Tribute to an Anarchist

The unexpected death of Ian Liebenberg on 11 October terminated a life grounded in the belief and hope that open conversation may continue – a conversa continua.

Ian understood that it is the free mind that ennobles, not the blood.

ANARCHIST AT HEART

At heart Ian was an anarchist in the sense that he affirmed freedom, justice, equality and human well-being as basic values.

In common with other anarchists, he attacked the state as inconsistent with freedom, justice, equality and human well-being.

He spoke of the ‘smoke and mirrors’ of the state and its agent, the government, and proposed direct democracy as an alternative for building a more humane society without the state.

As a political theory anarchism may at present not be widely held, but it continues to serve as an important basis for the critique of different forms of authoritarianism and as a continuing reminder of the need to justify existing institutions and policies.

Ian drank from more than one font.

He was at once an anarchist and a passionate proponent of the social spirituality of the late German theologian, Dorothee Sölle (1929-2003), and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s (1906-1945) understanding of the ‘confessing church’.

Both Sölle and Bonhoeffer dedicated their lives to the integration of politics with ethics and theology.

Apart from history, politics, philosophy and sociology, Ian also dubbed in theology, hence his familiarity with the work of a range of theologians and his deep interest in reconciliation and telling the truth.

Born in 1960 in Keidebees (now part of Upington), Ian learnt from an early age to consult nature as the true law, for to command nature one must obey it.

THE POWER OF NATURE

The power of nature was his book of knowledge.

He loved the Northern Cape and Namibia, for nature obeys necessity and does not lie.

In his life there were no boundaries – natural, racial or social – between the Northern Cape and southern Namibia.

Since his return to Namibia to take up a professorship in politics at the University of Namibia (Unam) in February 2020, where he lectured, used and asserted his own reflective reason until shortly before his demise, Namibia loomed ever-larger in his existential being.

During his stint at Unam, Ian and I explored and enjoyed the naked beauty of the Khomas Highlands, inclusive of Hornkranz, the dominion of the dead, where, in the words of Walter Benjamin, “the construction of history is consecrated to the memory of the nameless”.

As a military historian, Ian read history from below.

His archaeology was a deep history, based on the geology of springs, sunken spaces, rivers of lamentation and blood, burials and battle fields within which individual agency was key as in the historiography of Michael Max Paul Zeuske in his life histories of enslaved people and slave traders.

Zeuske left more than a passing imprint on Ian’s work on the South African War (previously called ‘The Anglo-Boer War’) and his edited volume on the more recent War of Liberation in Angola and northern Namibia.

At the time of his death, I had the distinct pleasure and honour to collaborate with Ian and his co-authors on both of these book projects.

PERSON OF MANY SEASONS

Ian was a person of many seasons.

He had a lively interest in art, literature, crafted poems, published autobiographical short stories and researched the role of the arts in the struggle for democracy, mostly during the turbulent 1980s in South Africa and beyond.

He valued cultural freedom and engaged critically with Albie Sachs’ paper ‘Preparing Ourselves for Freedom’.

For a time, Ian lived in a community of creatives near Stellenbosch.

Among these, Hardy Botha stood out as a creative artist.

In the mid-1980s Ian was a civilian officer in the former South African Defence Force (SADF) in northern Namibia.

This experience left a permanent marker on his person and his soul and primed his deep love for Cuba and Namibia and their people.

For Ian, Fidel Castro was the incarnation of a legendary hero surrounded by an aura of magic, a bearded Parsifal who had brought deliverance to an ailing Cuba unjustly under boycott form a hegemonic United States empire.

This was the start of a life-long, deeply personal relationship with Cuba.

Ian visited Cuba on more than one occasion. To him Cuba signified the spirit of exaltation and hope in the face of American-led injustice.

At the time, Ian also developed enduring friendships and intellectual relations with a number of prominent Russian intellectuals and researchers.

What is popularly called ‘the Bush War’ taught him that divisions do not originate in the love of truth, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy.

SCARS OF WAR

The war also left its own scars in the form of post-traumatic stress and dogged depression that stayed with him for the rest of his eventful life.

In July 1987 Ian, then a student at the University of Stellenbosch, attended the formative Dakar Meeting organised by the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (Idasa), that made it possible for a diverse group of Afrikaner intellectuals, business people and journalists to meet with a 17-person African National Congress (ANC) delegation in exile.

Notwithstanding its limitations, Dakar affirmed the value and necessity for open dialogue as a means towards breaking the dead-end violence and inhumanity of apartheid.

The 10-point Dakar Declaration/Communique issued after the Idasa-organised conference with the ANC in Dakar provides a succinct summary of the very process of history that were to shape subsequent engagements with the ANC.

In retrospect, there was also a link between Dakar and the ANC’s 1989 Harare Declaration that crystalised the former liberation movement’s position on negotiations with the former South African regime.

As a student of politics and society, Ian rejected the one-dimensional in his activism, agency, literature and academic writing, preferring instead the non-racialism of the United Democratic Front (UDF) to the more canonical ANC with what Albie Sachs called “solemn formulas of commitment”.

His parameters were broad. He recognised idiosyncrasies – including his own – steering clear from the bourgeois pretence at total tolerance.

ACADEMIC CAREER

Ian’s academic career had its own trajectory.

He held degrees from the Universities of Stellenbosch, Western Cape and the University of South Africa (Unisa); and lectured on sociology at Unisa; worked as a researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria, South Africa; was the director of research at Idasa (1989-1990); spent several years at the Faculty of Military Science in Saldanha; and lectured at Unam in the Military School and the Department of Political and Administrative Studies.

His diverse research interests included, among others, the study of ideology, defence diplomacy, military history, the ‘Bush War’ in Angola and Namibia, the Anglo-Boer War (the South African War), transitions to democracy, reconciliation and global politics, and found expression in an impressive list of publications – edited books, scholarly journals, conference reports, creative writing.

MORAL ACTIVIST

Ian was, as my close friend and colleague Piet van Rooyen reminded us, “a moral activist” of cosmopolitan bent.

Ian leaves his wife, Mariaan Roos, a son named I-Ben Mangeliso after the second name of Robert Sobukwe, the late founder of the Pan-African Congress (PAC) in 1959, and a married daughter, Marlene.

As an active member of an extensive epistemic network, Ian left his friends and former students with the imperative that freedom of judgement should be granted, so that people may live together in harmony – however diverse or even openly contradictory their opinions may be.
Adieu, Ian!