{"id":442308,"date":"2011-06-16T08:54:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-16T08:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/06\/16\/scrapbook-of-memories\/"},"modified":"2011-06-16T08:54:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-16T08:54:00","slug":"scrapbook-of-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/16\/scrapbook-of-memories\/","title":{"rendered":"Scrapbook of Memories"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Catherine Sasman<\/p>\n

15 June 2011<\/p>\n

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Forty years after her deportation from the country by the South African apartheid regime, Antoinette (Toni) Halberstadt returned to Namibia to share her scrapbook memories with her former students.<\/p>\n

FOUR months ago, the daughter of a former student of Antoinette (Toni) Halberstadt googled her mother’s name “out of sheer boredom”. She stumbled on a blog with the name ‘ghostbubble’ that Halberstadt had set up six years ago.<\/p>\n

The blog contains the names of pupils and seating plan of Halberstadt’s classes at the Odiba High School in 1971.<\/p>\n

What followed can only be described as fate. Halberstadt’s former student e-mailed her where she now lives in Canada, and invited her to celebrate the student’s 60th birthday with her in Namibia.<\/p>\n

And then the heavens conspired to get Halberstadt to Namibia. A colleague gave her 6 000 air miles, and the former student paid the rest of the way from Sweden to Namibia.<\/p>\n

Halberstadt returned to Namibia for the first time in 40 years, a country from which she was deported by the apartheid South African regime in 1972 together with the likes of Anglican Bishop Colin Winters, Steven Hayes and Dave de Beer.<\/p>\n

She came with a scrapbook under her arm that holds the memories of her short but profoundly changing time spent in northern Namibia.<\/p>\n

She had put together the scrapbook a year after her deportation. In it are black-and-white snapshots of the pupils and the mass strike action of 1972, news clippings of the deportations and other matters, a news bulletin the ‘Pink Press’ because it was written on pink paper, a petition drawn up by her students, the dreaded permits and deportation orders, letters and notes.<\/p>\n

It forms a personal and political account of a period of intensified clamour for political independence.<\/p>\n

“Six years ago when I again opened the scrapbook, which is now fading and disintegrating. I felt a combination of admiration for the bravery and idealism of my students at that time, while grieving the loss of those who died,” reminisced Halberstadt.<\/p>\n

She had put the names of her students in the blog because she felt that they deserve to be “memorialised”.<\/p>\n

In 1971 Halberstadt first came to Namibia – then South West Africa – as an idealistic young woman of 22 to teach in the north after being inspired by the work done here by Reverend Colin Winters, who was a fearless anti-apartheid activist and critic.<\/p>\n

As a white woman from South Africa, she got a six-month permit to be the principal and teacher of all subjects in Forms 1 and 2.<\/p>\n

The permit was issued by the then Department of Bantu Administration and Development, a requisite for whites entering “native areas”.<\/p>\n

On advice from Winter, she started teaching at Odibo where, as headmistress of the school, she had to teach all subjects in Form 1 and Form 2.<\/p>\n

The conditions were harsh and made more difficult with the political repression by the South African regime.<\/p>\n

After Halberstadt introduced her pupils to the encyclopaedia, they looked up the United Nations, and wrote a petition addressed to the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Netherlands, dated June 21, 1971.<\/p>\n

Thirty learners from Odibo and about 680 from a government school took part in a demonstration at the government offices at Ongwediva, and handed over the petition to two white men who claimed to have represented Jannie de Wet, the then Commissioner General of Ovamboland.<\/p>\n

In her notebook, Halberstadt scribbled that the white men would not believe that the pupils had drawn up the petition themselves.<\/p>\n

Ten plain-clothed policemen were circulating among the students, asked their opinions, and took pictures. The police then followed the pupils home, and started to bombard them with tear gas and rubber bullets.<\/p>\n

Many pupils got expelled from government schools for “talking politics” as activism heightened in schools.<\/p>\n

Some months later, in October 1971, the Minister of the Department of Bantu Administration and Development, M.C. Botha, opened the Ongwediva Training Centre, which was hailed in the newspapers as “the most outstanding building”. At the opening, Botha passionately spoke about education’s task to create responsibility and leadership, and the freeing of intellectual potential.<\/p>\n

Halberstadt is of the opinion that Botha was merely playing up to the television cameras of the international media.<\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter, on October 18, 1971, Halberstadt was expelled from Ovamboland for her purported instigation of the student demonstrations and petitions.<\/p>\n

She considered refusing to leave and get arrested, but a fellow teacher, 22-year-old Roger Key, prompted her to leave, fearing that it would spark further demonstrations with the consequence of pupils not being able to write their examinations.<\/p>\n

After her expulsion from Ovamboland, Halberstadt phoned and wrote a letter to M.C. Botha in Pretoria to ask why she was kicked out.<\/p>\n

In her letter to Botha, she reminded him of his “high-sounding” sentiments on education he expressed at the opening of the Ongwediva Training Centre.<\/p>\n

She wrote: “This is exactly what I have been trying to do, as I sincerely have the development of all peoples in South Africa at heart, especially the Ovambos, whom I have grown to love.”<\/p>\n

Through her persistent calls to Botha, she eventually got him on line, and repeated her question. After evading the question three times, said Halberstadt, there was a silent pause before Botha burst out screaming: “Miss Halberstadt, we never give reasons!”.<\/p>\n

In Windhoek, said Halberstadt, she “tried to make myself useful” by working at the Anglican Church and enlisted as a cub reporter at the Windhoek Advertiser under Hannes ‘Smithie’ Smith.<\/p>\n

In December 1971, there was a big strike when Oshivambo-speaking workers downed tools.<\/p>\n

One of Halberstadt’s memory of the strike is when workers were locked in compounds in Windhoek and given the ultimatum to return to work or return to their homeland.<\/p>\n

The workers decided to return home, and were taken back in trainloads. The returned workers arrived at Ongwediva the same time when scab workers from Angola arrived, and clashes ensued between the groups, “and things escalated from there”.<\/p>\n

Halberstadt’s first assignment at the Windhoek Advertiser was to report on a pastor who was being deported.<\/p>\n

To cover the story, she went to the airport from where he was flying out of the country, and took some “spontaneous and posed pictures” of the pastor and those that went to bade him farewell.<\/p>\n

This prompted the then editor of the Algemeine Zeitung, Kurt Dahlmann, to write an editorial in which he accused Halberstadt and Steven Hayes, who by then also worked at the Windhoek Advertiser, of supporting terrorism.<\/p>\n

Halberstadt wrote a letter to Dahlmann and demanded an apology and retraction. In response to the editorial, though, the Windhoek Advertiser’s advertisers refused to do business with the newspaper if Halberstadt and Hayes remain on the newspaper’s staff.<\/p>\n

Smithie, begrudgingly, let the two go, and Halberstadt returned to her family home in Johannesburg for Christmas.<\/p>\n

It was while she was in Johannesburg, that she learnt through the South African media that she was expelled from the then South West Africa as an “undesirable”, alongside Steven Hayes, Dave de Beer and Colin Winter.<\/p>\n

The Act on ‘undesirables’ was originally framed to get rid of prostitutes, but a day before they were issued with orders to leave, Parliament met and changed the proclamation to apply to those to be deported.<\/p>\n

Halberstadt was served with her deportation papers after returning from South Africa in a parking lot near the church where Winter made his last sermon. They all had to be out by March 5, 1972.<\/p>\n

They appealed the deportation orders in the Supreme Court on March 4, but after the judge patiently listened to their appeal, he responded that if a Minister had decided they are ‘undesirable’, then they are indeed ‘undesirable’.<\/p>\n

Halberstadt got married within six months of her deportation, and left South Africa for Canada with her British\/Canadian husband because she was fearful to bring up children in a country that might blow up in violent revolution.<\/p>\n

Colin Winter continued to petition for the independence of Namibia.<\/p>\n

Now in Namibia, Halberstadt would like to use a scrapbook to regain contact with her former students.<\/p>\n

Some of them include Olivia Kamati, Justina Hikumwa\/Paulus, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, Alfeus Kamati, Josephine Hamutenya, Lucas Kauiyu, Gideon Iileka, Hilka Joseph, Jonas Shafombabi, Timothy Hidimbwasha, Veronica Nainguedja, Joel Augongo, Julia Paulus, Monica Namweya, Olivia Haipinge, and others.<\/p>\n

Those wishing to contact Halberstadt can contact her at 0816974443 [number valid while she is in the country], or a.halber@telus.net.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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