PRISONERS OF WAR
While the capture by South African forces in Angola of a number of Soviet citizens gained widespread publicity in the overseas press, the existence and eventual fate of other prisoners of war from Operation Protea received little attention.
CAPTURED IN ANGOLA
The Chief of the SA Army, Lt. Gen. Geldenhuys, told journalists at a press briefing on 14 September (see THE SOUTH AFRICAN VERSION) that 38 prisoners had been taken by South African forces in the course of Operation Protea, comprising eight SWAPO troops, members of FAPLA (the Angolan armed forces) and "a number of Russian officers". He said that the estimates of SWAPO and Angolan losses during the invasion were partly based on information supplied by some of the prisoners (WA 15.9.81; BBC/T 16.9.81).
A photograph published in the Windhoek Advertiser showed "one of the captured wounded SWAPO soldiers" lying in Oshakati hospital, alongside a wounded South African soldier (WA 15.9.81). Another SWAPO guerilla captured earlier this year and described by the SADF as the commander of SWAPO's northern artillery, John Angula, was also brought before the press in Oshakati on 14 September. He stated that he had been captured inside Angola, near Ngiva. On being presented to journalists in July 1981, however, the press had understood him to have been captured while leading a specialist unit supposedly en route to attack the Ondangua airbase in Namibia (WO 19.9.81).
RED CROSS CONCERN
In the past, the South African government has often not admitted to having taken prisoners, either in operations against SWAPO inside Namibia, or in incursions into Angola. Following the raid against the Kassinga refugee settlement and other SWAPO centres inside Angola in May 1978, for example, the SADF announced that 200 prisoners had been brought back into northern Namibia. The SA authorities subsequently concealed the fact that only a minority of these had been released until forced under pressure from international publicity and anti-apartheid campaigning to admit, two years later, to the continued imprisonment of the Kassinga detainees (see FOCUS 32/3; 35/10 & IDAF Fact Paper No.9, Remember Kassinga).
The fact that the SADF admitted to having taken 38 prisoners during Operation Protea may have been promoted by a statement in August by the head of the newly opened Windhoek bureau of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Peter Lutolf. Introducing the new ICRC office in Namibia to the press, he said that his organization was concerned at the scanty information on prisoners-of-war given to it by the South African authorities. He expressed strong doubts about the number of SWAPO members officially listed as prisoners by the SADF (a total of 119, being the Kassinga detainees held at Hardap Dam prison camp near Mariental). It was "very strange", he commented, that there appeared to have been no more prisoners taken since the May 1978 raid. The Red Cross did not know what happened to SWAPO prisoners or wounded. "We are not even informed by the authorities if there are any. It simply does not happen in any conflict or battle that you have a clash with 200 people and 45 are killed and no prisoners or wounded are taken", he said (Star 18.8.81; T 20.8.81).
CAPTURED IN NAMIBIA
Speaking in the Senate on 11 September, the South African Minister of Police also disclosed that 23 SWAPO members had been captured during a total of 50 clashes between South African Police patrols and guerillas in Ovambo between 1 July and 7 September 1981, a period of just over two months (BBC 14.9.81). Figures of this kind, which are not normally published by the South African government, suggest that the total number of SWAPO prisoners taken over a year by the SA Police, SADF and other South African forces operating in Namibia, may well run into several hundred.
"REFUGEES" REALLY P.O.W.s ?
The real figure of persons taken prisoner or forcibly abducted into Namibia from Angola during Operation Protea may well be considerably higher than the total of 38 officially given. In particular, both SWAPO and the Angolan government have voiced their belief that many of the Angolan "refugees" who have been reported by the SA authorities to have arrived in northern Namibia in recent weeks and months have in fact been forcibly evacuated by SA forces for propaganda and other purposes.
By the third week of September a total of 1,100 Angolan refugees were reported by South African sources to have arrived in northern Namibia since the start of Operation Protea, 100 being accommodated at Oshakati and the remainder in the Ohangwena region. The local Red Cross Society in Namibia announced plans to appeal to international aid organizations on behalf of the refugees, who were said to comprise mostly women, small children and old men, but also included five Portuguese citizens. According to one report identity documents were being prepared by the Ovambo bantustan administration; another source stated that the SA Department of Civic Affairs & Manpower was handling the matter. The Secretary of the Ovambo Administration said that most of the refugees were of Kwanysama origin and would "probably return to Angola once life there had returned to normal" (WA 9/18/22.9.81; BBC 14.9.81).
Large numbers of Angolan refugees arrived in Namibia following the 1975-76 South African invasion. There is now considerable evidence that many of them were supporters of FNLA or UNITA and were subsequently redeployed inside Angola with UNITA forces under SADF supervision, or integrated into special South African military units such as 32 Battalion (e.g. see FOCUS Special Issue No.2).
A representative of SWAPO's Information Department in Angola raised this kind of possibility in relation to the latest refugees at the press conference given by Angolan President Jose dos Santos in Luanda on 9 September (see ANGOLA - A BUFFER ZONE). The SWAPO representative suggested at question time that the Angolan refugees reported by South Africa to have arrived in northern Namibia had in fact been forced out and were now being confined in "concentration camps". Dos Santos replied that Angola did "not recognize the existence of South African refugees fleeing to Namibia. It is true that there has been a forced evacuation whose objective we all know is to recruit more forces for the puppet groups which are trained... to destabilize Angola" (BBC 12.9.81).
President dos Santos was later reported to have asked international relief organizations to investigate reports that villagers in southern Angola had been abducted by South African forces and were being held in camps in Namibia (GN 11.9.81).
A HUMAN TRAGEDY
An overseas observer writing from Luanda on 10 September 1981 stated:
> "Towns have been razed and highways are under constant bombardment. The civilian population has had to flee northwards through the bush, many injured, with children, without food or water. Apart from the many refugees being cared for in centres near Lubango, no one knows how many people are lost or dead in the bush. Angola needs urgent help. This war is a human tragedy of enormous proportions" (Special Report from Marga Holness, Mozambique, Angola and Guine Information Centre (London), from Luanda, 10.9.81).
At an extraordinary session in Belas on 30 August, the Angolan Council of Ministers declared the invaded zones in the three southern provinces of Kunene, Huila and Kuando-Kubango to be disaster areas, and appealed to the Organization of African Unity to provide all kinds of aid (communique dated 31.8.81).
Apart from the immediate casualties of dead and wounded, and Angolans forced to flee from their homes into the bush (see FACTS & FIGURES), the long-term socio-economic damage and disruption remain to be quantified. The huge amounts of loot captured and taken back into Namibia by South African forces, besides military equipment, included tractors, cattle, bulldozers, transport vehicles and other property. The FAPLA Commander in the Cahama area, in briefing journalists on this aspect of the invasion, summed up the losses as "all the technical means necessary for the reconstruction of our country" (MS 15.9.81; BBC 17.9.81).
PRESS CLAMP-DOWN
Several local newspapers in both South Africa and Namibia commented critically on the failure of the South African government and Defence Force to keep their own publics informed of Operation Protea, while giving favoured treatment to the overseas press and media. Comparisons were drawn with the press embargo imposed by Pretoria at the time of the 1975 invasion of Angola. According to the Cape Times, for example, writing four days after the launch of Operation Protea, the South African public were "almost completely in the dark" about its purpose, duration, extent, its success or failure, the forces involved and the casualties suffered (WA 26.8.81; CT/RDM/GN 27.8.81).
The reluctance on Pretoria's part to release information to South Africans and Namibians themselves has since been extended to developments in the international Namibian settlement negotiations. Editors and chairmen of the South African press who were summoned to a confidential meeting with the Prime Minister, P. W. Botha, on 29 September were instructed to "use circumspection" in reporting the negotiations, "owing to the delicacy of the issue" (FT 30.9.81).
