Ottilie Grete Abrahams (2 September 19372 July 2018) was a Teacher, Activism, and politician.[ Ottilie Abrahams Namibia Institute for Democracy]
Personal
Abrahams was born on 2 September 1937 in the
Old Location township outside of
Windhoek. Abrahams was the daughter of
Otto Schimming and Charlotte Schimming. Her father was the first Black teacher in Namibia. Her sister Nora Schimming-Chase became the first Namibian
ambassador to
Germany after the independence of Namibia. Before obtaining a degree in Cape Town, she attended Trafalgar High School in
District Six in Cape Town.
[ Namibian Bios, retrieved 13 August 2014]
She and her husband Kenneth Abrahams raised four children, one daughter is the scientist and activist Yvette Abrahams, her son Kenneth Abrahams overtook the management of the Jacob Marengo School after her death.
Activism
Abrahams became politically active while studying in high school and university in
Cape Town,
South Africa; she joined the South West Africa Student Body in 1952 and later became active in the Cape Peninsula Students Union and the Non-European Unity Movement. She and other activists formed the Yu Chi Chan Club, a secret
Maoism organization. In 1985, Abrahams founded the Jacob Marengo Tutorial College in
Katutura, of which she was still the principal until her death.
Politics
Abrahams was active in the independence movement with several political parties. Abrahams was part of SWAPO from 1960 to 1963. She, her husband and fellow activist, Kenneth Abrahams, fellow
SWAPO dissidents
Emil Appolus and
Andreas Shipanga formed
SWAPO Democrats while in exile in
Sweden.
[Tonchi et al. 2012, p. 13.] However, she left SWAPO Democrats in 1980 and later joined the Namibia Independence Party, where she served as the Secretary General and Publicity and Information Secretary. The Namibia Independence Party was part of the Namibia National Front coalition which won one seat in the 1989 election to the Constitution-writing Constituent Assembly of Namibia.
Life in exile
From 1963 until 1978 Ottilie Abrahams lived in exile with her husband and their children. They lived in Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania and
Lusaka,
Zambia and for nine years in
Stockholm,
Sweden. With United Nations Security Council Resolution 435 they returned to Namibia in 1978.
Notes
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