There were tumultuous scenes in Windhoek yesterday when thousands of Swapo supporters gave a rapturous welcome to their president, Sam Nujoma, as he returned home after 29 years and seven months in exile. Crowds mobbed the 60-year-old Swapo leader as he emerged from Windhoek airport and there was a carnival¬ like atmosphere in Katutura township as his ecstatic followers – most of them wearing clothes in party colours – poured out into the streets to see him, blaring car hooters, brandishing Swapo flags and giving clenched fist salutes.
”At last my exile is over,” said Nujoma, in his first press conference on home ground. ”No words can adequately express my happiness at my home-coming.” ”My comrades and I return in a spirit of peace, love and above all national reconciliation,” he added. The Swapo president touched down at Windhoek airport yesterday afternoon in an Ethopian airliner which had flown him in from Luanda. He stepped down from the aircraft to throw his arms around Swapo’s ”internal” president, Nathaniel Maxuilili, before embracing his 89-year-old mother and kneeling to kiss the ground in what has become a traditional gesture for returning Swapo exiles.
There were angry scenes and some tussles in the airport terminal between newsmen and Untag officials who- apparently paranoid about security following the murder of Swapo leader Anton Lubowski this week – attempted to restrict press access to Nujoma. Earlier the Swapo president bad refused to come out of the Ethopian airliner until the press had been allowed out onto the tarmac. After excited greetings with other Swapo leaders who had preceded him in the journey home from exile, Nujoma was swept through immigration and out of the airport in a large Mercedes. Dozens of police guarded the road to the exit, but as he emerged through the gates of the airport thousands of waiting supporters surged forward and nearly swamped the car and the accompanying motorcade. Even larger crowds of dancing, cheering and ululating followers greeted him as he toured the streets of Katutura.
Later, at a press conference in the garden of a Katutura house, Nujoma read a lengthy statement appealing for reconciliation. ”The struggle has been long and bitter,” he said. Committing himself and his party to national unity, he said: ”Let us this day un-learn, forget and leave the sad chapter behind us; those memories of bitter and long years of conflict, racial hatred and deep distrust among us Namibians must be buried forever. Let us open a new page and a new chapter based on love, peace, human rights, patriotism, respect for one another and ‘ genuine reconciliation.” He said that in pursuit of these goals ”I personally offer to meet any party, group or individual for the realisation of the tasks we have set ourselves.”
In his statement, however, Nujoma said the question of ”who is a Namibian” was a fundamental issue and that ”Swapo refuses to accept the notion that Namibian citizenship should he as open-handed as the electoral laws (for November’s UN-supervised election) would suggest.” He stressed Swapo’s continued claim to Walvis Bay and off-shore islands, saying they were geographically and economically an integral part of the Namibia for which Swapo had fought.
ujoma side-stepped a number of questions, however, including the vexed issue of Swapo detainees, hundreds of whom are alleged to have either been killed or still in detention following party purges of suspected South African spies. Challenged on the issue the Swapo leader gave a rambling rationalisation of the detention, referring to the thousands killed and maimed in the liberation struggle, talking of Namibians bribed and· ”recruited even at gunpoint” by ”the enemy”.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
