Health, Solidarity, and Propaganda under Real Socialism: East German Medical Aid to swapo

Abstract Together with the existing literature on socialist health internationalism, the article contributes to the integration of the socialist world within the narrative of global health history, providing an overall picture of the East German medical programs of solidarity with the South West African People’s Organization ( swapo ), the Namibian liberation movement that was waging an armed struggle against the South African illegal occupation of Namibia. In addition to dispatching medical cadres on site and delivering medicines and medical equipment to swapo refugee camps, the gdr provided health assistance to swapo by admitting hundreds of Namibians within East Germany for treatment. The article emphasizes the benefits brought by the East German medical care while highlighting the propaganda intent which jeopardized the solidarity rhetoric of the state by using paternalistic tones and representing the patients as mere symbols of solidarity. The article also sheds light on the story of Stefanie Lahya Aukongo, who was born at the Berlin-Buch Hospital in 1978 with a spastic cerebral hemiparesis as a consequence of the severe injuries that her mother suffered due to the Cassinga massacre. Aukongo’s story was unique in gdr , insofar as an East German family insisted on adopting her, showing how grassroots solidarity could compensate for the shortcomings of the gdr state medical solidarity.