Church leaders of different denominations, both from churches inside Namibia and from sister churches abroad, have in recent months voiced their concern about the widespread violence inflicted on the people of Namibia as a result of South Africa's illegal military occupation. Broadly similar conclusions about the repressive role of the South African Defence Force (SADF) in Namibia, the degree of support for SWAPO, and the yearning of Namibians for genuine independence, were reached by two separate church delegations visiting Namibia in late 1981 and early 1982.
BCC REPORT
The report issued by the British Council of Churches (BCC) of a visit of its delegation to Namibia in November 1981 speaks of a reign of arbitrary terror maintained by the security forces against which the local people have no redress. The team collected details of 20 individual cases of brutalities in which security forces were involved. In one case, the delegation met a woman whose two sons had been killed by soldiers. She was sleeping in her hut with her blind mother and two daughters; her two sons aged eight and 15 were sleeping outside. Soldiers directed more than 1500 bullets at the hut, ostensibly to protect her against 'terrorists'. When she asked about a bundle they were loading onto a truck, she was told that 'a child had been killed', and that her other son had already been taken away dead. The woman received R1000 compensation for her dead children, damage done to buildings, grain stores and other possessions after suing in court. The soldiers had at first offered her R100 and a bag of meal.
The majority of cases collected by the delegation occurred in the six weeks preceding the team's arrival in Namibia. Many told of attacks by soldiers on women teachers, often ending in rape, or attacks on liquor stores and assaults on their owners.
A particularly objectionable practice of the security forces described to the BCC team is for soldiers to drag through the villages behind their vehicles the corpses of those killed whom they allege to be 'terrorists'. The bodies of the young men are exhibited to their parents, to villagers and to young children in school. 'This desecration of the dead, particularly their own dead, is very deeply offensive to the Ovambo people, and totally counterproductive', the BCC report noted.
The delegation found virtually unanimous support for SWAPO among most Africans to whom it spoke. They regarded SWAPO guerillas as children of the people, and told the visitors that many of the SWAPO leaders are Christians. SWAPO guerillas operated in areas where they were known, and they explained their actions to the local people. In contrast, the delegation said at a press conference, the conviction of many people they spoke to was that they suffer far more from arbitrary actions by the security forces. The delegation added that they had experienced first hand the deep desire of the great majority of the people of Namibia for independence under a government elected fairly and freely.
SACC VISIT
Two leaders of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), Bishop Desmond Tutu and the Rev. Peter Storey, President of the SACC, visited Namibia for a week in February 1982 at the invitation of the Council of Churches in Namibia. (The Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN) is an umbrella body representing the Anglican Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in SWA, the Evangelical Lutheran Ovambokavango Church (ELOC) and the Roman Catholic Church. Together they represent 75 per cent of the total population of Namibia.)
At a press conference at the end of their visit, Bishop Tutu said that all church leaders he had spoken to, with the exception of one, expressed the view that the large majority of people in the country supported SWAPO and that this support was growing every day with the continued presence of the South African security forces in Namibia, seen as an occupying army and much resented by the local black populace. The black view was summed up by one leader who said: 'the South Africans are the "terrorists", they terrorise our people'.
Referring to South Africa's campaign to 'win the hearts and minds of the people' by using soldiers in social welfare services such as health and education, Tutu said people felt any contribution made in this respect was far exceeded by atrocities committed against black people. The two delegates were told of the destruction of people's property by the SADF, of killings, burning of huts, rapes and detention without trial. The security forces laid landmines which they wanted people to believe were laid by SWAPO. The two visiting churchmen were given a long catalogue of such incidents.
ELOC SYNOD
Assessing the situation in Namibia at their synod meeting in December 1981, leaders of the 300,000 member Evangelical Lutheran Ovambokavango Church (ELOC), in a statement issued in February 1982, said that in the last few years suffering and torture in Namibia were predominant, more than at any other time in the past.
'Hundreds of members of the Church's parishes and congregations had lost their lives', the statement said. 'Private houses have been put aflame, and many innocent civilians have had their properties either destroyed or damaged.' There were waves of persecution and torture which had caused thousands of the Church's members and other Namibians to become exiles. Hundreds of people, both male and female, had been held in jail, said the statement, and in some cases their whereabouts were unknown to this day.
It was found that at the time of the Synod session, about 13 per cent of the 300 delegates present had at one time or another experienced imprisonment or torture. A number of church properties were destroyed, including the ELOC printing press and some of the missions. The statement called for the speedy implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 435, allowing people to elect their own leaders.
CCN APPEAL
The call for an immediate ceasefire and free elections under the UN Plan was echoed by the Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN) in a statement presented to the South African Prime Minister when he visited Windhoek in February 1982. In a lengthy submission, the CCN recalled its longstanding concern about violations of human rights in the country, expressed in an open letter to the Prime Minister in 1971. Since then, the situation had grown much worse. 'We know of the killing of innocent people, of the wanton destruction of property and of beatings, detention, solitary confinement and torture of the local population', the statement said. The curfew in force in the north of the country prevented people from being taken to hospital if they fell ill or were burned or injured during the night. Local people were distressed at seeing army recruits teaching in their schools and working in their hospitals. The church itself had suffered; its leaders and workers deported, some arrested and detained, and its properties destroyed at night. The CCN statement appealed to the SA government, 'which still controls this country', to agree to the immediate signing of a ceasefire and to allow UN-supervised elections to take place.
FINNISH MISSION CHURCH PLUNDERED
A mission station in southern Angola belonging to the Finnish Missionary Society, and an office and bible school belonging to the Southern Angola Lutheran Church in Kunene Province were reported to have been attacked by South African soldiers in late 1981. The South African troops reportedly plundered everything in the church, the bible school and the missionaries' dwellings. A sum of US$6000 was taken from the safe. The Finnish Missionary Society only learned about the attack in January 1982, having been unable to maintain contact with its members in southern Angola because of the fighting in the region.
