&c1=usa&c2=(none)&c3=The+Guardian&c4=Press+and+publishing,Media&c5=&c6=Kevin+Toolis&c7=2001_01_08){kind=small}
- The Guardian, Monday January 8 2001
The phone on my desk was ringing. "Is that Mr Tooooolis," said the voice of a perfect but familiar stranger, his long Afrikaans vowels ringing in my ears. He did not introduce himself, but then he never needed to: he was a security policeman, part of the illegal South African occupation of Namibia. I answered and then waited, already knowing what was coming next. "You're not verking at the Namibian newspaper are you, Mr Tooooolis?"
I did not answer because there was nothing I could say or do. This phone call was not an inquiry but an executive act: his words and the decision were synchronous - I was being expelled from the country.
The year was 1986 and the Namibian was the sole voice of opposition to a nasty racist regime. Namibia was the last colony on African soil. Originally a German colony, it had been virtually annexed by South Africa in 1916. In 1966 the UN ordered South Africa to leave. To no one's great surprise the apartheid regime refused to go.
I wasn't anyone important, a mere irritant, an easily removable bit-player in the long struggle for independence in Namibia. But that did not matter. In the eyes of the white security men I was probably a "terrorist", a "white Swapo" - a follower of the liberation movement that challenged Afrikaner rule. Worst of all, I was a racial traitor, a foreign "kaffir boetie" - black-lover - working for what they considered to be a communist newspaper. I was the enemy.
I had joined the paper after answering an ad in the Guardian's Media section to help train black Namibian reporters, but soon ended up reporting myself. It was not exactly a cushy number. Not long after I left, the paper's offices were firebombed, the windows shot out and the editor, Gwen Lister, sent repeated death threats.
The paper's barrister, Anton Lubowski, was assassinated in 1989, on the eve of independence, by a killer from a notorious apartheid death squad, the Civil Co-operation Bureau. In his confession, the killer said he had also been told to target Lister. No one took the Namibian more seriously than apartheid's security policemen.
In the mid-80s Namibia's tiny capital Windhoek was a back-water, but to the north of this huge semi-desert country the armies of apartheid were locked in two cruelly bitter wars. Deep in Angola the South African Defence Force was fighting, and losing, a desperate rearguard action against a Cuban expeditionary force equipped with the latest sophisticated Soviet fighters and air defence systems. Inside Namibia a vicious guerrilla counter-insurgency war was raging in which South African mercenaries "slotted" gooks and, like the ancient Romans, paraded their bodies as trophies through the surrounding villages. We did not know it but Pretoria's evil empire was falling.
What I did know was that it was great in that Namibian dawn to be a young journalist. I was 26. Every day I would get out of bed, shoulder my verbal armour, and go out to report and denounce the cruelties of South Africa's racist regime. The sun shone, the stories kept coming, and we would end our days jumping into suburban swimming pools, drinking cold beers or getting stoned on Natal grass.
In apartheid's final days, Namibia had one of the most complicated governments ever invented. Theoretically, there were nine governments to reflect the nine tribal groups that composed Namibia's 1.3m population. In reality, there was just one white colonial administrator and a row of "black puppets" in what was known derisively as the "so-called Transitional Government of National Unity", or TGNU for short. The whole thing was as unreal as a Hollywood stage set. All the puppets' offices, from the blond Afrikaner secretaries to the immaculate rosewood furniture, had the air of being props that could instantly be switched to the next location.
Equally strange was the composition of the local press, which included English, Afrikaans and German dailies with tiny circulations, and a weekly, the Windhoek Observer, that ran inquest photos of white suicide cases on the front page to fill space. I can still remember the sad, bloated face of one middle-aged German hausfrau staring out of the passenger window of the family car in which she had asphyxiated herself.
But apart from the Namibian, all toed the government line. The paper was and is the child of one woman, its editor Gwen Lister. Lister, a white South African with an Imelda Marcos-like love of good shoes and a 60-a-day cigarette habit, was the first real hero I ever met, and like all real heroes was a bad, mad and dangerous person to know. If she was ever afraid, then she did a good job of hiding it.
Lister had been pursued by the regime from paper to paper for her outspoken criticism until she had run out of papers to be sacked from. Her solution was to found the Namibian with money donated originally by the European Union as a "development project". The presses started rolling again, printing the truth about what was going on in Namibia under apartheid rule.
Independence came in 1990 and the Nambian went daily. A black Swapo government took power but, ironically, the Nambian, which had campaigned so vigorously for freedom, was soon cast again as the lone voice of opposition to the government.
"The Swapo government has failed to keep up with the idea that although we shared their aims for independence, we are an independent newspaper and our role now is to act as a watchdog scrutinising the actions of that government. In fairness they have never tried to clamp down but they attack us verbally almost on a daily basis," says Lister.
Instead of atrocities, the Namibian, under the slogan, "Telling it like it is", now reports on government corruption scandals, the sub-Saharan Aids crisis and the rumbling opposition to Swapo President Sam Nujoma's autocratic-style rule.
In peace the Namibian, run as a non-profit trust, has grown to become Namibia's biggest- selling newspaper with a staff of 100 and a daily circulation of 21,000 - a huge achievement given Namibia's literacy rate and immense distances. Financially the paper is self-sustaining and it has just celebrated its 15th birthday.
The existence of a small paper such as the Namibian, in the face of murder and bombing attacks, is a sweet reminder that sometimes even in the cynical world of journalism some dreams do come true. And that a small band of journalists committed to a dream of freedom can help make the world a better place.
