Description
Book SynopsisThis book traces the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) across its three decades in exile through rich, local histories of the camps where Namibian exiles lived in Tanzania, Zambia, and Angola and highlights how different Namibians experienced these sites, as well as the tensions that developed within.
Trade Review'Drawing upon insights from anthropology as well as a number of remarkable interviews he conducted with Namibians who had been in exile, Williams’s ‘historical ethnography’ is rich and sophisticated. No one concerned with SWAPO’s exile history in future will be able to ignore this book.' Christopher Saunders, Journal of Contemporary History
Table of ContentsPart I. Camp, Nation, History: 1. Liberation movement camps and the past of the present in Southern Africa; 2. Revisiting an image of a camp: remember Cassinga?; Part II. Camps and the Formation of a Nation: 3. Living in exile: life and crisis at SWAPO's Kongwa Camp, 1964–8; 4. Ordering the nation: SWAPO in Zambia, 1974–6; 5. 'The spy' and the camp: SWAPO in Angola, 1980–9; Part III. Camps and the Production of History: 6. Namibia's 'Wall of Silence': challenging national history in the international system; 7. Reconciliation in Namibia? Narrating the past in a post-camp nation; 8. The camp and the post-colony.
