South African troops who raided St. Mary's Anglican Mission at Odibo in Ovamboland on Friday 17 August arrested Archdeacon Philip Shilongo and detained him under AG 26. Archdeacon Shilongo, who is the most senior Anglican churchman in the north of Namibia, was taken from St. Mary's to a military camp at Etale and from there to Oshakati. He was previously detained in July 1976.
On 22 August Maj-Gen Geldenhuys, OC SWAPO Command, announced that SA security forces had seized SWAPO propaganda material from St. Mary's during the raid, prompted by reports that SWAPO guerillas regularly visited the mission. The material confiscated included a Scandinavian slide-show, two capsules of vaccine for fatigue, a SWAPO membership card and T-shirt, an article by the exiled Bishop Colin Winter and a number of SWAPO pamphlets. The Rt. Rev. James Kauluma of the Anglican church in Windhoek subsequently pointed out that as the mission was open to the public the material confiscated could have come from any source. It certainly did not warrant Archdeacon Shilongo's arrest, he said.
On Sunday 29 July armed SA soldiers reportedly disrupted a church service at Ondobe by entering the building, including the sanctuary, and telling the Pastor that the women and children should leave. Men attending the service were asked for their identification cards and two people, Mr. Josef Hamutenya, a school teacher, and Mr. Leevi Shakela, were arrested.
A spokesman for the Ovambo-Kavango Lutheran Church further said that SA soldiers had broken into a girls' secondary school near Ondobe, damaged doors and windows and took food.
At the end of July, SWAPO reported that its sources had uncovered a plan by the SA authorities to destroy the headquarters at Oniipa of the Evangelical Ovambo-Kavango Lutheran Church (ELOK). The attack would have been attributed to SWAPO. In 1973 a printing press belonging to the Lutheran church at Oniipa was destroyed in a bomb explosion believed to have been instigated by SA forces.
