THE CASSINGA MASSACRE IN NAMIBIA: The Aftermath of the Cassinga Massacre: Survivors, Deniers and Injustices. By Vilho Amukwaya Shigwedha,. Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2017. Basel Namibia Studies Series. Pp. xiii + 169. $33.38, paperback (ISBN: 978-3-905758-80-1 ); $22.95, e-book (ISBN: 978-3-905758-92-4 ).

The Aftermath of the Cassinga Massacre: Survivors, Deniers and Injustices. By Vilho Amukwaya Shigwedha. Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2017. Basel Namibia Studies Series. Pp. xiii + 169. $33.38, paperback (ISBN: 978-3-905758-80-1); $22.95, e-book (ISBN: 978-3-905758-92-4).

The Aftermath of the Cassinga Massacre: Survivors, Deniers and Injustices, by Vilho Amukwaya Shigwedha, explores the unresolved afterlives of colonial and apartheid violence in independent Namibia. It also examines the problems and impossibilities of adequately sharing, representing, and conveying the realities of lived trauma. The event that inspires the study took place in 1978, when South African forces attacked a South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) camp at Cassinga, Angola, which housed at that time over 4,000 civilians, primarily women and children, who had fled from Namibia. A brutal massacre ensued, leaving at least 400 noncombatants dead. From the moment of the assault (and as archival sources demonstrate, from the earliest stages of its planning), Cassinga has been deeply controversial. Shigwedha delves into these entangled conflicts by examining how the dominant narratives and representations of the attack by both South African Defence Force (SADF) and SWAPO caused survivors continued suffering, because those official accounts denied their memories of the event and actively ignored, concealed, or obscured the horrors they had...