Sworn affidavits filed by a number of former political detainees with the Windhoek Supreme Court give detailed descriptions of torture and assault by the security police, and allege that one detainee died as a result of torture. A court case was due to open in February investigating the disappearance of Johannes KAKUVA, a stock farmer, who has not been seen since his arrest by security police on 4 August 1980. While the police deny the murder or ill-treatment of any of the detainees, and claim that Kakuva fled to Angola to join SWAPO after failing to keep an arrangement to work as a South African informer, the allegations of torture contained in the affidavits reinforce numerous previous reports in FOCUS of atrocities committed by the security forces.
Kakuva was one of 25 people arrested by security police in August 1980 and held under Proclamation AG9. They were accused of providing assistance to a group of SWAPO guerillas. In a statement made under oath one of those who were arrested, Hapeheri NDERURA, told how the detainees, including Kakuva, spent the night blindfolded in a place of interrogation near Opuwo in Kaokoland. They were interrogated about aid given to SWAPO. During his interrogation, Hapeheri Nderura was blindfolded, handcuffed and chained at the ankles. He was forced to lie down and was beaten with a wooden stick causing him unbearable pain. He was given electric shocks to both sides of his head and lost consciousness. When he regained consciousness, he heard Johannes Kakuva screaming. He had known Kakuva for many years and could recognise his voice. He could hear the police beating Kakuva incessantly, and the prisoner's continuous screams became fainter and fainter until they finally stopped. He thought the uninterrupted assault lasted one hour. He became aware that Kakuva was being dragged in his direction and placed across his body. He managed to remove his blindfold and saw that Kakuva, who was also blindfolded, had stopped breathing.
A policeman, noticing that Nderura had removed his blindfold, hit him on the head with a rifle butt. Police then started pouring pails of water over Kakuva, and later pulled him away.
Hapeheri Nderura said in his affidavit that to this day he could still not move two fingers of his right hand. On his back and across his rib cage he bore multiple scars of the assaults he had been subjected to in detention. He remained in a critical condition for a long time and was later transferred to Opuwo hospital. He had never seen Kakuva again.
Affidavits submitted to the court by other witnesses who were themselves detained apparently contain similar details of torture. One man, Gustaf HAO, confirmed that he was assaulted repeatedly; another, Tjituuo NDONDU, said the torture applied to him was of great intensity. If the same treatment he, a strong man, had suffered, was applied to Johannes Kakuva, who was much older, Kakuva would not have survived, he said.
Efforts by a member of the second-tier Herero authority, Markus Nderura, to visit the detainees, failed. He visited Opuwo police station with members of Kakuva's family, demanding to see the detainees. While a captain of the security police assured him that Kakuva was still in detention and 'under his personal care', he refused access. On further insistence Nderura was told that 'Kakuva has left with the terrorists'.
According to a member of the security police, Lieutenant King, Kakuva was asked to obtain information about SWAPO guerilla hideouts and activities, in return for ten head of cattle. It was 'considered wise to isolate him' while he thought about the proposal. Having allegedly agreed to cooperate, he was taken, according to the police, to a prearranged spot. Here, after having made contact with SWAPO, he would be met several days later by a police car. According to the police, Kakuva failed to turn up at the arranged spot, and was assumed to have joined the guerillas. He was placed on the security police's list of exiles.
The disappearance and likely death in detention of Johannes Kakuva is one example of the coercion and violence used by the South African and local security forces to prevent local support for the liberation movement. In many cases, such repression is applied on a completely arbitrary basis, as an increasing number of reports from the north of the country testify.
A representative of the British Council of Churches, who as part of a four-member delegation visited Namibia for ten days in November 1981, spoke of the 'appalling suffering' of the people in Namibia. During its visit, the delegation had heard grim accounts of death, torture, beatings and seizure of property, according to a statement issued by the delegation's leader, Reverend Stanley Booth-Clibborn. 'These things are happening to people who believe they are innocent of any offence, and those to whom we spoke felt that they were suffering far more from the arbitrary actions of the security forces than from the activities of SWAPO guerillas', Rev Booth-Clibborn added.
The leader of the Namibia Christian Democratic Party, Hans Rohr, gave examples of arbitrary police actions in northern Namibia during a National Assembly debate on the Combating of Terrorism Bill. Opposing the Bill, he said it would further enhance the tremendous powers of the security forces. There would be no penalty for the deeds of terror committed by their institutions. As an example, he cited the case of a teacher in Ovamboland who was arrested for allegedly having undergone guerilla training in Zambia, put on trial, ill-treated for three days and then released. In fact, the teacher had never left the country but had attended school every day. In another incident which occurred in October 1981, security forces searched a settlement for firearms and assaulted the women living there. They had arrived with a prisoner who, having visibly been ill-treated, had told them that a man in the settlement had hidden a gun there. According to Rohr, the man accused of hiding a gun had died two years previously. A similar incident occurred in the Kavango region, where police accused the residents of a settlement, all women, of having provided food for SWAPO guerillas. Two of the women were taken away; those remaining received no news of them for three weeks. When they finally returned, one had a broken arm. Both said they had been assaulted during their detention.
Rohr cited a number of other examples and pointed out that when people in the Kavango region held a protest meeting to complain about assaults and ill-treatment, they received no explanation but were told that it would not happen again in the future.
The civilian population have no means of protecting themselves against arbitrary arrest, interrogation and torture. A number of incidents in Ovamboland reported by the Windhoek Observer illustrate that many young people are subjected to humiliating and violent treatment, usually because they are suspected of supporting SWAPO.
In one case, a 17 year old youth, lipinge PETRUS, was approached by a large number of soldiers in army trucks outside a local cuca shop (cafe) in Okathitu. Asked where his gun was, he replied that he did not have one, and showed his identity papers. He was taken near a truck and forced to put his left hand on the exhaust. He and two other youths were then forced to accompany the troops, blindfolded, for several hours in the trucks before being dropped. Lipinge suffered deep burns on his hand which became infected and had to be treated in hospital.
The newspaper cited several other cases of youths being beaten by soldiers. One youth, Modestus NUUYOMA, was taken to the military post at Ogongo and charged with having taken bags of maize to guerillas in the bush. When he denied this, he was forced to spend the night in a hole in the ground, lined with truck tyres. He was unable to sit or lie down in the hole. 'The hardship and sufferings of the people in the war zone seem to have no end', commented the Windhoek Observer.
