Two Ways to See NamibiaNamibia: Africa's Harsh Paradise by Antony Bannister; Peter JohnsonReview by: Ralston DeffenbaughAfrica Today, Vol. 26, No. 2, Namibia: Crisis for the International Community (2nd Qtr.,1979), pp. 55-56Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4185856 .

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A Look at Books

Two Ways to See Namibia

Colin Winter, Namibia (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Win. B. Erdmans Pub. Co.,

Ralston Deffenbaugh

Antony Bannister and Peter Johnson, NAMIBIA: Africa's Harsh Paradise (Cape Town and Johannesburg: C. Struik Publishers; Northbrook, Ill: Domus Books, 1978). 240 pp., $37.50.

Most of those who have heard of Namibia probably learned of that isolated and vast land from newspaper accounts of a Western diplomatic initiative, or of an International Court of Justice opinion or a U.N. resolution, or of a South Afri- can raid on a guerrilla camp or vice versa. Politically, Namibia is in a radical flux which might resolve itself in extremes as wide as from an Angola-type revolutionary government to a South African-sponsored internal settlement not unlike Rhodesia's. Economically, Namibia is coveted as a vast storehouse of uranium, diamonds, and other rare, exotic and valuable minerals. Even legally, Namibia's unique position under international law has made it a class- room example of unusual variety.

Lost in these considerations and absent from the news reports is the intense beauty of the land itself. Larger than California and Nevada put together, Namibia's population is only about one million. It is a land dominated by deserts - the Namib along its western coast and the Kalahari in the east. In the central column of the Territory is a highland spine which allows for some population but is still rather barren. Only in the relatively small Ovambo area along the Angolan border is there enough water for plant agriculture and it is here where 46% of the pe'ople live.

Namibia, then, is dominated by the land - dry, vast, sparsely vegetated and breathtaking.

Bannister and Johnson's Namibia brings us the natural beauty of the land, leaving to others that which makes the place newsworthy. Professional wildlife photographers whose talent is here amply demonstrated, they have produced a coffee-table book chock full of photographs which vie to outdo the one before. The authors say that they set out to be true to the natural splendor of the land and they more than succeeded.

The Namibia shown in this book is that of the naturalist. We have scenes of the delicately wind-sculpted Namib dunes and close-ups of the curious spiders which have learned how to pull in their legs so as to carthweel down the dune- face. We see the animal wonders of the Etosha Pan, from the giraffe's lofty per- spective to that of the more down-to-earth sandsnake, and the mineral wonders

Ralston Deffenbaugh, Jr. practices law with the Denver firm of Ireland, Stapleton & Pryor. In 1875-76 he observed political trials in Namibia.

Vol. 26 (1979) No. 2 55

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of the Oranjemund diamond coast. Many people are shown as well, but they are seen as an anthropologist would see them - another natural phenomenon of great beauty to be remarked upon and perhaps studied with interest. The Bush- men, Himba, Ovambo, even the Germans are treated in this light - people who lived or who are living curious lives not of the modern world today.

Namibia's curse is that a land so strikingly beautiful is afflicted with so much oppression and strife. Scrupulously avoiding politics, Bannister and Johnson do not instruct us as to the oppression and strife. Their magnificent photographs do, however, tell us thousands of words about the beauty; their book is a work of beauty in itself. Combine this Namibia with the Namibia of Bishop-in-Exile Colin Winter and the armchair traveller will get quite a fair idea of why Namibia attracts both naturalists and newspapermen. Bishop Winter is a remarkable man; it is fair to call him one of the heroes of our age. He stirs up passions in those he encounters. My Afrikaans teacher in Windhoek, an aged and feeble blind man. told me that if Winter were to step into the room he would shoot the Bishop if someone would aim the gun. Yet Winter's parish- ioners, the Anglican Diocese of Damaraland, continue to elect him as their Bishop even though he is forbidden to return to Namibia from his exile in England.

The Namibia of Colin Winter tells of the Namibia seen by this sensitive and Christian man. We learn about Katutura --- "the place where we do not live"- Windhoek's "township"/ghetto where the black half of its population live either in identical four-room tin-roofed cinderblocks or in the single men's quarters, where even in this segregatiorn camp thie people are further divided into separate tribal neighborhoods. We learn about leaders of Namibia - people like Clemens Kapuuo, a pro-nationalist resister to South African rule who later becamne a leader of the South African-sponsored Turnhalle internal constitutional settlement group and the victim of assassins, and people like Herman Toivo ja Toivo, a founder of Swapo who did not collaborate and has spent over a decade in the political prison on Robben Island off the Cape. And we learn about the strike - the surprising and spontaneous economic protest of Ovambo contract workers which brought Namibia's economy to a standstill in late 1971 and early 1972. It was in the aftermath of the strike that Winter became the second of four successive Anglican Namibian chuirch leaders to be expelled from the Territory.

Above all Winter tells of the Namibian chuirch. This is a story not of buildings and liturgies and fine doctrinal dlistinctions. It is of the living church of courageous people driven by strong and often simple faith to stand up and say what is right. We begin to undlerstand why the insecure South African regime, which prides itself for being based on "Christian" principles, ends up imprisoning and expelling so many pastors and devout laity. Yet even from its chains the church's prophetic voice speaks clearly.

Winter can sometimes be shrill, sonmetimes righiteous. These, though, are the characteristics of the prophet. Like the prophets of old, Winter has been cast out by those against whom he prophesized. From that exile he has given us this book which the South African censors forbid his diocese to read. If Bannister and Johnson give us the sugar of nature's beautv, Winter gives us the salt of how harsh people can make their paradise. Sugar and salt; both are necessary to know Namibia.

56 AFRICA TODAY

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