Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
A lifetime of 85 years was literally reduced to 30 minutes in Namibia during which Namibia, including President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, last Thursday, paid homage and tribute to civil rights leader, the late Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson.
A tribute that had all signs of a hurried job and thus was reluctantly hosted. Worst of all and ironically but not strangely, late Jackson’s life was reduced by the United States of America’s (USA) ambassador to Windhoek to a mere two minutes or so. Perhaps a reflection of the reality that few of his contemporaries are now around, especially in Namibia, who could fittingly reminisce about that era. Thus depriving the occasion of witnesses’ tributes. Thus, his contemporaries are few and far in between in Namibia these days; the tribute could not but awfully fall short.
Not to mention its glaring ideological bankruptcy, with those who took to the podium coming no closer in any way to his ideological ideals. Ideological ideals, however one may wish to define ideology in this respect. Whether from a religious perspective, given that Jackson was a man of the cloth, or faith, as you would. A minister of the Baptist Church. The Baptists certainly have a good representation in Namibia that could have hosted a befitting tribute for, indeed, this giant of African descent. True to the environment of the venue where the tribute was held, it could not hide its elitist nature. Denying it a true and genuine tribute of the people, by the people, to do justice to the departed man of the people who in essence and deed was a people’s person.
As he did not only speak for the people, the downtrodden, oppressed and exploited wherever in the world, whether in the United States of America (USA), his birthplace by a historical accident and incident with his forefathers and mothers forcefully taken there as slaves during the Transatlantic slave trade more than 400 years ago.
While these historical epochs may be what they are, one cannot but with hindsight think that slavery was indeed paradoxically a destiny. For the United States of America to ultimately give birth to people of African descent in the hues and likes of the late Reverend Jackson, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Diane Nash, Rosa Parks, Dorothy Height, Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, you name them.
Also, as has come to be, African liberation has not been without its forerunner, the civil rights movement. But is there actually a cause célèbre? Given the apparent civil rights movement in the United States of America and African liberation on the continent. And indeed, the liberation of all Africans the world over, like in the Caribbean and Latin America? Certainly, from what has been transpiring ever, it cannot be said to be Uhuru yet, especially for Africans on the continent and in the diaspora, the very USA not excepted. One pointer to this is the latest initiative by African countries, as per the Algiers Declaration, to have colonialism declared a crime, if not GENOCIDE, and thus a crime against humanity in international law.
The late Jackson being a people person that he was, it is a pity but not strange that his homage was relegated to what it seems to have been and confined, an elitist affair. With those whose cause he champions, the Namibian masses are not afforded the opportunity to offer one of the greatest sons of the African soil of latter years, if not one of the few remaining ones of his generation, the opportunity to offer him a befitting homage from the detached and stultifying and self-fulfilling spectre at Nipam.
But perhaps these are the signs of the times. If they are still, they cannot but be terrifying and ominous signs that ought to awaken any true Namibian out of the seeming slumber of indifference, dissonance and/or apathy, if not ignorance, revealed by the late Jackson’s particular tribute last Thursday at Nipam. Perhaps an awakening pointer that the current leadership of whatever political persuasion cannot be taken for granted and for the people to awake, arise and be true to the historic mission of their generation. Of unshackling their chains of bondage of their minds, among others. If the legacy of those before them, like that of the departed son of the African soil, the late Reverend Jackson, is to live forever. As all those who paid tribute to him and shall continue to until he is committed to his ancestors this week. But can his soul really be so committed to eternal rest? Can it really be so committed if those appearing to be so wishing cannot be consequent to his legacy and that of many before him?
To finish the unfinished business that his people ultimately see as real Uhuru. As needless to say, the gains of his legacy and that of others before him are and have been at risk of obliteration, if not complete reversal. It may sound like a contradiction to speak of his untimely death. How, indeed, could the departure of someone of 85 years, fragile and frail as he may have been?
It is said to be untimely. Yes, but untimely his departure certainly is. As one cannot but imagine how frontal in his restrained demeanour a clergyperson he could be. Head-on, confronting the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement spearheaded by none other than the incumbent American President himself. Which, with the profiling, among others, of people of African descent, has all the hallmarks of reversing the gains of the civil rights movement. How then can Jackson’s departure not be untimely?
