A ‘Footnote’
Towards the end of my regular and direct involvement with the programme in Tanzania in 1991, I began more frequent collaboration with colleagues in London as a DPU Working Associate. There was growing interest in how better to define and address real needs in development. Evidence from too many failed initiatives around the world highlighted that the situation was actually aggravated in many instances and that development efforts were bypassing ‘poor and vulnerable’ groups. Specific groups of women and also men were being negatively impacted in many cases.
The Development Planning Unit (DPU) established a core group of trainers, developed a sound methodology, and found itself in huge demand for extensive staff training in development agencies and programme development in different countries. Namibia had just become independent, and there was considerable effort and donor resources to ensure that a gender perspective was integrated into new policies, programmes, and projects. Over two years, my friend Caren Levy and I undertook three or four visits a year, running training programmes across all sectors and working with government ministries, NGOs, donors, and research institutions—a very productive and effective period.
Following one of these visits, I flew from Windhoek to Luanda, the once-beautiful but war-torn capital of Angola, where Ronald met me, and we travelled south in a UN cargo plane to Menongue, where he was based in a recently established peace-keeping mission.
I had a strong sense of cognitive dissonance among the men and women whom I met there, living in their UN tents and under ‘hardship mission’ conditions. Ronald had a room in the building serving as the office, but that did not mean any extra comfort. A great plastic water ‘bladder’ had been transported somehow and lay bloated in the weeds outside, providing a source for basic ablutions. A generator kept up a steady hum, facilitating basic office functions, radio communications, and dull lighting. Alfonse, an Angolan who had lost all the members of his family, was the cook overseeing the ‘pantry’, which was bleak. It was stocked with food rations, huge sacks with WFP stamped on them for use in humanitarian missions. The sacks of rice had been sprayed with something toxic to control the population of weevils, and no amount of the wild greens carefully scavenged from the desolate surroundings and prepared with care by Alfonse could hide the taste in the staple meal which everyone gathered to share each night.
And then, there was the shooting. At night, in the vicinity, sometimes the gunshots seemed very close. I might have voiced some of my apprehension quietly to Ronald before I left Menongue, having seen the arrival that morning of a group of young men. They were dressed stylishly and swaggered with a sense of bravado. I learnt later these were the self-styled ‘Ninjas’, part of Savimbi’s destabilisation efforts. I had felt a profound sense of unease when I saw them.
But calmly, quietly, Ronald said:
“We have to believe that peace is possible. We have to act as if it already exists.”
But, flying away from Menongue and leaving my husband and partner standing amidst the ruins and tattered children, I wondered. In fact, it would be three months until we would see each other again.
***
The scene, imagine the scene…
We are seated across the thick cherry wood plank, on trestles, which serves as our dining room table in our kitchen in Nyon. We found this beautiful piece of wood in a brocante and carried it home on a tram across Geneva when we arrived in 1983. There are moments when twelve friends have squeezed around it. Now it is Ronald and I, alone and facing each other.
It has been three months since we saw each other last, after I visited him in Menongue in southern Angola, where the UN had established a peace-building presence. During this time, Ronald had been under siege in Huambo as the civil war had restarted after a short respite soon after I left and returned to Namibia. We had had one radio conversation about six weeks ago, facilitated by Radio Berne, who had interpreted Ronald’s words for me as his voice faded out frequently. At its conclusion, when all I could hear was fuzz, a closer voice with a Swiss German accent said, “He says he loves you…” “Oh, merci,” I said and hung up slowly, reflecting on the thin radio waves of communication which had linked me to Ronald for this brief but significant moment.
Now, I reach out my hands to hold his. “I am sooo pleased to have you home…”
“Yes…” he mused, looking out beyond me, somewhere else, revisiting something in his memory… recent memories. He got up and disappeared into the study, returning with his silver metallic attaché case, the kind that peace diplomats and humanitarian workers carry around with them in conflict and post-conflict peace-building missions. He stood it on the table and then turned it round with a gaping wound along its surface facing me. I examined the straight line which had been prised open through the metal, the lips of the wound curling back and exposing the interior through the slit. It felt brutal, a violation.
“I was sitting next to this,” he said quietly, patting the chair next to his thigh.
“…in a helicopter, being flown to Luanda from Menongue by two Russian pilots.”
I was silent, imagining the scene. “We were flying over Savimbi’s headquarters… there was a loud bang… and the cockpit started to fill with fuel. …I lifted my feet as it sloshed around, and we spiralled downwards and landed in an open field. Actually, we crashed.”
During these words, I had become cold, chilled with the images evoked in these simple sentences. Ronald did not waste words, just the essential information delivered in a calm, matter-of-fact transmission. Almost no emotion.
“You were sitting… next to this…?” I asked, letting the picture settle, seeing the bullet penetrate the fuselage, move up through the seat he sat on, enter the attaché case at one end and rip along its surface, violently, exiting…where? Lodging itself somewhere…
“The UN headquarters in Luanda failed to notify Savimbi’s base that our helicopter would enter its vicinity. So, they shot us down.”
I probed further, and a few more details emerged. UNITA soldiers came to the field with Kalashnikovs, with the intention to blow up the helicopter, pretending it had crashed and exploded. Words to this effect had been deciphered over the pilot’s radio in the moments before the crash. Ronald’s first impulse had been to photograph the event, then realising it was possibly unwise as the UNITA men in uniforms arrived. Hating Russian support for the MPLA, the soldiers started kicking and beating up the two shaken Russian pilots. Ronald was the only passenger and stood to the side, with his red Swiss passport and his blue UN Laisser Passer clearly visible.
A small man with a withered arm led this group: General Bok, Savimbi’s second-in-command, his notorious personal assassin responsible for getting rid of any threat to Savimbi’s power. General Bok stood sizing up Ronald, sizing up General Bok, who reached out for Ronald’s documents. They were effectively going to be taken as prisoners. The two Russians doubled up on the ground and Ronald, standing his.
In an inspired moment, with total clarity, Ronald said to General Bok:
“In terms of the Geneva Convention, we are now under your protection.”
The small man, his power thus acknowledged and endorsed with these words from the quiet Swiss diplomat, stood taller, and the three men, essentially prisoners, were led away from the site of the crash, fuel leaking out dangerously, to a more comfortable outcome and a handover to the UN.
An added irony – this field now hosting the crippled helicopter had recently hosted a visit from the Pope, as he celebrated mass for thousands of young people who have never known peace or the absence of civil war in their lifetimes.
A Namibian friend, who had been a freedom fighter with SWAPO, on hearing of this incident, said knowingly, “Ronald, you have understood the essence of power. Recognising General Bok’s ‘power’ in the way you did, not only saved the situation for the Russian pilots but turned everything around, calling on General Bok to act from a higher place, as a protector of prisoners.”
If my husband had lived to write his memoirs, I have a strong sense that this entire episode might have received a couple of lines, if inserted in the text at all, or perhaps might have only been a footnote.