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- Convenor:
-
Christian Williams
(University of the Free State)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Chris Saunders
(University of Cape Town)
- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Flight and migration
- Location:
- Room 1231
- Sessions:
- Friday 10 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
The panel solicits papers that trace the lives of Southern African exiles/refugees and their interlocutors prior to and while residing in Europe from 1960 to 1990. Research on exiles' motivations for entering Europe and how they experienced and leveraged social relationships there are welcome.
Long Abstract:
From 1960 to 1990, thousands of people escaped Southern Africa's white minority regimes to seek refuge in countries beyond these regimes' grasp. Although their destinations varied, some eventually made their way to Europe. There they represented liberation movements and mobilized support for anti-colonial struggles from European metropolitan centers. They enrolled with scholarships at European universities. And, in the Eastern bloc, they received military training to prepare guerrilla armies for liberation wars in their respective countries.
Despite growing literature that traces such Southern African trajectories in Europe during this era, most of it is organized in terms of the historiography of widely recognized African liberation movements and of the European host governments and institutions that supported them. As a result, groups of displaced Southern Africans living in Europe, and dimensions of many of their lives, remain marginal to scholarship. It follows that what it meant to be an African "exile" or "refugee" is often assumed and continuities and ruptures in how Africans have experienced displacement in Europe over the past sixty years require examination. Similarly, European countries' records of anti-colonial "solidarity" tend to be oversimplified, obscuring the uneven, nodal quality of solidarity and how Africans experienced race in different European locations and across the Cold War divide.
The panel solicits papers that trace the lives of Southern African exiles/refugees and their interlocutors prior to and while residing in Europe from 1960 to 1990. Research on exiles' motivations for entering Europe and how they experienced and leveraged social relationships there are welcome.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 10 June, 2022, -Jéssica Höring (University of São Paulo)
Paper short abstract:
This proposal aims to analyze the role of exile politics in UNITA's trajectory before Angola’s Independence (1975). The goal is to understand the biographical pathways of Angolans associated with UNITA in Europe during the 1960s and their experiences of activism abroad.
Paper long abstract:
One of UNITA's foundational narratives states that the movement was conceived in Champex, Switzerland, in October 1964, by Jonas Savimbi and Tony da Costa Fernandes, while the former was finishing his university studies in Lausanne. Besides Jonas Savimbi, other Angolans who would later become key figures in UNITA were also studying or living in exile in European countries, as Jorge Sangumba and Jorge Alicerces Valentim. Despite the relevance of such encounters and experiences, there is an absence of studies on UNITA’s exile politics and the biographical trajectories of Galo Negro’s activists. It is interesting to note that although many UNITA’s activists were forced to live abroad, where they received assistance from institutions and individuals, after UNITA’s official foundation, in 1966, UNITA’s Kwacha-Angola propaganda bulletin criticized the other two Angolan anti-colonial movements (MPLA and FNLA) for their reliance on “exile politics”. To analyze the role of exile politics in UNITA’s foundation this paper will draw the biographical experiences of at least two members of the movement: Jonas Malheiro Savimbi, who was a student in Lausanne and later became UNITA’s President, and Jorge Alicerces Valentim, who as President of UNEA (National Union of Angolan Students), which was located in Leiden, supported and publicized UNITA’s activities among Angolans studying in Europe in the 1960s.
Justin Pearce (Stellenbosch University)
Paper short abstract:
The paper addresses how Angola's Cold War relations with Cuba & the Soviet Union were seen by officers & soldiers who studied abroad or interacted with advisors from abroad. Based on recent interviews, it analyses sometimes contradictory personal & political interests beneath stories of solidarity.
Paper long abstract:
Cuban and Soviet expertise were central to the security of the Angolan MPLA party-state, and to social and economic development. Complementing a literature that has centred the strategic and ideological priorities of Cuba and the USSR, this paper addresses how relations with socialist allies were seen by officers and soldiers of the MPLA’s armed forces, who studied abroad or interacted with advisors from Angola’s allied states, and the implication of this for the creation of an Angolan national identity.
Angolans who studied in the USSR saw the benefits of a technologically advanced society and recognised a connection between the Soviet resistance to Nazism, and an anti-colonial ideology that the MPLA defended. Those who had been in Cuba were shocked by the harshness of life there, which enhanced their admiration for the Cuban people but prompted doubts about the efficacy of the Cuban social model. Inside Angola, Soviet advisors were seen as culturally alien and bureaucratic, useful as instructors in using technology; by contrast, Angolans saw Cubans as culturally proximate, pragmatic and dedicated. Yet gratitude for solidarity was tempered by suspicion that both Cubans and Soviets had ulterior motives in Angola. Even as the MPLA remained aligned to the Eastern Bloc and its officers believed that they continued to wage an anti-colonial struggle, they recognised that socialism was a necessary gesture to cement foreign support – a belief that was accompanied by a deep suspicion of all politicians alongside a conviction of the moral and practical superiority of the military itself.
Anja Schade (University of Hildesheim)
Paper short abstract:
Many South African exiles had religious roots, but religion was under pressure in the GDR. I will argue that being in contact with East-German Christians, South Africans got a unique insight into inner-social tensions in the GDR and early realised social problems becoming crucial in 1989.
Paper long abstract:
Since the 1960s, the ANC received direct assistance from the Socialist Bloc. And socialist countries recognized the ANC rather as freedom fighters than as terrorists like the West. In publications on the ANC’s history and in autobiographies of ANC members, socialist states are therefore often presented as the “more natural place to be”.
Using personal interviews and archival documents as primary sources, my doctoral thesis uncovers diverse viewpoints and experiences of ANC exiles in East-Germany. Since they lived, worked and studied amongst and with their German fellows, they participated in a socialist everyday life and got insight into many spheres of the East-German society. In my paper, I’d like to focus on experiences of ANC-activists with the marginalised East-German protestant church. Mostly, ANC-members were seen as communists in the GDR. But for South Africans, religion and Marxist ideology sometimes went together and East-German church-structures played an important role for those South Africans with Christian roots. They took part in church-seminars and weekend-gatherings, they even married in a church. The East-German Gossner Mission hosted two South Africans. But reading their reports it becomes obvious, that due to their involvement in church-structures, South Africans early became aware of inner-East-German tensions that erupted in 1989.
Christian Williams (University of the Free State)
Paper short abstract:
By drawing attention to Salatiel Ailonga's Finnish exile, the paper examines a Namibian exile/refugee community that was estranged from SWAPO. Also, it traces solidarity work done at the margins of the global anti-apartheid movement.
Paper long abstract:
The paper examines the life of Salatiel Ailonga, a Namibian refugee pastor and a "dissident" of the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO), during his exile in Finland from 1976 to 1990. First, it traces Ailonga's solidarity work with Namibians detained in Zambia and Tanzania from 1976 to 1978, focusing on letters that he received and wrote on behalf of detainees. The letters were the product of interpersonal relationships formed between detained Namibians, the Ailongas, and their wider social networks, including church leaders and diplomats working beyond the policies of the institutions that employed them. From there, the paper turns to Ailonga's social world as a SWAPO dissident in Finland, highlighting the severe mistrust, isolation, and loneliness that he experienced there and the extent to which these experiences reflected his status as a dissident. Finally, the paper considers social relationships that sustained him in these circumstances, especially his friendship with the German Lutheran pastor Siegfried Groth. Together, Ailonga and Groth consolidated a global network of SWAPO dissidents. resulting in new flows of aid, knowledge, and identification among displaced Namibians. By drawing attention to Ailonga's Finnish exile, the paper examines an exile/refugee community that was estranged from a national liberation movement and solidarity work done at the margins of the global anti-apartheid movement. Moreover, it suggests the value of biography as a genre for challenging stereotypes and opening conversations about what it meant to be an exile/refugee or to do solidarity work during the late twentieth century.