Kae Matundu Tjiparuro
I have purposefully titled this tribute to Rikondja Ben Karamata The Quintessential Intellectual. Because despite having been many different things to me during what I would say have been a short sojourn that I have been and come to be and know him, more than a good time, and indeed it has been a good time of knowing him. A good time while to many and most may have seemed like a time of socializing, it has been for me more a time of fertilising off his rich intellectual proclivities.
During the time I have had the privilege of being close to him, I have come to establish him as being more than a mere acquaintance. A friend, a brother hailing from the same matrilineal lineage known as eyanda, that being of the Ovakuahere off which I also hail culturally. Politically we once were from the same school and indeed is a school whose imprint we have never been able to shed off. This school being Swanu. Which partially introduces us to the teachings of Marxist-Leninism and thus the Socialist ideology. In which both of us not only strongly believed in but have remained adhered till with him with the end of his journey as we are witnessing.
An ideology which we did not only come to embrace dogmatically but scholarly as well through our understanding of dialectical materialism. Having gone the extra mile of studying it, not necessarily as a matter of political expedience but to be able to understand why change was needed, as was then espoused by Swanu during the first phase of the Namibian revolution, which was about political kingdom, as the founding president of Ghana, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, would put it. Maintaining that such a political kingdom, meaning the political freedom of many colonised African countries, was necessary as a stepping stone towards economic independence. The latter, which all of the African countries without any exception, are still, more than 60 years after Nkurumah’s political kingdom, are still very much wrestling with. There’s and has been no indication whatsoever that the former Imperialist Capitalist colonising countries shall ever let go of the former colonies, including Namibia. Hence, all the more reason the like of late Ben have remained convinced in alternative systems such as Socialism and the ideology of Marxist-Leninism.
In this context I cannot but confine myself to his thinking in this regards that he has been sharing with postings on social media. Which has established him to be a prolific albeit a highly intellectual writer in his own right that many a Namibia have come to hate him for as well at the same time could not have otherwise but equally compelled to love him for. To the extent of impulsively finding themselves in his company. During impromptu sessions which if needs be you would find yourself being bullied into agreement with his postulations. Postulations which for most of the times were scholarly presented as per the scholarly approach that RBK was. Because if there is one thing outstanding about RBK, he was not only well read but well vested in the intellectual arena, and add to it the diplomatic field as many who have crossed paths with him in this regard may testify.
There’s a saying in English referring to a Jack of All Trades and a Master of None. There was hardly any subject that RBK could not engage himself in and others. But much so masterly in many if not most. As aging was catching up on him his engaging person was diverted to social media postings. Not for the posterity of social engagement but for raising various issues across the spectrum. Politics, diplomacy, cultural, ideology has been hardly a subject that he has not been covering in his postings. Not for the sake of writing but raising real pertinent issues. In this regard one cannot but hail the emergence of social media. For where and who would have given the likes of RBK such a platform that the mainstream despite their existence and the relevance and pertinence of their outlooks such an imperative voice. Out there, believe me are many RBKs whose voices have been clamouring for ventilation. For the mainstream media, true to the bourgeois society that Namibia is, is there and has been there to only serve the interests of the bourgeoisie.
“A new model of security in the Middle East must be established that guarantees sovereign equality of all States without American or Western interference. America must be ordered to leave the Middle East forever ending long decades of American Imperialism,” reads one of his last sunset postings if not the last posting.
One of his favourite subjects, naturally as a bona fide descendant of the survivors of the Genocide of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama, was this very Genocide. Imploring early this January on the eve of the 121st anniversary of the beginning in Okahandja of the armed resistance against Imperial Germany, the various leaders of the descendants to rally together. “The year 2025 should signal the end of the dark days of internal disputes and regression,” RBK posted.
We are today over the half way mark of 2025. But we are yet to see and/or hear the leaders heeding RBK’s clarion call which by no means must be the call of most descendants. “The idea of the Joint Declaration is for the Ovaherero Nation to sell their Genocide and Reparations Claims to Germany for a pittance 1.8 billion euros, leaving ancestral lands, wealth and heritage.” “Parliament must correct the President, on the Ovaherero Genocide 1904 Motion brought by the late Paramount Chief Dr Kuaima Riruako. There’s no reference to Namibian Genocide.” “Let me help spell it out to the Government….that the Ovaherero/Nama Genocide 1904/1908….we the descendants are not looking for sympathy or generosity.” “The message to the Ovaherero Youth,….is to reorganise , develop the consciousness, and never forget or forgive, but to focus on how to fight German neo-colonial imperialist settlerism in Namibia…Your struggle against historical injustices never ended with national independence.”
These are just mere bare snapshots of what RBK has been posting. One can and shall never exhaust them. The pertinent question is how many are and have been familiar with his postings, and most important their messages? I cannot but be reminded of a posting once by King Ipumbu Kazondunge, also well known as Welcome. Who was perplexed by the silence to RBK’s postings. Postings, especially “our” democratic representatives. It is either for lack of conceptualizing his postings? Or? “I’m so confident that GENOCIDE inclusive of Reparations shall be won only when we heed the call of Diplomat Karamata and that is going the ICJ Route,” King Kazondunge concluded.
Well, RBK has run his race and is gracefully intellectually and socialistically revolutionary. It is now left to who? All of us as descendants’ revolutionary need to provide the answer. Imbued and conscious of the song by Diasporan revolutionary, the late Bob Marley’s Redemption Song. “How long shall they kill our prophets, While we stand aside and look? Yes, some say it’s just a part of it, We’ve got to fulfill the book.
Are our prophets really being killed by some other people or by ourselves?
