St Mary's Mission at Odibo near the Namibian-Angolan border was firebombed by unknown assailants on 18 June 1981. Residents of the mission compound nearby said the entire seminary complex was destroyed, including a chapel, classrooms, a student dormitory, the principal's apartment, the library and office. A Mothers' Union building near the seminary was also destroyed. Damage is estimated at R100,000. No-one was injured since the seminary is in indefinite recess due to the war in northern Namibia. It was hoped, however, to reopen the seminary, which has trained many Namibians, in the future.
The attack on the seminary took place in the early morning. Residents nearby reported hearing the sound of doors being forced open and windows being smashed shortly after 1 am. The curfew in force in Ovamboland prevented them from leaving their houses to investigate, for fear of being shot. At 1.45 am there was a big explosion, followed by several smaller ones, and then smoke was seen. After the curfew had ended, residents found that explosives and fuel had been used to blow up the buildings. They followed footprints, apparently from the attackers, to a place where they had left their vehicles during their attack. They also found a flare at the site, a device commonly used by the South African army.
Although the incident was reported to the police by Archdeacon Shilongo, Director of the Mission, at 10 am, they did not arrive until 3.45 pm. They looked around the site and took a statement from Archdeacon Shilongo. Two weeks later, no results had been reported from the police investigation.
Bishop James Kauluma, the Anglican Vicar General in Namibia, who visited the site the Sunday after the attack, said: "It is clear that whoever did the destruction, for whatever reasons and motives, belongs to the anti-church forces in our country who can only act against church property and institutions under cover of the night curfew."
The personnel at St Mary's Mission have repeatedly been subjected to harassment and the mission raided by South African police and army. On 11 September 1973, Archdeacon Shilongo was ordered to leave the mission area by 25 October. A day later he was forcibly removed by Ovambo tribal police. He suffered injuries in the process and had to be taken to hospital.
On 31 July 1976, the mission was raided in the early morning by 150 South African troops supported by four armoured cars, and Shilongo arrested. He was detained until 2 August and interrogated at Oshakati. Three weeks before Shilongo's arrest, his private secretary Ms Ngegen and her fiance Mr Jacobus were reportedly beaten up by tribal police. Mr Jacobus died from the injuries he received.
On 17 August 1979, South African troops again raided the mission and detained Archdeacon Shilongo. The South African military claimed that SWAPO propaganda material had been seized during the raid. Shilongo was again taken to Oshakati for interrogation, and was released in September 1979. Other church representatives in Namibia, particularly of the Evangelical Lutheran Ovambо Kavango Church and the Finnish mission, have frequently been harassed, expelled or refused permission to remain in Namibia.
There has been speculation that a Special Police unit, Koevoet, has been involved in some of the recent attacks on people and property in the north of Namibia. The existence of a death squad operating under the code name "Koevoet" was first discovered in May 1980, when SWAPO's headquarters in Luanda announced that a list giving the names of more than 50 individuals, marked out for assassination by the regime in the name of SWAPO, had been found and was in SWAPO's possession. Some people on the list had already been killed.
Koevoet is apparently a counterinsurgency unit operating as part of the South African police and headed by Brigadier Hans Dreyer. Accusations that Koevoet was responsible for the murder of several prominent businessmen in Ovamboland, and was involved in the attacks on the Lutheran printing press in Oniipa and the explosions at St Mary's mission, were dismissed by Dreyer in an interview with the Windhoek Observer. He claimed that there was "nothing sinister about the designation koevoet" ("crowbar") nor about the work of his unit. He described his task as locating insurgency and countering it. "We are attempting to locate armed resistance and try to eliminate it", he said. According to the Windhoek Observer, Koevoet is believed to be responsible for 60 to 70% of guerillas killed in the north of Namibia every year.
