Christian Faith and Namibian Liberation: An Ethnographic Biography of Salatiel Ailonga.

Born at a Finnish mission station in then South West Africa (SWA), Salatiel Ailonga was part of a generation of contract labourers who first imagined a multi-ethnic Namibian nation and who played a central role in liberating it from apartheid South African rule. Christian Faith and Namibian Liberation examines the interplay between Christian missionary work and anti-colonial nationalism through Ailonga's life, in the context of Southern Africa's liberation struggles and exile experiences during the late twentieth century - a period that united an international community across the Cold War divide and shaped the future of an African region. Ailonga joined SWAPO in 1960, and in 1974 became the first chaplain affiliated with a Southern African liberation movement in exile. When, amidst SWAPO internal conflict, he and his Finnish missionary wife were deported from Zambia to Finland, he advocated for Namibians detained in the frontline states and became part of a SWAPO dissident community. In 1990, just after Namibian independence, the Ailongas repatriated to Namibia, where conflicts and rumours from exile followed him home; competing memories of his life have reverberated ever since, outliving his death in 2015. This biography examines how personal Christian faith and Christian communities have shaped the trajectory of African nationalism, and highlights the complex interplay between religion and politics and the role of religion in conflict and peace-building processes in Africa. Christian A. Williams is Associate Professor in Anthropology at the University of the Free State, South Africa.