The Role of the Media in the Struggle for Liberation: The Case of The Namibian
Author(s)
Lush, David
Abstract
When the first edition of The Namibian was published on August 30, 1985 – as an alternative to the mainstream papers guarding the status quo – the United Nations independence plan for Namibia, Security Council Resolution 435, had existed for seven years but was fast fading into oblivion. The Namibian set out to revive it while at the same time mounting a campaign for the human rights of the population, which was still struggling for liberation. Since the independence plan had worldwide recognition the international community would have been hard-pressed not to support the newspaper’s aims. International support was – and still is – of crucial importance to alternative or democratic newspapers like The Namibian, which has had an extraordinarily dramatic history. Harassed by the South African authorities and flooded with death threats during the pre-independence period, the paper’s staff still managed to produce the paper, day after day, dispelling, among other things, the vast ignorance of the war that was waged in the far north of the country. It was The Namibian and The Namibian alone which started documenting the bloody toll the war was taking on the people living in the war zone – nearly 60 per cent of Namibia’s entire population – and the atrocities being committed by the South African security forces. One might expect that The Namibian would have been allowed to develop under more peaceful circumstances once Namibia became independent in the spring of 1990. However, this is not the case. The author describes how on August 5, 1990, the new offices of The Namibian in Windhoek were fire-bombed in an attack coming a few days after the publication of a ‘top secret’ police document outlining information reports that former South African security force members were planning an armed rebellion against the new Namibian government.
