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COMMEMORATING HEROES IN WINDHOEK AND EENHANA: MEMORY, CULTURE AND NATIONALISM IN NAMIBIA, 1990–2010

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2011

Heike Becker
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Abstract

In post-colonial Namibia public memory of the liberation war prioritizes the armed struggle from exile. This master narrative of national liberation, having become the new nation's foundation myth, legitimizes the power of the post-colonial SWAPO elite as the sole, heroic liberators from apartheid and colonialism. It has not remained uncontested, however. The article develops the complex transfigurations of liberation war memory, culture and nationalism in post-colonial Namibia around a discussion of two memory sites. The National Heroes’ Acre near Windhoek, inaugurated in 2002, appears as the cast-in-stone nationalist master narrative, aimed at homogenizing the multi-faceted agencies during the liberation war, whereas the Heroes’ Memorial Shrine at Eenhana, constructed in 2007, expressly recognizes the heterogeneity of war-time experiences. The Eenhana site further gives visual expression to recent Namibian unity-in-diversity discourses, which have followed, and partly been running alongside, a period of ideational emphasis on nation building, based on a national culture supposedly forged through the nation's joint struggle against oppression and colonialism. I argue that the social processes of remembering and forgetting political resistance, on the one hand, and those of cultural reinvention in the new nation on the other, are entangled, and that both registers of imagining the Namibian nation have shifted since the country's independence in 1990.

Resumé

Dans la Namibie postcoloniale, la mémoire publique de la guerre de libération accorde une plus grande priorité à la lutte armée qu’à l'exil. Ce grand récit de libération nationale, devenu le mythe fondateur de la nouvelle nation, légitimise le pouvoir de l’élite de la SWAPO postcoloniale comme seuls libérateurs héroïques de l'apartheid et du colonialisme. Il ne reste cependant pas incontesté. L'article développe les transfigurations complexes de la mémoire de guerre de libération, de la culture et du nationalisme dans la Namibie postcoloniale autour d'une discussion de deux lieux de mémoire. Inauguré en 2002 près de Windhoek, le National Heroes’ Acre apparaît comme le grand récit nationaliste taillé dans le roc, visant à homogénéiser les actions multiformes survenues pendant la guerre de libération, tandis que le Heroes’ Memorial Shrine construit à Eenhana en 2007 reconnaît expressément l'hétérogénéité des expériences pendant la guerre. Le site d'Eenhana donne par ailleurs une expression visuelle aux récents discours namibiens d'unité dans la diversité qui ont suivi (et en partie circulé parallèlement à) une période d'insistance conceptuelle sur la formation de la nation, basée sur une culture nationale prétendument forgée à travers la lutte conjointe de la nation contre l'oppression et le colonialisme. L'article soutient que les processus sociaux du souvenir et de l'oubli de la résistance politique, d'une part, et ceux de la réinvention culturelle dans la nouvelle nation, d'autre part, sont entremêlés, et que les deux registres de l'imagination de la nation namibienne ont évolué depuis l'indépendance du pays en 1990.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 81 , Issue 4 , November 2011 , pp. 519 - 543
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2011

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