All tagged South Africa
In August 1960, the Black writer and musician Dugmore Boetie fled apartheid South Africa and entered Bechuanaland (today Botswana) on foot. Boetie was one of thousands of refugees from apartheid. Unlike most, he returned soon afterwards—and his novel Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost is the only book describing apartheid by a Black writer residing in South Africa in this period.
From the 1960s to 1990, the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) opposed apartheid South African rule in Namibia, and administered camps for Namibian exiles in neighbouring countries. Mostly repatriated in time for Namibia’s political independence in 1990, many former exiles continue to appeal to the SWAPO-led government for assistance with their basic needs. Among them are ‘the children of the liberation struggle’, roughly ten thousand people born to at least one Namibian parent in exile. The struggle children emerged as a distinct group in 2008, presenting themselves to SWAPO as sons and daughters to whom the liberation movement and government bears an ongoing parental responsibility. This post tells the story of one of them, Mawazo Nakadhilu.
