Detailed evidence in the form of sworn affidavits and accompanying medical reports of torture and assault by the South African security police and army in Namibia, has been published by church organisations in Windhoek and London, and by SWAPO. In Namibia the material was banned as "undesirable" by the South African government, within two days of its release.
The 13 affidavits had been submitted to the Windhoek Supreme Court in December 1977, in support of an application by Franciscus Petrus for an interim order restraining the security police from assaulting his detained son, Bernadus. On 19 January they were released in Windhoek in the form of a 62 page booklet by Father Heinz Hunke, the Father Provincial of the Irish Order of Mary Immaculate of the Roman Catholic Church, and Justin Ellis, an Anglican layman on the staff of the ecumenical Christian Centre in Windhoek and part-time correspondent for the BBC in London. In an introduction to the booklet, which is entitled "Torture - A Cancer in our Society", Hunke and Ellis point out that if the allegations contained in it are true, then the present South African administration in Namibia, "which legitimizes itself as Western, democratic and Christian, is just another form of ill-concealed barbarism". They maintain that, contrary to recent statements by the SWAPO Administrator General Justice Steyn, torture is an institutionalised practice in Namibia and is in fact "proliferating". In a reference to the failure of Steyn and the South African authorities, despite frequent appeals from the church, to undertake a thorough investigation, the authors conclude: "It would seem to us to be a folly to hope for a peaceful solution to this country's problems while such a fundamental issue remains unresolved".
Two days after its publication, on 20 January, the booklet was banned by the Director of Publications in Cape Town and deemed "undesirable". The order, which is applicable both to Namibia and South Africa regardless of Justice Steyn's purported status as the highest authority in Namibia during its transition to independence, in effect suppresses the records of a public hearing before the Windhoek Supreme Court.
In a statement issued on 1 February, Steyn rejected the idea of a judicial commission of inquiry into torture allegations as "unnecessary at this stage". He suggested that affidavits such as those reproduced by Father Hunke and Justin Ellis should not "simply be accepted as the truth, experience having taught that even in courts of law such allegations are often falsely made under oath; neither should they however be summarily rejected as false."
"Torture - A Cancer in Our Society" has since been released in Lusaka by SWAPO and re-published in London, for circulation in the UK and elsewhere, by the Catholic Institute for International Relations and the British Council of Churches.
