The silence which usually surrounds the arrest, detention and interrogation of suspected SWAPO sympathisers and others in the north of Namibia has been broken in a number of instances recently. In the Kavango region in particular, where there has been an upsurge of guerilla activity, substantial numbers of local people suspected of having assisted SWAPO combatants in launching attacks on the security forces, have been arrested and held for questioning.
Military activity in the west of Kavango, between the administrative and military centre of Rundu and the Ovambo region, has reached a peak of intensity not seen for the previous four years. A 'six-to-six' curfew exists throughout the area while in Rundu itself, no one is allowed to move around on foot after midnight. The police do not travel on roads leading westwards from Rundu except in armoured vehicles.
On 11 May, in the course of a spate of guerilla activity, the settlement of Nkurenkuru in north western Kavango witnessed attacks both on its police station and against South African soldiers serving as teachers at the Kandjimi Murenga Secondary School. Local people, including school students, were believed by the authorities to have guided the guerillas to their targets, and numerous reports of arrests, including that of a 17-year-old pupil at the Kandjimi Murenga School, followed.
Two armed and uniformed SWAPO insurgents were also reported to have been arrested in Rundu's black township shortly after the attacks.
A few days after the attacks, a delegation from the Namibia Christian Democratic Party addressed a public meeting in Nkurenkuru, attended by reporters from the Namibian press. Members of the audience told journalists that they had been detained and ill-treated by security forces in recent months. Suspected SWAPO collaborators were jailed in groups of eight, with some of the prisoners suffering severe beatings and electric shocks, they said. One of those detained, Jakko KANGAJI, the headmaster of the Kandjimi Murenga Secondary School, was imprisoned from 29 December to 12 January. Jonas TJAPUA, another detained suspect, told the press that he feared a repeat visit by the security forces. 'We cannot ask questions', another person said. 'If we ask questions here or dare to say what we feel in our hearts, we may vanish during the night.' The NCDP meeting itself was watched over by security force members in a four wheel drive vehicle.
The detentions in Nkurenkuru (presumably other than those in connection with the recent guerilla attacks) were reportedly the subject of a special inquiry carried out by the SWA Territory Force following allegations of security force maltreatment and torture of prisoners.
Pressure from church bodies, who have been particularly active this year in exposing security force brutalities and taking up the cases of injured parties, has proved a successful counter to official censorship on the subject of arrests and detentions, in some instances.
In May, for example, a security force spokesman confirmed details of the detention of a Lutheran pastor, Rev. Jason HAUFIKU, and a teacher Sarah SHIVEKA, after their case had been publicised internationally by the Lutheran church. Rev. Haufiku, pastor of the 10,000 member Engela parish of the Evangelical Lutheran Ovambokavango Church near the Angolan border in central Ovambo, was arrested by South African soldiers on 27 March. According to details published in the news-letter Lutheran World Information, six soldiers — five of them whites with their faces smeared black — arrived at his home at about 9pm, asking him to identify five or six people on a list. He was then required to take the soldiers to the home of Sarah Shiveka, where she also was arrested. Subsequent inquiries by Lutheran church officials at the local Ohangwena military camp simply produced denials that any information was available.
It was later learned that the two were being detained for questioning in Oshakati, but it was not until 5 May — nearly a month after their release — that a security force spokesman confirmed that they had been released around 8 April.
