have the great gift to be a good doctor, since you are a good human being with an open mind for the needs of the people”, I said. The young colleague stood up and expressed his wish of keeping in contact. “I will write you, but now I thank you for all that you have done for me. I wish you the best for the future. The change is visible that it will come soon.” I accompanied the young colleague to the gate where we gave each other the hand and said goodbye.
The three Casspirs were mud-dirty when they returned from the veld with the sitting-up squads and took the sharp right curve in front of the gate on the way back to the camp. The young colleague passed the place between flat and guesthouse when we greeted each other the last time before he disappeared on the sandy path between bushes and trees. I closed the gate and went back to the flat. I leant the verandah door by and went to the kitchen for a cup of instant coffee with the chicory supplement and put the cup on the verandah table. I took a seat on the verandah chair at the verandah table in the small sitting room and lit up a cigarette and read the young colleague’s words of farewell again.
This poem arose from a deep-rooted humanity that the reading moved my mind. I learnt the wording and had it in my mind after the seventh reading. The poem had a melancholic pensiveness especially in the saying: “Now I go back to a place where things are white” and “because skin colour should not make the differnce if it comes to honesty and human caring”. In the reflection it became clear that a long way had to be gone, since racial segregation went deep into the blood of the blacks and deep into the dried-up mud and other crusts. Hunger, poverty and indignity of the blacks and the privileges and preferences in life for whites, both had lasted too long and had created a deep valley of injustice and inhumanity.
But the time has come that more whites packed their bags and boxes for the departure to Windhoek and the coastal towns of Swakopmund, Walvisbay or Hentiesbay. Others went deeper to the south like the Free-State in South Africa where the communities were still and mainly white, while the ‘black masts’ were in sight in the far north. People were also packing things into their bags and boxes what did not belong to them and were registered with the Bantu-administration that had given up control and responsibility to its greatest extent. Things like porcelain, tea and kitchen things, and bed linen, sheets and towels were moved from the north to the south despite the washing-proof marks ‘SWAA’ [South West Africa Administration]. There was no order neither in the region nor in the white run administration that things started moving away from the north.
Everyone had the storm clouds of change in his and her eyes and in mind that the empty bags were filled for the way into an uncertain future. The system of injustice and white superiority reacted indulgently to the whites who took everything for granted and took with as much as possible on their final trip to the south. It were the desk sitters with the meaningless faces and short necks and bulging buttocks on the lower and middle floors, and the masterminds with the sphere or cube heads on the top floors in the pyramidal administration buildings, and all of them were trained in the ‘pretorianic’ view through the windows at the south front, and all of them had followed the ‘pretorianic’ instructions and orders through the years without any criticism and hesitation and without any self-criticism.
These opportunistic sitters and nonsense writers started thinking how they would survive and rather change smoothly from one system into the other system with keeping the ‘sit-out’ salaries and the additional allowances on the same level. Administration sitters had no illusion that the white era was running out and the window view had to be changed from the south to the north, what had to be exercised and practised accordingly in the same opportunistic manner. The ideal situation was thought in this way that the whole pyramid tower got turned of one hundred and eighty degrees, since in the old time there were no windows at the north side of the pyramid according to the ‘pretorianic’ architecture. This shortsightedness of the running-out system was one essential part of the design and architecture and the change from white to black was not expected.
Now and under the storm clouds it had been revealed that the old window placements were wrong and no longer suitable that all the desk sitters in the various floors of the white administration started exercising the turning and nodding movements with the cube heads on the broad and short necks to the other side in becoming a smooth turncoat for the new system at the right time. Views and thinking had to be changed into the opposite direction. It had to go to the north to the Angolan border where the Ovambos would come back from exile with the PLAN [people’s liberation army of Namibia] fighters on the Soviet and East-German military vehicles, the howitzers and Stalin organs and tanks of the outdated Soviet T-series. Vast amounts of Kalashnikovs were expected to cross the border as well.
The long-term objective of the promoted administration sitters remained the comfortable life behind the big desk on an upholstered swivel chair with a high backrest in an air-conditioned office with little and meaningless work of little responsibility, but for a high-responsibility salary with all the plus-allowances like in the white-run system before. The old tradition should remain that an attractive secretary should serve the tea with some snacks and something else. Also in future she shall deny the presence of the ‘overworked boss’ with the stereotype that he is hindered or in a long-lasting meeting, while he reads the newspaper or picks his nose with a look through the window or makes some private calls or other things. The change from one system to another system should be not more than a routine change when only the skin colour of the superior has changed. It should not compromise the life with its regular payments of the monthly salaries and the various extras and the certainty of a good medical aid and a good pension. The administration people exercised therefore the turning and nodding movements of their heads and minds right in time to be ready as turncoats for the big swing from the old system into the new system which always requires some unscrupulous skills as well.
The time has come for the turning and nodding movements of the necks and the brains with the ‘black masts’ in sight. It became a kind of slogan: “Black up!”, which hammered in the administration heads with the good noses for the ‘smell’ of the upcoming political and socio-economical changes going with the timely turned opportunistic skills. On top of the Bantu-administration and above of the white ‘Sekretaris’ was [more for optical reason] the black ‘prime minister’ with a few black resort ministers who officially were not members of Swapo. The ‘prime minister’ was leader of a regional Ovamboland party which had parted from the ‘Turnhalle Alliance’. The parties of the alliance had moderate programs and consisted of black people of other tribes as well as of white people who did not categorically reject the colour bar and cooperated with the white administration by following the ‘pretorianic’ instructions of the South African administrator general who got his instructions from the power centre in Pretoria or directly from the South African president. [The former Ovambo-minister of trade was a well known businessman in that time whose warehouses were left out from getting blown up and burnt down. He disclosed in a newspaper after independence that he was a registered Swapo-member since many years.]
Dr Nestor became the first black superintendent in the history of the hospital
That the ‘black masts’ came closer to the political scene, it became evident when Dr Nestor in a dark jacket and trousers with a blue shirt and open collar sat as the first black superintendent in the history of the hospital one Monday on the swivel chair behind the large desk. The desk was moved to the opposite site in the room where it was when Dr Witthuhn was the civilian superintendent. The white pale-faced doctor with the bulging pockets on his linen jacket was removed from this post overnight as fast as he had become the short-term superintendent. I entered the room for the morning meeting when I saw as the first this remarkable change which I recognized as a good development and congratulated Nestor for his new position. We had a short chat in which the new superintendent mentioned that Dr Witthuhn would become the acting medical director, though the white ‘Sekretaris’ of the Bantu-administration had offered him the post what he had rejected due to the commitments and
