Thinking and writing liberation politics – a review article of: Hans Beukes, Long Road to Liberation. An Exiled Namibian Activist’s Perspective

Abstract

Thinking and Writing Liberation Politics is a review article of: Hans Beukes, Long Road to Liberation. An Exiled Namibian Activist’s Perspective; with an introduction by Professor Mburumba Kerina, Johannesburg, Porcupine Press, 2014. 376 pages, appendices, photographs, index of names. ISBN: 978-1-920609-71-9. The article argues that Long Road to Liberation, being a rich, diverse, uneven memoir of an exiled Namibian activist, offers a sobering and critical account of the limits of liberation politics, of the legacies of a protracted struggle to bring Namibia to independence and of the imprint the struggle left on the political terrain of the independent state. But, it remains the perspective of an individual activist, who on account of his personal experiences and long absence from the country of his birth, at times, paints a fairly superficial picture of many internal events in the country