David Merero, SWAPO's National Chairman, is to lay evidence of the torture of Namibian detainees before the United Nations General Assembly, the Committee of 24, and the UN Council on Namibia. Merero himself was tortured by the security forces during six months of solitary confinement in Namibia in 1974.
By the middle of October, all but three of the eleven SWAPO and NNC officials arrested by the security police in Windhoek were reported to have been released. No charges were ever brought, and their detention neatly coincided with the Windhoek constitutional talks. In Ovamboland, by contrast, all those detained following the Elifas assassination were still, at the end of October, being held under the emergency regulations, and security generally in the northern region has been considerably tightened up. Following South African reports that SWAPO guerrillas had killed eight Ovambos, including a number of tribal policemen, it was announced that South African Defence Forces had been instructed to take "appropriate action" against SWAPO bases inside Angola. Two SWAPO camps were subsequently reported destroyed, and seven freedom fighters killed, in reprisal raids by South African troops. Another crucial development on the Namibian border with Angola was announced on 17 October, when Mr. Jannie de Wet, Commissioner-General of the Indigenous Peoples of South West Africa, stated that civilians in the Kwanyama Tribal Authority area were to be evacuated as a security precaution. He denied that anyone would be forced to move and estimated the numbers involved at "less than 100". The cleared area would be up to 3km deep and would be patrolled. Depopulated zones with fortified villages on the fringes of the no-go area are nevertheless familiar features of counter-guerrilla action, and a well established pattern in Rhodesia. The intention would appear to be to create an effective base for military incursions into Angola by South African troops, in addition to clamping down on political activity in Ovamboland.
[List of detainees omitted from body text for brevity, but included in entities]
