Changing constructions of Germanness in Namibia: The “GDR Kids”

• Main Author: Owens, Jason Paul
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2001
• Subjects: African history; Ethnic studies; Language; Minority & ethnic groups; Modern language; Sociology
• ISBN: 0493368094; 9780493368092

This study investigates the background, outlook and composition of the German-speaking community in Namibia and how it—and the connotations that the concept of Germanness itself carries in Namibia—were shaped by the arrival in 1990 of the “GDR Kids.” These 428 black Namibian children were so named because they had spent much of their childhood in East Germany, i.e. the German Democratic Republic. Many were orphans; some had seen the effects of war first-hand during the South African attack on their refugee camp at Cassinga, Angola. The Marxist East German SED government housed them in a renovated palace and educated them to return and fight for Namibia's independence under the armed liberation movement SWAPO, the South West African People's Organisation. Apart from news articles, no literature about the GDR Kids' return existed at the time this study began. This study's interdisciplinary approach included participant observation at the GDR Kids' weekly Jugendklub, interviews with Germans and Namibians responsible for the children, and analysis of the media attention they received as well as writings by the GDR Kids themselves. These complemented texts on the history and attributes of German-speakers from the colonial German South West Africa period to the present. The GDR Kids' deracination and socialist education led both to their longing to return to East Germany and their feeling alienated from the social and material culture of their Oshiwambo-speaking extended families, which heightened intergenerational conflicts. As adolescents, they were old enough to have fully adopted German culture, yet young enough to evoke sympathy less frequently granted to adults. Furthermore, their arrival coincided with the shift of political power from an apartheid occupying regime to multi-racial self-governance and calls for multiculturalism. The GDR Kids seemed more familiar to Namibia's ethnic Germans and thus served to facilitate the integration of Namibia's German language schools and other institutions including the media, which granted them more coverage than other elements of the Namibian diaspora. The GDR Kids blur traditional distinctions while simultaneously elucidating several facets of language- and race-based identity in Southern Africa and Central Europe.