My Last Letter to late President Hage Geingob
RE: Namibia’s Response to the Escalating Crisis in Gaza
Office of the Namibian President
Windhoek
President Hage Geingob
24 December 2023
Your Excellency, I am writing to you at this terrible hour, a moment in history that will be remembered long beyond our lifetimes and with profound implications for the future.
Beyond the political impacts and the potential for wider military conflagration and global economic contagion, we find ourselves also at a transformative moment in the consciousness of humanity, as a result of the worldwide apocalyptic revelation of the tragedy of the human condition.
I am of course pointing to the ongoing hourly massacres of people in Gaza over the past 10 weeks, which the highest authorities within the UN system have characterized as ethnic cleansing, war crimes and genocide. There can be no worse charge than this and there is no way anyone with a shred of human virtue can ignore crimes of such magnitude and severity, not just irremediable offenses against the bodies of native Palestinians, but against the conscience and integrity of all humanity.
I am not calling on the government to take a belligerent stance when it has no means to enforce its position, but I am reminding your office of our sacred duty under the UN Convention on the Prevention of Genocide, that it would prove utterly immoral and destitute of justice if the government of the proud people of Namibia were to remain silent or reticent when our dearest brothers and sisters are under relentless and merciless fire.
Hell on Earth
Indeed, their situation has been described as “hell on earth”, with daily destruction as has never been seen in our lifetimes – and we have no reason to doubt these reports.
It is against the backdrop of over 20,000 people killed, mostly children, and many more at risk of starvation, disease and imminent attack, I feel this immense sense of responsibility and a weight on my conscience of our moral duty to the people in Palestine. It is for this reason that I am writing to the highest authority in the land, knowing that you are intimately familiar with the close historic association between the anti-colonial struggle of the Namibian people and their Palestinian counterparts, including the role of the League of Nations in designating these territories as Mandate C countries, under South Africa and Britain respectively, ostensibly to be administered only until such time as the natives were capable of self-governance – something the colonizer is never willing to concede with a fight.
The role of the UN
In my reading, the United Nations exacerbated this crisis in 1948, partly by inaction and by failing to resolve it within the framework of the Declaration of Human Rights, which would be adopted later that year, but evidently and tragically excluded the rights of the Palestinians, for whom it became the year of the Nakba, the Great Catastrophe. Truman found it convenient at the time for electoral purposes to appease the Zionists and recognized the state of Israel barely 10 minutes after they seized power in May 1948.
The UN’s decision not to oppose this usurpation, and instead to divide the native Palestinian lands for the benefit of European settlers is the foundation of this intractable problem and present crisis. This travesty of justice has been allowed to fester and defile the very purpose of the UN for 75 years, which has now been utterly undermined at every level by Israel, not only by killing hundreds of UN staff, refusing visas to UN officials, slandering the UNSG as a racist, bombing UN schools and refugee camps, and moreover refusing to implement its lawful resolutions.
It is one of the eight wonders of the world that Israel is still able to retain membership of an organization they hold in such blatant contempt.
A Matter of Priority
Mr. President, I am not attempting to convince you of the need for reform at the highest levels of the UN, or the need to restrain Israel from its worst excesses, which you understand far better than I do. In saying this I am also gratefully acknowledging the progressive and humane positions adopted by Namibia at the recent UNGA votes on the need for a truce and ceasefire. Nor am I attempting to prove the insolent wickedness and racism of Israel’s policy towards the native people of Palestine, a subject which you will be intimately familiar with as an anti-apartheid fighter of many years.
It is true that I cannot agree with the proposed two-state solution for Palestine anymore than you would have agreed with South Africa on a two-state solution for Namibia, as I regard the one-state solution with equal rights for all inhabitants as the proper democratic solution to the problem of colonial brutality and apartheid, something which the transition to democracy in Namibia achieved to some extent.
That said, I do not believe those issues on which we may not agree at present should deter Namibians from the point on which we can readily agree: the need to respond with urgent emergency support to save as many children as we can from needless destruction, if only to lend a hand of friendship and international solidarity in this hour when they are in great need of such friendship and care, from anyone who is prepared to come forward, since they are besieged from all sides and helplessly trapped.
Emergency Support
The reason for my appeal to your good offices is to request the government of Namibia to consider, approve and prepare an emergency rescue and medical support team of some 100-200 persons to head towards the Sinai as soon as they can, and if possible, to set up a Namibian field hospital, and at the expense of your government to provide critical assistance to the injured and dying. Ideally, we should mobilise an emergency crisis response unit of humanitarian aid workers, including trauma recovery experts and child therapists, logistical support officers, medical and nursing staff, fire and rescue workers, water and sanitation experts, and any other emergency personnel that may be needed and available.
Instead of merely sending money as aid, which Namibia did in previous assaults on Gaza, we should muster – even on a SADC-wide basis – the courage, resources, muscle, and solidarity to put shoulder to the wheel and help lift the massive burden that has fallen upon the children, our brothers and sisters and their dear parents along the Strip, which has now been turned into the killing fields of Netanyahu. We must reject his primitive and genocidal talk of exterminating ‘the Amalek’, but should rather remember the Jewish boy who taught his followers to love their enemies, and to treat others as we would want to be treated.
If such a tragedy as the merciless war on Gaza had befallen the children of Namibia, we would surely have prayed for the world to bring us a little fresh water, some bread, some blankets, perhaps some light of hope to fend off the threat of eternal darkness. Let us not forget the women and children gasping and groaning for air and for dear life beneath the tons of rubble. How can we?
Although we are a small nation with meagre resources, let us teach our children by right actions to do as we expect from others. At this time, when our help is sorely needed by a million thirsty and famished, frightened children, come, let us prepare our strong men and women to go and relieve their suffering in whatever way we can. Let us take them some food and water.
We must lead by example
Come, let us teach the children by our righteous action what a proud and honorable thing it is to be an African, to build a nation on the foundations of compassion and integrity. Let us demonstrate that Christian values are not superfluous talking points but a guide to rightful action.
Though I feel justified - given that I am the one making this bold request - I am in no position to criticize or compel the government to take a stronger stance in immediately cutting all commercial and other ties to Israel, as the argument over Namibia’s commerce with Israel, despite its constitutional and foreign policy commitments – a moral and political question of profound importance – should not deter us now in taking immediate action to save lives where we can, while relegating these disputed and controversial issues that can be addressed later to its due place in the order of priorities.
I know that my call to offer immediate assistance to the besieged population pf Gaza is ambitious and will not be easy to implement, because of logistical and other challenges, but the alternative is to sit on our hands and watch mass murder unfold from morning to night for months on end as if it were the most normal thing. And if we tolerate this, who is next?
A question of duty
We have certain moral duties and imperatives to uphold, Mr. President, and this moment calls for bold leadership and action to save lives. I have no doubt that sending a humanitarian rescue team of aid and medical workers would be helpful, greatly appreciated by the victims of the war and – beyond the pedagogical benefits to the nation – such action would raise the moral standing of Namibia and its reputation for advancing solidarity, freedom and justice for all.
With these hurried and imperfect words, I thank you for your patience and for tolerating this intrusion in the affairs of state, but I trust the urgency of the situation merits my intrusion, your attention and all necessary interventions.
I therefore appeal to you, Mr. President, to apply yourself to this critical issue as if there were no more urgent priority right now, for this is and will come to be seen as the defining moment of the early 21st century, and as much as Chamberlain is remembered for his limp-wristed appeasement of Hitler, what we do at this critical moment will shape not only how we are remembered for what we did when Palestinians were being trodden underfoot and set on fire, but also what happens next.
Given the immensity of the threat to world security if this conflict were to expand or continue, as it is can and will trigger wider regional war, potentially sucking greater nations into the vortex of the conflict, something Netanyahu hopes for as a means of delaying his retirement, but it would be dereliction for Namibia to remain silent in the face of his ongoing genocide and to do nothing in the face of the immense threats this colonial aggression poses to the protection of basic human rights, peace and security in the world, values we are dutybound to bequeath to our children if we are not to surrender our hard-won rights and theirs by tolerating colonial savagery and sheer barbarism in the 21st century.
It is with these weighty concerns and appeals for justice that I must burden your office, Mr. President, and pray for a humane response to the pleas of the children at the gates of Rafah, that need us to stand up now and be counted among the real men and women of history.
I trust, Mr. President, that you have not and will not leave this life-and-death matter unattended, but will see this opportunity to do justice and to indubitably cement your place in the history of international solidarity.
With fraternal regards and kind wishes to your loved ones at this time of year,
Jade McClune