Within a month of the publication of Proclamation AG 9 it had been used to arrest a number of leading officials and members of SWAPO. DANIEL TJONG-GARERO (SWAPO Vice Chairman), TAUNO HATUIKULIPI (SWAPO National Treasurer and Director of the multi-denominational Christian Centre in Windhoek), MARTHA FORD (Secretary for the Women's Council), LUCIA HAMUTENYA (Secretary for Legal Affairs), CHARLES SIHANI, GEOF-FREY MAEZI, SIMON HISKIA and four other SWAPO members including JUSTIN ELLIS, an official of the Christian Centre and correspondent in Namibia for the BBC, were arrested in Ovamboland on Friday 2 December 1977 after travelling to Oniipa from Windhoek to attend a symposium organised by the Christian Centre. Ten of them were detained in Oshakati under the new security legislation while BERNADUS PETRUS, Chairman of the Windhoek branch of the SWAPO Youth League, was held under Section Six of the Terrorism Act, allowing for indefinite detention without charge.
In a statement issued on 4 December in Windhoek, SWAPO'S Secretary for Youth described the SWA Administrator General's new security measures as cosmetic attempts to fool the Namibian people and the world. The detention of the SWAPO office bearers, the statement said, was clear proof that Proclamation R17 was still operational.
Two of the detainees, Tauno Hatuikulipi and Justin Ellis, were released on Sunday morning, 4 December, while the remainder, with the exception of Bernadus Petrus, were released on 5 December. Brigadier H.V. Verster, Divisional Commissioner of Police, initially declined to say why any of them had been arrested, but was later reported to have disclosed that the detainees had been suspected of associating with armed guerillas. A police investigation was reported to be in progress following the detentions although it was not yet clear whether anyone would be charged. According to SWAPO, the detainees had been separated from each other, physically threatened and told that they would not return home alive. Daniel Tjongarero in particular, received special attention and was interrogated continuously from the Friday afternoon to the Saturday morning.
In a statement issued in Windhoek following his return from Oshakati, Daniel Tjongarero revealed that he had been threatened and intimidated until he signed a 22-page document repudiating SWAPO's "senseless murders" and resigning from his office as vice-chairman. After being arrested he said, he and his colleagues had been taken to Security Police headquarters in Oshakati where they were compelled to remain standing continuously for two hours. He himself was separated from the others and made to sit on the floor "in a position of extreme discomfort" and subjected to a "barrage of threats, insults and interrogation" until 3.00 a.m. on Saturday morning. He was later taken to Ondangua where he was placed in a metal cell and warned that he would remain indefinitely in solitary confinement until the completion of unspecified "investigations". His treatment by the Security Police, Tjongarero said, had "produced a state of disorientation by way of discomfort, menace, threats and unrelenting intimidation" in which he had signed the resignation document. "I repudiate this resignation as it is not and never has been my intention to step down from my post in an organisation which historically and still today strives for democratic participation of all people of Namibia, irrespective of race."
Tjongarero also stated that on the Saturday afternoon he had been taken back to Oshakati and made to look at the corpses of persons whom the Security Police claimed had been murdered by SWAPO. On 7 December, at a press conference of an unprecedented nature convened by Colonel Koos Myburgh, Head of the Security Police in Namibia, newsmen were handed photographs showing Daniel Tjongarero "assisting army personnel to take a body from an army truck". The dead man was a Water Affairs worker who had been on his way to repair a pump installation when the vehicle in which he was travelling struck a landmine east of Oshakati.
Col. Myburgh claimed that Tjongarero's 22-page memorandum had been written in his own hand on stationery provided by the police. During the course of the weekend Tjongarero had also had lengthy conversations with two "rehabilitated SWAPO insurgents" Gabriel Mutumbulua and Timoteus Amupolo. Copies of the document, together with Tjongarero's letter of resignation addressed to SWAPO's Administrative Secretary in Windhoek, were made available to the press.
In a statement issued on 9 December, SWAPO's National Executive Committee in Windhoek said that Daniel Tjongarero was an excellent leader and efforts to discredit him were to no avail and came as no surprise. The SWA Administrator General, Justice Steyn, later claimed that Tjongarero's arrest "did not take place as a result of my orders and in spite of the detention, the freedom of politics and political campaigning is the same today as it was two or three weeks ago."
