those governments, international organizations, and foreign-aid groups that, beginning in the 1960s, came to recognize swapo as the “sole and authentic representative of the Namibian people” (113), thereby “allowing” swapo to persecute dissidents (28). This “international system” is an interesting, if loose, formulation. Moreover, even though such systems have turned a blind eye to injustice for centuries, Williams’ tendency to lump together states that, in fact, opposed SWAPO, with the African hosts of the camps or with Sweden and the USSR, which offered material solidarity during the Cold War, fails to account for diversity and motivation.

An admirable feature of Williams’ work is his inclusion of the marginalized people excluded from the dominant narratives. Yet, we learn little about the lives of swapo leaders, their movements and diplomacy. Williams uses ethnographic techniques not for historical reconstruction but for “analysing contemporary societies.” This approach accounts for his final chapters that discuss reconciliation and today’s continued marginalization of dissidents; the first two parts of the book chart earlier decades. However, his emphasis on negative aspects tends to crowd out possibilities of wider ethnographical and historical treatment by highlighting the problem of human rights; he understandably devotes considerable attention to dissent, conflict, and harshness, but much less to resilience and creativity in exile.

Williams stresses the matter of unequal access to resources or justice in the camps, but unlike other authors, he downplays ideology, class, and threats of South African military attacks as major contributing factors to this situation, preferring instead to depict the camps as closed spaces of control and fear (126).¹ His point that such investigation is a good way to “open the nation to critical scrutiny” was never more timely (227); we remain stuck with nations and nationalism: swapo remains in power twenty-seven years after independence, as does zanu-pf in Zimbabwe, even after Robert Mugabe’s fall in November 2017. But is it simply “the...