Mburumba Kerina

Mburumba Kerina (born William Eric Getzen; 6 June 1932 – 14 June 2021) was a Namibian politician and academic.

He was a co-founder of SWAPO, NUDO, and FCN, and the founder of a host of smaller political parties.

For independent Namibia, he was a member of Namibia's Constituent Assembly, as well as the National Assembly and the National Council.

Kerina coined the name "Namib" for the independent state "Namibia" on the territory of South West Africa.

Kerina had Ovambo and Ovaherero ancestry, and was also a great-grandson of explorer and trader Frederick Thomas Green, from which he derived his surname (Kerina green).

Mburumba was born William Eric Getzen on 6 June 1932 in Tsumeb.

He grew up in Walvis Bay and went to school in Windhoek Old Location where he attended St Barnabas Anglican Church School.

While schooling he came into contact with Reverend Michael Scott, who would later enable him to study in the United States, and to become one of the early petitioners to the United Nations.

He went to the United States in 1953 and studied at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

From 1956 onwards, Kerina was among the first petitioners to the United Nations for Namibian independence on behalf of the Herero Chiefs' Council.

Other early petitioners besides Kerina and Scott were Hosea Kutako, Hans Beukes, Markus Kooper, Ismael Fortune, advocate Jariretundu Kozonguizi, and Namibia's founding President Sam Nujoma.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1957.

The year 1959 saw the establishment of two important Namibian black nationalist parties: the South West Africa National Union (SWANU) and the Ovamboland People's Organization (OPO).

SWANU had its base among the Herero population while OPO was founded as an organisation of the Ovambo people.

In December the Old Location Uprising in Windhoek gave the liberation struggle a different direction.

Following protests and an effective boycott of municipal services by Main Location residents, the police opened fire on the protesters, killing 11 and wounding 44 others.

A brother of Kerina was among those killed.

The event was one of the factors leading to the foundation of SWAPO by forcing community leaders from OPO into exile, including Sam Nujoma.

It is also probably one of the main reasons for SWAPO to have put less effort into petitioning and resistance, and to turn the independence struggle into an armed conflict.

Both OPO and SWANU soon realised that a broader group would serve the nationalist interests better.

Kerina then became a graduate fellow at New School for Social Research, New York, and between 1960 and 1962 did a PhD at Padjadjaran University in Bandung, Indonesia.

While in Indonesia, Kerina got an audience with then-president Sukarno, who, according to Kerina, agitated him to find a better name for the territory of South West Africa whose independence he was fighting for.

Kerina subsequently wrote an opinion piece in an Indonesian publication about a yet-to-be created country Namib and its nationalist movement, Namibianism.

The claim for Kerina to have coined the name "Namib" is widely recognised, while Sam Nujoma, Namibia's founding president, is more commonly credited with the name "Namibia".

SWANU founder Fanuel Kozonguizi and OPO leader Sam Nujoma discussed whether a merger of OPO and SWANU would achieve that result but Kerina's suggestion to expand OPO into the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) was implemented in 1960, mainly because SWANU did not have the full support of the Herero Chiefs' Council.

Kerina became one of SWAPO's co-founders, and is the person to have suggested the name.

The difference in preferred methods to lead the country to independence soon led to different factions within SWAPO.

Kerina was on the moderate side and disliked violence.

He was expelled in 1962 for publicly discussing the formation of a new party.

Morgan Norval writes:

"However, all was not well [...]. A growing rift was developing between the moderates and the hardliners. The hardliners, led by Nujoma, were insistent upon following the path of a war of liberation. They looked with disdain on those seeking a political solution to the independence question in Namibia."

In 1964 Kerina returned from the US for an unsuccessful attempt to enter Namibia.

He stayed in Bechuanaland (today Botswana) for a while but soon was expelled from there and moved to Tanzania.

In September 1965 the National Unity Democratic Organisation (NUDO) was founded by Kerina, Clemens Kapuuo, and Hosea Kutako.

NUDO at that time was an organisation that had mainly Herero followers.

It was created at the suggestion of the Herero Chiefs' Council.

In 1966 Kerina broke with the Herero Chiefs' Council (and by extension, NUDO) again.

That same year he established the South West Africa National United Front (SWANUF) in an attempt to unite SWANU and NUDO.

The attempt was unsuccessful; the two parties remained partly adversarial.

SWANUF ceased its activities at the end of the 1970s.