My friend Jane Katjavivi, who has died aged 69 after a short bout of ill-health, dedicated her life to Namibia. She and I first met in the 1970s when we were both working in the London office of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo), the liberation movement fighting to end South Africa’s illegal occupation of South West Africa.
Swapo later formed the government of independent Namibia. After moving to the country at independence, Jane forged a unique role for herself. Six months after she arrived she started the first Namibian publishing house – New Namibia Books.
Jane was born in Leeds, one of four children of John Coles, a paper merchant, and his wife, Rosina (nee Pocock). She grew up in a family whose strong Christian ethics influenced her for the rest of her life.
On leaving Leeds girls’ high school, she began undergraduate studies in English literature at the University of Sussex, in the School of African and Asian Studies, later completing a master’s degree in African studies at Birmingham University. These studies, and a year as scholarship officer for the World University Service, an NGO that campaigned for racial and social justice, set her on her course.
In 1976 Jane went to work as information officer in Swapo’s small London office with Peter Katjavivi, its representative in UK and Europe. Work was intense with many crises at the height of the liberation struggle. Along the way, Jane and Peter fell in love, and in 1980 they moved to Oxford for Peter’s doctorate. They married in 1981 and a few years later their son Perivi was born.
Peter’s university appointments took their family to Finland and the US, where their daughter, Isabel, was born, before they moved to Namibia for independence elections in 1989.
Jane’s publishing house successfully championed Namibian and African authors, especially giving a voice to women. Though publishers elsewhere warned her the market in Namibia was too small, Jane’s bestsellers included Last Steps to Uhuru by David Lush (1993) and The Price of Freedom by Ellen Ndeshi Namhila (1997). In 1994 she opened the busy New Namibia Bookshop in Windhoek.
A member of the Communist party in her youth, Jane nonetheless moved seamlessly into new roles, as Peter became an MP, the founding chancellor of the University of Namibia, an ambassador, and the speaker of the National Assembly. As with everything, Jane performed with dedication and panache.
The irony of the anti-colonial campaigner becoming wife of an ambassador in Brussels and Berlin, at the heart of colonial Europe, was not lost on her. As a radical young woman in London, she had probably imagined a different kind of life – but she never lost her core political values.
In 2008, returning from Europe, Jane founded the University of Namibia’s publishing arm – an important and lasting legacy. She never stopped making things happen to help build the new Namibia. She combined this successfully with being a wife, mother and grandmother.
She is survived by Peter, their children, and her siblings, Sarah, John and Helen.
