A SOUTH African-born Anglican priest whose anti-apartheid work in Namibia led to his deportation in the late 1970s has died.
Edward Sydney Morrow died at his home in Bromley, south London,
last week after a long struggle with cancer. He was 69 years old.
Morrow was born on July 30, 1934, in Brakpan, on the East Rand,
South Africa. He was the last of seven children. He trained as a quantity surveyor and architectural draftsman.
After a meeting with another of South West Africa's anti-apartheid
clerics, Anglican Bishop Colin Winter, Morrow was invited to become a missionary
builder in the Diocese of Damaraland, now Namibia. He came to Namibia with his wife Laureen in 1971 and set up a church building company called Noki.
His work earned him the name of Tate Noki from many Namibians. After two years, Morrow went to Queen's College in Birmingham,
United Kingdom, to read theology.
He was ordained a priest in 1975 and returned to Namibia. Morrow became Vicar-General of the Anglican Church in Namibia
following the deportation of Bishop Winter and Bishop Richard Wood. His position brought
him into contact with torture victims of the Apartheid forces.
Under his leadership the Anglican Church defended and acted on
behalf of those detained without trial, provided legal assistance for those who were
brought to court, organised visits to political prisoners and offered pastoral and
practical care for their relatives.
Morrow was at the heart of this work and also helped Namibians skip
the country for exile, including at least one prominent Swapo leader.
Businessman Aaron Mushimba remembers him as having assisted people
detained because of their Swapo activities.
"He was a helpful somebody who has been standing up with us during
that time," said Mushimba, recalling his experiences as a political prisoner.
In July 1978 Morrow was deported as an "undesirable" element.
He worked in Swaziland, Zimbabwe, after that country's independence
in 1980, and South Africa.
But he also continued to work closely with Namibians.
In 1987 he set up the Namibian Chaplaincy in Europe at the request
of Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican bishops in Namibia.
He and Laureen ran a house in London that provided "pastoral care,
hospitality and accommodation to Namibians in exile", said Helle Jensen, who worked
closely with him for several years.
He served on the management committee of Church Action on Namibia -
the main church group campaigning for independence in the UK - in the late 1980s.
Ten years after his deportation, he was finally granted a visitor's
visa.
In September 1989 he met with United Nations Transitional
Assistance Group (Untag) representatives in Namibia.
Following Namibia's independence he was appointed Vicar at St
Thomas's parish in the East End of London where he served for 8 years, while continuing
his care and concern for Namibians.
In 1997 Morrow was one of the founders of the Friends of Namibia
Society in the UK, serving as vice chairman and then chairman until 2002.
Between 1998 and 2003, his final five years of his ministry, he was
Chaplain and Clerk to the Trustee at Bromley and Sheppards Colleges - ancient
almshouses providing sheltered accommodation for retired clergy and clergy widows.
Illness forced his retirement at the end of March this year.
He died on August 13.
* A book of condolences has been opened at the Anglican Diocesan office on Robert Mugabe Avenue, Windhoek.
Trevor J Stone
It was with very great sadness that we heard of the death of Ed Morrow, founder member of the Friends of Namibia in 1997, and first Vice Chair and then Chair of the Society until his retirement in November 2002. He died on 13 August at his home in Beckenham after suffering from cancer.
Over the years he has served Namibia in many capacities and the two obituaries from the British press reproduced below - one by Randolph Vigne, first Chair of the Friends, and the other by Denis Herbstein, another founder member of the Society - indicate the important contribution he made in working for justice and freedom in Namibia and caring for and serving Namibians both inside and outside the country - a task he continued in his dedicated work for the Friends and in keeping the Society going at times when it was in danger of flagging.
Many of us who have known him over the years have lost a very dear friend - and it is clear from the hundreds of tributes, letters and cards which poured in from all parts of the world following his death that he was held in great respect and affection wherever he had worked. His funeral mass at Bromley Parish Church on 27 August also testified to the love and affection people had for him. The Anglican bishop of Namibia, Shihala Hamupembe, flew over to preach, the Namibian High Commissioner in the UK, Mrs Monica Nashandi, attended and the church was packed with friends, former colleagues and parishioners who all sang their hearts out in a very strong and affirming service. A book of condolence was opened in Windhoek and a memorial service held in Katutura on 3 September where friends and colleagues in Namibia also had the opportunity to pay their respects to Ed's memory.
Ed was always a man of principle and integrity but remained very modest and unassuming. As he was approaching retirement a number of people suggested he should now take the opportunity to write down his memoirs of what had been a very remarkable life. But, in addition to ill health by this time hindering him from taking on such a task, he was not himself convinced and, as he and Laureen 'downsized' their possessions to move into their retirement flat, he threw out all his old diaries and most of the papers and records collected over the years. His work had been as a priest ministering to other people and he left the writing of history to others.
Always good company, with a great sense of humour and fun, Ed also had a creative and artistic side which he had only begun to cultivate in recent years. While he had always enjoyed music, especially jazz and classical, a few years ago he confessed he had always wanted to play the piano so his family clubbed together and bought him a keyboard one Christmas. He started as a complete novice, having never heard of middle C, but with a disciplined regime, getting up early each morning to practise before starting work, he began to master the keyboard and gradually built up his repertoire to include quite complex pieces, ranging from hymns to pop songs, and popular classics to jazz. More recently still he took up drawing and painting and demonstrated considerable natural talent, particularly working in pastels and charcoal and winning awards when he entered some of his work in a local amateur art exhibition. He had been looking forward to spending more time on these two hobbies - as well as playing more golf - during retirement, but this, unfortunately, was not to be.
Ed was a devoted family man and he and Laureen always worked very much as a mutually supportive team. He was very proud of their daughter Lydia, especially when she followed her father's technical bent and chose to study engineering at university. When, after years of being refused re-entry to Namibia, he was offered a job there at independence there was no funding allowed for Laureen and Lydia - so, rather than be separated from them, Ed chose to return to be with the family in the UK and take a job there. While in Swaziland, the Morrows also fostered a little girl, Constance (Connie), helped her through her schooling and have always regarded her as an integral part of the family. Last year Connie's husband, Jabu, came to the UK to study, bringing the family with him and giving Ed and Laureen an opportunity to enjoy their grandchildren, Nonduduza aged 5 and Bhekwayinkosi aged 3.
It is to Laureen, Lydia and Constance and her family that we send our love, sympathy and condolences at this painful time. Ed will be greatly missed by his many friends.
Donations in Ed's memory are to be sent to the Anglican church's AIDS programme in Namibia, which runs a terminal care ward at Odibo Health Centre in the north of the country and also, with the assistance of teams of specially trained volunteers, offers palliative care to HIV/AIDS patients and their families in their homes. Laureen has asked the Friends to administer this collection for her. Please email us if you would like details on how to donate.
Margaret Lipscomb
From The Independent, 26 August 2003
Ed Morrow was the last in a great tradition of Anglican priests who helped the people of Namibia to freedom from particularly brutal colonial rule – German followed by South African.
From the Revds Michael Scott, who confronted the infant UN with its South West African duty, and Theophilus Hamutumbangela, who stood up against apartheid oppression internally, to the deported Bishops Mize, Winter and Wood, the Anglican leadership became a thorn in apartheid South Africa’s side. Morrow was recruited to the territory in 1971 by the fiery and flamboyant Colin Winter (they met in the house of Alan Paton in Natal) to build schools and churches for the diocese, and went on to train for the ministry at Queen’s College, Birmingham, all Anglican seminaries in South Africa then being segregated by law.
Ordained in 1975, he returned to Windhoek on the eve of Richard Wood’s deportation, as Bishop Winter had been three years before. The intense harassment that followed did not deter Morrow from ceaseless pastoral work and from holding together a church divided between its white membership, willing to compromise with the South African administration, and the great majority of indigenous worshippers, mainly in the north, absolute, as he was, in its rejection of apartheid rule in defiance of the UN.
There followed three years in the eye of the storm, with Morrow heading the Anglican Church as Vicar-General. Succouring the victims of torture and political repression, giving sanctuary to Security Police targets, such as David Meroro, national chairman of SWAPO, and aiding his escape abroad, channelling funds for political trials and to support dependants of the accused, briefing journalists, politicians and church visitors from abroad.
In the false dawn in 1975, when Andrew Young for the US and David Owen, British Foreign Secretary, led South Africa’s trading partners in a near-miss attempt to effect South African withdrawal, he brought spokesmen from SWAPO and other groups and the Western ‘Contact Group’ together, free of a South African presence. He took the fight into South Africa itself, with, inter alia, a public lecture in Cape Town, on torture, and a meeting with the opposition Progressive Party, who disappointingly refused to oppose South Africa’s ‘internal settlement’ scheme to buy off a UN take-over. It was probably the latter, and the imminence of local elections, that led to the promulgation in 1978 of ‘AG 50’, an edict to legalize the expulsion, in seven days, of the Morrows, South African citizens unlike Winter, Wood and other earlier deportees. The Morrows flew to England, since South Africa would inevitably have meant house arrest. The work for freedom and justice of this most modest, unassuming yet dedicated of men was to continue in exile.
Ed Morrow was no stranger to Afrikaner Nationalist thug tactics. With his South African born parents and six siblings he had left his birthplace, Brakpan, as a child when his father came back from the Second World War, to be hounded by local pro-Nazis. He went through technical school in Durban (meeting his only girl friend, and future wife Laureen on the school bus), did his builder’s apprenticeship, qualified and ran his own construction company. Loathing of apartheid and the meeting with Colin Winter changed all that and led to his great contribution of later years.
Exile did not end his Namibian connexion, though for five years he worked in Swaziland, at the Usuthu Mission, and in immediately post-independence Zimbabwe, building schools for 10,000 returned refugee children, doubling as university chaplain in Harare. Local petitions to successive South African Administrators-General in Namibia failed to effect the Morrows’ return and they moved into South Africa itself, to the eastern Transvaal, where as Rector of Sabie and Archdeacon of the Lowveld, he set up the Transvaal Council of Churches. The old familiar harassment returned – with Special Branch raids (even on his church – police were told to leave their guns outside) and Home Guard surveillance, The Rectory was, nevertheless, a safe house for political fugitives heading for the Mozambique border.
In 1984 the Lutheran, Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops in Namibia organized the Morrows’ return to England to set up a Namibian Chaplaincy in Europe. In a house in Islington they gave pastoral care, houseroom and hospitality to a flock of Namibian exiles. He took charge later also of the Namibian Peace Centre in Cephas Street, London E1, founded by the late Colin Winter. With the independence process under way in 1989, Morrow spent a month back in Namibia, advising the UN Transition Assistance Group and picking up the threads of his church work. The SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma (President of Namibia the following year) urged him to stay on but AG 50 was still in force and there was no funding for Laureen and their daughter Lydia, now 16, to join him.
Though always in touch with Namibia, he became at last an ordinary parish priest in England, serving as Vicar of St Thomas’s, Stamford Hill for eight years and in charge of a home for retired clergy and clergy widows, Bromley and Sheppard’s Colleges, until 31 March this year. He co-founded the Friends of Namibia Society in London in 1997 and became chairman three years later, but his tragically brief retirement also cut short his work in building Anglo-Namibian friendship.
Randolph Vigne
The Revd Canon Edward Sydney Morrow, Anglican priest; born Brakpan, South Africa 30 July 1934. Ordained Grantham 1975. Vicar-General, Diocese of Damaraland (later renamed Namibia) 1975. Expelled 1978. Rector, Usuthu Mission and Grantee of Schools, Swaziland 1979-81. Zimbabwe Foundation for Education and Production under Bishop’s licence, chaplain, University of Zimbabwe, 1982-4. Rector of Sabie with Lydenburg and Bushbuckridge, South Africa, Archdeacon of the Lowveld, 1984-7. Director, Namibian Chaplaincy in Europe, 1987-90. Vicar, St Thomas’s, Stamford Hill, London, 1990-8. Chaplain and Clerk to the Trustees, Bromley and Sheppard’s Colleges, Bromley, Kent 1998-2003. Married 1957 Laureen Black (one daughter). Died Beckenham, Kent, 13 August 2003.
From The Guardian, 28 August 2003
ED MORROW, former Anglican Vicar-general of Namibia, who has died in London aged 69, belonged to a sturdy group of white churchmen who took on South Africa in the apartheid regime’s backyard.
Morrow was running a construction firm in Durban – and was a licensed lay person in the Anglican church - when he was persuaded by the flamboyant British-born bishop of Damaraland, Colin Winter, to drop everything and move to Windhoek, capital of Namibia (it was then South West Africa) as a missionary builder. Soon he was building clergy houses in Ovamboland in the far north and in Windhoek’s black townships.
Within a year, Winter had been deported (following his American predecessor) and continued his work as a bishop-in-exile. Morrow, now almost 40, moved to England in 1973 to study theology at Queen’s College, Birmingham with the intention of becoming a worker priest. But three days after his ordination the Anglican suffragan bishop, Richard Wood, was deported from Namibia. Morrow now faced a challenge imposed upon few clergymen in their first posting - he was sent back to the Namibian diocese as vicar-general, the territory’s highest Anglican office.
He returned to a country in the midst of a low-key war of liberation, with the churches the target of an increasingly nervous colonial power. The nationalist movement, SWAPO, was condemned as communist by Pretoria, but in fact consisted of devout, mission-educated guerrillas who understood only too well the message of the Gospels learnt from German, Finnish and English missionaries. Namibia was the most Christian country in Africa, with the possible exception of Ethiopia.
Morrow’s documents were seized at the airport, while a delegation of welcoming black congregants waited in the arrival lounge. Sceptical white Anglicans, conservative in matters of race relations, would have preferred a more experienced figure as the senior priest in the diocese, and certainly not someone on the best of terms with the black majority. But the church was the only organisation willing to act on the people’s behalf, and Morrow’s work was to be mostly with them.
In an angry, frightened world, his unthreatening demeanour offered an area of calm, but he could act firmly, as on the day a snake invaded the church office. The vicar-general seized a Bushman bow and arrow and coolly shot it through the neck. He’d practiced archery as a young man in Durban, he explained to his wide-eyed officials.
He preached to migrant workers in the mines, but also delivered a paper on human rights to the management of the British-owned Rossing uranium mine. Much of his work centred on human rights support. When activists were arrested or had disappeared, Bishop’s House was often the first port of call for the family. Morrow and his network of sympathisers arranged funds for legal defence, compiled lists for Amnesty International to follow up, while his wife, Laureen, took down affidavits from victims of torture. They organised family visits to SWAPO freedom fighters imprisoned on Robben Island, faraway in Cape Town.
The Morrows set up Namibia’s first multi-racial pre-school, in a white suburb of Windhoek, busing in children from the townships. Apart from their daughter, Lydia, few whites dared join. We were able to show, he said, that it could be done.
The harassment came with the job - death threats, spent bullets in his car, an offer of uncut diamonds that, if accepted, would have seen him join the queue of IDB (illicit diamond buying) accused in the magistrate’s court. His financial scruples were unbendable - money earned from occasional broadcasts on the BBC radio’s Focus on Africa programme went to defence funds. As no foreign staffers were based in Windhoek, the South African propaganda machine could get away, literally, with murder. For the wise visiting journalist, Bishop’s House in Brahms Street was a mandatory first port of call. Quietly, Ed would paint the picture of the underground, offering an alternative list of people to be contacted and stories to follow up.
He lasted three years, and the deportation order gave no reasons why he had to leave. He worked elsewhere in Africa, notably building schools for 10,000 refugee children returning to independent Zimbabwe. In 1987, as the war hotted up in South West Africa, he started a Namibian chaplaincy in Highbury, north London, offering pastoral care and accommodation to refugees, marrying them and baptising their children. James Kauluma, the first black bishop, applied several times to have the Morrows return to Namibia, but the white government would not have them. Once Namibia became independent in 1990, time had run out. He became vicar of St Thomas’s in Stamford Hill, then, in 1998, chaplain at Bromley and Sheppards Colleges in Kent, where retired clergy and clergy widows spend their final years.
Namibia’s Anglican bishop, Shihala Hamupembe will preach at Ed Morrow’s funeral in the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Bromley, on Wednesday August 27 at 12 noon. His ashes will later be returned to St Barnabas church, Durban, where he first served the church. It will complete the circle of the life of a man who quietly but effectively helped many in their time of need.
Edward Morrow, clergyman and freedom fighter, b 30 July 1934, d 13 August 2003.
Denis Herbstein
(from CIIR E-news, 26 August 2003)
The launch of the first 'Secondary School San Students Newsletter' is helping to capture the interest of the San youth, writes CIIR/ICD development worker Yvonne Pickering.
San are one of the few indigenous peoples of the world who remain in close contact with their traditional culture, values and way of life. But their lives are often constrained by lack of formal education. Mainstream teaching lacks sensitivity to their language, culture and identity and has led to isolation and stigmatisation of San children. In a bid to develop a curriculum that is sensitive to San tradition and language, the Working group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA) developed a comprehensive education programme, aimed at raising the capacity of San youth.
Currently WIMSA is supporting eleven students, including seven at the Windhoek College of Education and one student at the University of Namibia. WIMSA recently visited several schools to highlight the importance of completing their studies to San secondary students. They arranged talks by successful San students, displayed photographs and distributed information leaflets.
Yvonne Pickering participated in several of the visits to secondary schools in Namibia. She reported that many San children were dropping out after Grade 8 due to lack of financial resources, language barriers, and feelings of stigmatisation from teachers and peers. But the stories about the San students in tertiary education elicited a positive response. She said that: 'Seeing the photos and hearing about the students in the tertiary was very effective in capturing the interest of each and every student. They were very excited over the pictures of the students WIMSA is presently supporting.'
In July this year, WIMSA, together with San tertiary students, started a newsletter enabling the students to share their experiences with San secondary students. Kleofa, who is training in para-legal and human rights at the Legal Assistance Centre at Windhoek sent a message to all the San Children to 'Never give up. With dedication, hard work and commitment you can make a difference in your communities.'
Please put the date of the Friends' AGM in your diary. It is to be held at the Namibia High Commission, Chandos Street from 3-5p.m. followed by a reception until 7p.m. when there will be an opportunity to meet up with Namibians currently working and studying in the UK.
Please let us know if there is anything in particular you would like to see on the agenda or discuss during the meeting.
Let us know what you think about the Friends of Namibia website and come along with ideas as to how it could be made more useful and user-friendly.
The History Department of the University of Namibia and the PEACE (People's Education, Assistance and Counselling for Empowerment) Centre is planning to hold a conference entitled: '1904-2004 - Decontaminating the Namibia Past', to be held at the University of Namibia, Windhoek Campus (Pioneers Park) from 17 to 21 August 2004. The Conveners are Dr Wolfram Hartmann (UNamibia) and Dr Gudrun Kober (PEACE Centre).
The year 2004 marks the centennial of German Colonial War in southwestern Africa, 160 years of missionary activity in Hereroland, 120 years of formal German colonialism, 90 years of direct South African intervention in Namibia, and 15 years since the implementation of UN Resolution 435. While the conference will be focussing mainly on Namibian history and German colonialism, an Africa-wide, more comparative perspective will be encouraged, aimed at facilitating intellectual debate and conversation across disciplinary divides and regional borders.
For more information, please contact:
Dr Wolfram Hartmann c/o History Department, University of Namibia
Private Bag 13301, Windhoek, NAMIBIA
E-mail: conference2004@iway.na
Telephone ++264 61 206 3859
Fax ++264 61 206 3806
If anyone is interested in joining a small group of Friends visiting the Powell Cotton Museum on 27 October, please do get in touch with Margaret Lipscomb. The Museum, at Quex Park, Birchington, Kent, houses a number of Kuanyama artefacts and photographs from southern Angola and northern Namibia and there should also be an opportunity to view a film made for the Namibia archives office in Windhoek.
The Museum is closed to the public on a Monday so the staff will have more time to show us around – though this also means the café will not be open, so please bring a packed lunch and staff will provide facilities to make coffee and tea. The plan is to arrive by 11 a.m. and to stay until about 3 or 4p.m. The Museum can be reached by road or by train from Victoria to Birchington-on-Sea Station (trains leave every half hour at 4 minutes and 35 minutes past the hour and the journey takes about an hour and a half). The Museum phone number is: 01843 842168.
Unfortunately the Namibian music group Scorpion has had to cancel its proposed visit to the UK due in large part to the illness of the daughter of the leader of the group, Ivan Murangi. We wish Ivan and his family well at this difficult time.