Labor movements in Namibia have been rather fragile over the past few decades, ever since the country gained independence from South Africa in 1990. This was not always the case. Collective labor action, both spontaneous and organized, has had a long history in the country as a notable segment of anti-colonial resistance.

With their trajectories embedded in a political economy of settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and extractivism, Namibia’s emerging nationalist organizations of the mid-twentieth century grew out of a long history of collective protest and resistance. Mobilization by Namibian workers became an important factor in the struggle that culminated in the country’s liberation from South African rule shortly before the demise of apartheid in South Africa itself.

“Okaholo”

Namibia became a colony of the German empire from 1884. By December 1893, the earliest strike had been recorded at a mine at Gross Otavi. When the Allied powers stripped Germany of its colonies after World War I, the League of Nations entrusted Namibia’s administration to the Union of South Africa.

South Africa systematically extended its established policies of racial segregation to Namibia, seeking to extract as much wealth as possible from the colony as Germany had done before. With labor supply a foremost concern, the South African administration installed political structures in the north and a distinctive contract labor system that marked Namibia’s colonial economy and social relations until independence and beyond.

Despite persistently very low wages, traveling to provide migrant labor for the mines, fishing industries, and farms of central and southern Namibia became a defining life experience for the people in the northern regions. Between the 1930s and the 1980s, Owambo men generally spent much of their adult lives as contract workers away from home. In 1938, of the total black labor force of 47,275, 43 percent were already contract workers; by 1971, the figure was 83 percent.

The system was administered through the recruitment agency South West African Native Labour Association (SWANLA). Locally it was known as “omutete wOkaholo,” literally “to queue up for the [identity] disk,” because of the copper or plastic bracelets showing one’s identification number that freshly recruited contract laborers had placed on their wrist.

The contract system operated under virtually forced labor conditions. No hours of daily or weekly work were stipulated — the worker was simply required “to render to the master his services at all fair and reasonable times.” Contract laborers were housed in compounds for “single” men. Meanwhile, women in the north had to take care of agricultural production and raise families on their own.

The much-hated contract labor system became a primary factor in the emergence of Namibian nationalism. It started with the workers from across the north who were recruited to work in the South African gold mines, where wages remained low, but were still considerably higher than those earned in Namibia.

From Cape Town to Namibia

Working in South Africa allowed the workers new opportunities to gain access to political education and protest politics. By the mid-1950s, an estimated two hundred Namibian workers lived in Cape Town. Most of them had deserted labor contracts and were dwelling illegally in the city. If caught, they were under imminent danger of arrest and deportation.

The Namibians in Cape Town formed a close-knit community. Every Sunday, they got together at a barbershop run by Namibian expatriate Timothy Nangolo in Somerset Road. From there, they would go to the Grand Parade to listen to the political speeches delivered there on Sundays by members of the anti-apartheid opposition, including well-known Cape Town socialists.

Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, who became the leader of the Namibian workers, joined the Modern Youth Society, a broadly socialist and racially mixed group. The Namibians in Cape Town benefitted particularly from the support of the radical academic Jack Simons and his trade unionist wife Ray Alexander, who provided political education and a welcoming, anti-racist social environment.

In August 1957, they formed the Ovamboland People’s Congress (OPC), which later evolved into the Namibian liberation movement, the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO). The OPC founders adopted a petition, which was sent to the United Nations. Signed by ya Toivo and eighty others, it demanded that South Africa’s mandate be removed and the administration of Namibia transferred to the UN Trusteeship Council.

Significantly, the petitioners also called for the abolition of the detested contract labor system. They raised demands for the right of women to join their migrant worker husbands at their place of employment, and requested that unmarried women from Namibia’s north should be given permission to look for work in the southern regions.

Initially, the OPC was a political revival of a long-standing “brotherhood,” which workers in the mines had formed to cater to their well-being, social security, and recreational needs. It encompassed a sense of comprehensive solidarity, unity, and mutual support among contract workers, and it provided the basis for collective responses to employers and administrations.

In April 1959, nationalist activity gained a base in Namibia itself with the official relaunch of the OPC as the OPO (Ovamboland People’s Organization). In Windhoek as in Cape Town, some of the group’s leadership harbored wider political goals of national liberation. However, it was the conditions of workers trapped in the contract labor system, and mobilization around labor issues, that took precedence for the rank and file.

Sam Nujoma, the Windhoek leader who later became SWAPO president, visited Walvis Bay in June 1959 to address meetings in the workers’ compounds of the port city. Almost all the workers came out to hear him speak about the need for freedom and an end to the contract system. After this rousing speech, he asked them: “Will you join the struggle to abolish contract labor?” Everyone shouted, “Yes! Yes! That’s what we want!”

OPO built on preexisting informal structures of “brotherhood” and on a long history of collective labor action. Despite brutal suppression, there had been labor action at the mines in Lüderitz, Tsumeb and Oranjemund almost every year between 1946 and 1959. The same was true of the fish processing factories of Walvis Bay.

Starting from 1949, organizers of the Cape Town–based Food and Canning Workers Union took trade unionism into Lüderitz Bay, the southernmost fish canning center of South West Africa. Ray Alexander played a key role in this effort as a union organizer, and provided a close connection with the Cape Town-based OPC group along with her husband Jack Simons. In the late 1950s, the fish canning industry of Walvis Bay, some seven hundred kilometers to the north of Lüderitz, emerged as a major center of industrial strife and political mobilization.

Workers hoped impatiently that the new organization was going to confront the contract labor system straightaway or, at the very least, that forceful negotiations with the management of mines and factories could ameliorate conditions. Helao Shityuwete, who was working in Walvis Bay at the time, recalled that despite much initial enthusiasm, organizing the workers was not always smooth sailing.

This was partly because of interference by the colonial regime and its allies in the “tribal authorities.” However, workers also became impatient as the conditions did not improve rapidly. When the OPO leadership emphasized nationalist aspirations, despite the organization’s ostensible aim to be the voice of the workers, this did not always match the desires of the workerist rank and file.

Resistance against the contract labor system fueled the formation of nationalist organizations in Namibia. In the 1960s, however, brutal repression led to the long-term incarceration of some of the leaders on Robben Island, while other members of the founding generation left for exile. The spirit of resistance seemed broken.

An Upsurge of Rebellion

However, the grievances that had been instrumental in the formation of the national liberation movement continued to instigate revolt and protest. The new upsurge started with demonstrations of high school students in August 1971.

When student leaders were expelled from schools in the country’s north and took up contract employment, they joined with labor and SWAPO activists to mobilize against the contract labor system under the slogan, “Odalate Naiteke” (“Break the wire” — in other words, break the contract system that tied the workers to their bosses like a wire).

This slogan linked resentment of the contract labor system to demands for liberation. In December 1971, the strike broke out largely spontaneously. Although mobilizing had laid the groundwork, walkouts happened without a hierarchical leadership, and workers refused to identify individual leaders. Instead, they expressed their demands collectively in mass meetings.

The strike started in the fish canning factories in Walvis Bay, where 3,200 contract workers were employed. Connections were built between different centers of contract labor. An ultimatum was set for December 12.

At a Sunday afternoon mass meeting in Windhoek, the workers decided that they would not go to work on the next day. On Monday, December 13, none of the Ovambo workers in Windhoek left the compound. Across Namibia, sixteen thousand contract workers went on strike to protest the system.

Two days later, the authorities deported the striking workers to Owambo. This enforced deportation was turned into a tactical opportunity on the part of the workers, who immediately organized a strike committee. On January 10, 1972, they held a mass meeting attended by 3,500 in the rural north, where the expelled workers characterized the contract system as a form of “slavery” because blacks were “bought” by SWANLA and compelled to reside in “jail-like” compounds.

Their demands included the abolition of the contract labor system, freedom to select the place and type of employment, higher wages, and permission to bring their families with them. In large-scale solidarity protests, high school students from across Namibia demanded an end to the South African occupation of their country.

The response of the authorities was mixed. There were some partial attempts to address the workers’ grievances with the abolition of SWANLA, to be replaced with a system of tribal labor bureaus. However, the colonial regime also cracked down on the unrest with measures that severely restricted political expression and mobilization.

By May 1972, 267 people in Owambo had been detained under emergency regulations. In Windhoek, so-called ringleaders of the strike were charged with “intimidating” the workers to stay away from work, although the state’s case eventually collapsed.

The massive strike of 1971–72 was a turning point of Namibian anti-colonial resistance politics. The workers’ calls for the abolition of the contract labor system and an end to controls over movement constituted a fundamental challenge to the oppressive, state-administered labor regime and apartheid colonialism. After a decade of enforced acquiescence, the alliance of workers and students wanted more than limited improvements.

In Owambo, resistance against contract labor broadened into a generalized revolt. Returned workers and other local residents cut and flattened more than a hundred kilometers of the border fence between Namibia and Angola. A campaign targeted the government’s cattle vaccination points, many of which were burned down. People suspected that the vaccinations administered by the colonial apartheid state actually killed their animals rather than protecting them from disease.

In the aftermath of the unrest, hundreds of young activists left for exile to escape repression. Among them was Namibia’s current president, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, who had been arrested and spent her twenty-first birthday in prison.

Community Mobilization and New Unions

In contrast with the experience of South Africa, the upsurge of collective labor action did not lead to the formation of trade unions. The National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW), which had officially been launched in 1970, remained dormant, existing mostly in official pronunciations of the exiled SWAPO leadership. Most workers in Namibia were not organized, although reportedly remnants of underground NUNW structures did function.

However, mobilization in the mid-1980s gave rise to a powerful (though eventually rather short-lived) labor movement. The new movement was initiated not by workers in the mining or manufacturing industries, but by community activists and the Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN), who played a key role in social movement politics at the time.

In late 1984, community organizers, led by social workers Rosa Namises and Lindi Kazombaue, initiated the Workers’ Action Committee (WAC). Namises and Kazombaue were working with the social welfare unit of the Roman Catholic Church in Windhoek, where they had found themselves inundated by workers complaining about problems in the workplace. Grievances included low wages, unfair dismissal, and no leave arrangements, as well as their broader living conditions and inadequate provision of housing and transportation.

The two organizers consulted with church and trade union activists in South Africa, whom they knew through personal connections. In a first step, they organized a workshop with a South African activist who was experienced in trade unionism to discuss how best to address the workers’ plight. This meeting took place in early 1985 and was attended by almost one hundred people.

From that point, the WAC was founded with the original aim to collect information and educate workers about their rights. The activists regarded this as a community program rather than an exercise in orthodox trade union politics.

The formation received strong backing about a year later when many of the Namibian political prisoners on Robben Island were released and returned to Namibia. In cooperation with the SWAPO Youth League, they set up a Workers’ Steering Committee in early 1986, which worked toward the establishment of a trade union movement.

The first new union, NAFAU (Namibian Food and Allied Workers Union) was established in September 1986. Two months later, the Mineworkers Union of Namibia (MUN) followed, and NUNW was reconstituted in April 1987.

The community focus of the labor-organizing activities soon merged with — if it was not overtaken by — a nationalist approach. When about ten thousand workers turned out for a massive May Day rally in 1987, the nationalist politics of the “Robben Islanders” had become central to the unions.

Ben Ulenga, a released Robben Island prisoner, was the secretary general of MUN and a key player in the formation of the new unions. He emphasized the nationalist orientation of the new unions, saying that “the Namibian workers were born with colonialism and the resolution of their problems could come about with the resolution of the colonial problem.”

After Independence

While Ulenga and his comrades conceded that the workers’ struggle would have to go on beyond independence, mobilization quickly declined after the South African withdrawal was completed in 1990. This came as part of the general demise of formerly vibrant social movement politics that had played a central role during the final years of the liberation struggle.

Tensions between SWAPO, which now became the ruling party, and the organizations of workers, students, and women were an important factor behind this development. Co-optation further weakened the labor movement as leading activists were recruited into senior positions in politics and the civil service.

Ulenga, for instance, served as a deputy minister and ambassador before he eventually resigned from SWAPO in 1998 and cofounded a new opposition party, the Congress of Democrats (COD). Dwindling financial support was also important, since international donors now channeled their funds to support the new government. These were among the significant reasons behind the faltering of the NUNW trade unions in the years after independence.