Efforts by the South African authorities to prevent any independent reporting of the war in Namibia have been stepped up, with actions taken or threatened against several newspapers. Since the introduction of new censorship regulations at the end of February 1983, there has been virtually no news about the activities of SWAPO's armed wing or the South African Defence Force (SADF), apart from official army news briefings.
JOURNALIST QUESTIONED
The political correspondent of the Windhoek Observer, Gwen Lister, was facing charges under the South African Customs and Excise Act, the Publications Act and the Internal Security Act in connection with a number of documents found in her possession. Ms Lister had been attending a United Nations Conference in Support of the Struggle of the People of Namibia, held in Paris from 25 to 29 April, as a reporter for the Windhoek Observer. On her return, she was detained by security police and customs officials at Jan Smuts airport, Johannesburg, for several hours. The documents she had brought back from the Conference were official UN publications and other papers freely available to conference delegates, including an IDAF publication, Apartheid's Army in Namibia. Most of the documents were confiscated though some were later returned to her. Subsequent to her return to Windhoek, a number of the documents were officially banned.
In June, Ms Lister was summoned to the headquarters of the security police in Windhoek and warned that charges were pending against her. She was asked whether she wished to make a statement, and declined. The case was being investigated by the Attorney General of the Transvaal, who was to decide whether or not to press charges.
NEWSPAPER RAIDED
The offices of the Windhoek Observer were raided by a police squad from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on 20 May, and photographic material seized after a thorough search of the premises. According to the Windhoek Observer, four pictures showing scenes of mass graves were taken by the police. Three were due to have been published by the newspaper in its weekend edition the following day.
The raid followed the publication by the Windhoek Observer on 14 May of a colour photograph showing blood being washed away with a broom — the caption stated that it was a 'scene of incidents taking place in our country and of human blood being washed away'. The paper stated that it had concluded its own investigation into what was happening, and promised that 'the full horror will be published' as soon as the legal aspects had been cleared. Another picture in the same edition showed dead bodies being buried in a mass grave.
Reporting the police raid, the Windhoek Observer disclosed that it had over a period of three years been engaged in trying to obtain material on a number of mass graves, one containing 13 people, another 11 people, and a third, eight people. It had had the assistance of several 'sources', and a reporter had been taken to a fresh grave in the border area between the Etosha Pan and the Ovambo region.
The editor of the Windhoek Observer was given notice by the police that he must reveal the 'sources' who gave him the pictures, by the end of June. According to the head of CID in Namibia, the matter was being investigated and a file would eventually be handed to the Attorney-General for a decision.
Further criminal charges under the Police Act, involving classified material on prisons were also pending against the editor of the Windhoek Observer.
CHARGES PENDING
Several South African newspapers were warned by officers of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the South African Police that they might face charges under Section 27(b) of the Police Act. The police were investigating charges in connection with statements made by Archbishop Denis Hurley about atrocities committed by the South African security forces in Namibia. The Rand Daily Mail, the Sowetan, the Citizen, Die Burger and the South African Press Association all reported comments made by Archbishop Hurley at a press conference in Pretoria.
CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR CHALLENGES SA LAWS
A young Namibian called up for military service has challenged the right of the South African authorities to draft black Namibian men into the South West Africa Territory Force (SWATF). After all attempts to gain exemption from military duty had failed, Erick Binga (20) applied for a declatory order before the Judge President to have his call-up orders declared invalid. He cited the Administrator-General, the South African Minister of Defence, and the Military Exemption Board as respondents.
Compulsory military service for all Namibian men was introduced in 1980, though those resident in the northern regions of Ovambo, Kavango and Caprivi were initially exempted, and have tended not to be called up. There were widespread protests when conscription was introduced and thousands of young Namibian men fled across the border into Angola.
Conscripts who identified themselves as SWAPO supporters were reported to have been victimised during their training period. In a policy statement the Officer Commanding SWATF announced in July 1981 that SWAPO supporters would be treated as conscientious objectors and employed in a non-fighting capacity.
Binga's case, the first to be taken to court, has been described by legal experts in Namibia as 'historic' and of 'fundamental importance for the country' as it challenges the very basis of South Africa's administration of Namibia.
In papers filed by Binga's attorneys in the Windhoek Supreme Court, he stated that he had joined SWAPO in June 1977, and handed in his SWAPO membership card. He asserted that the objectives of the SADF and the SWATF were exactly the same, and that laws passed by South Africa regarding Namibia were essentially in its own interests and not in the interests of the people of Namibia.
'It is impossible for me to identify myself with the conflict waged against SWAPO', he stated. He had no ties now or in the past with South Africa. He described South Africa's imposition of laws on Namibia as a completely illegitimate exercise of power. The majority of his countrymen had no say in the legislation made by South Africa and applicable in Namibia, he said. Yet that legislation included the law which now rendered him eligible for military service for South Africa. The application was of great importance to him, since he would be liable for arrest and detention on the basis of the very laws he now sought to attack.
Binga's application was supported by his father, Edward Binga, in a sworn statement. He said his son had been called up in November 1982, to serve from 10 January 1983 to 1 January 1985. He was due to join the second South African Infantry Battalion and undergo military training in Walvis Bay.
Binga snr. underlined his own support for SWAPO, which was 'the only organisation fighting for the true liberation of the country'. As black Namibian, he was convinced that the conflict between the South African armies and SWAPO's military wing was the result of the unfair treatment of his people under South African laws. Many Namibians had left the country and were now engaged in the armed liberation struggle against South Africa. He said that his older son, Ismail Hangwe Binga, had left Namibia in 1978 and 'I suspect that he is now a member of the military wing of SWAPO'. It was unacceptable to him that the SWAPO should be a conflict against his own brother. He described himself as a believer in 'the justice of SWAPO's struggle'.
The case was reported to have been potted indefinitely. Another report said it was expected to come before the Windhoek Supreme Court early in 1984.
LABOUR CONDITIONS
UNEMPLOYMENT
Retrenchment programmes adopted by most of the big private sector employers in Namibia have led to dwindling job opportunities with little prospect of any decrease in the unemployment rate among black workers.
By the end of 1982, some experts were putting the total unemployment figure in the territory at about 75,000, with the under-employed figure at a further 50,000. Assuming an average dependency rate of three persons per employee, these statistics, if correct, suggest that as many as 500,000 people, or nearly half of Namibia's population, are suffering from the effects of unemployment.
By October 1982 there had already been more than 2,000 retrenchments, affecting all grades of skilled and unskilled workers, in construction-related firms. Most of the main mining, industrial and trading companies had embarked on policies of selective retrenchment, leaving vacancies unfilled, or of cutting back on overtime and related labour costs. In the agricultural sector, for which statistics are very rarely available, the number of workers displaced by the drought and depressed export market was estimated to run into 'thousands'. The only notable exceptions to the general pattern of cut-backs and lay-offs were in the banking sector and in some larger commercial and broadly-based groups.
In April 1983, the director of the SWA Bureau for Development Coordination and Statistics was reported to have told a conference in Cape Town that five per cent of Namibia's population was unemployed - i.e. 55,000 people. (The 1981 official census indicated a total population of 1,100,000).
Specific examples of large employers who have retrenched include Rössing Uranium (not replacing the 40-50 employees who normally leave each month, amounting to up to 600 job losses in the course of the year to July 1983) and Tsumeb Corporation (250 vacancies in July 1982 out of a total labour force of 7,000, none of which were to be filled).
Businesses which increased their staffing levels during 1982 included the Olthaver & List group (involved in a wide range of activities including property, farming, white fish, food manufacture and the hotel trade) and Namibia's two leading banks, Barclays and Standard.
At Barclays, the total staff contingent in Namibia rose from 440 in mid-1978 to 659 at the end of 1982. The proportion of black workers employed rose to 30 per cent of the workforce during the period, according to the General Manager. Standard Bank anticipated a continuing increase in recruitment during 1983, focussed on a number of banking growth points such as Windhoek, Tsumeb and Swakopmund.
The general picture nevertheless remains one of rising unemployment with consequent social disruption and hardship. According to the Windhoek Observer unemployment, manifest in the 'horde of young black men without work ... wandering aimlessly through our streets', has become 'problem number one, about which nothing is being done, other than to barricade shop windows, to put fierce dogs onto premises to prowl around at night and to place armed guards around such places'.
SOCIAL SECURITY
Black workers who are laid off from their jobs or fall victim to retrenchment programmes (such as migrant workers who find that their contracts cannot be renewed) are likely to have no other source of income and no alternative jobs to go to. Black workers receive no severance pay or pension money, and are likely to forfeit rights to hostel or other accommodation in the urban areas, besides.
A spokesman for the Civic Affairs and Manpower department confirmed at the beginning of 1983 that employees were not entitled to any compensation or redundancy pay on being discharged, although outstanding holiday money would have to be paid. He added that employers had the right to dismiss workers if the company had financial problems or if there was a decrease in production.
Workers who have been ill or who have had to spend some time in hospitals or clinics have no job security and may well find themselves fired, despite possessing doctors' certificates. A black employee of the state water and electricity corporation SWAWEC, for example, found his job filled when he returned from three months' hospital treatment for tuberculosis. He had been a SWAWEC employee for four years. He was eventually given all the back pay due to him but told that the firm could not reemploy him.
STRIKES AND DISPUTES
Three strikes by black workers in Namibia were reported during the first half of 1983.
At the Table Top fish processing factory in Walvis Bay, half the factory's female workforce of 150 went on strike on 28 December 1982, over a holiday pay dispute. Eighty women workers walked out when the management failed to satisfactorily explain why they had not been paid the recognised double rates for working on 16 December, a public holiday.
The management declined to negotiate with the workers and urged them to form a committee, which they did. Negotiations between the committee and management were successful in securing the outstanding pay, and no actions were taken against the workers involved in the strike.
In April 1983, the entire 660-strong workforce at the Tsumeb Corporation's Otjihase Mine staged a 40 hour walkout in protest at a new work regulation. The strike was initiated by 100 mechanical equipment operators, who were followed the next day by the rest of the labour force.
Following negotiations with the strikers, the management announced that it could not accede to their demands but that detailed investigations would be initiated. All workers who failed to return to work within a period of 30 days would be considered to have resigned, and arrangements would be made to pay them off inclusive of the period during which negotiations were being concluded.
A fleet of police vehicles was sent from Windhoek and stood by in the mining compound while negotiations were in progress. According to the general manager of Tsumeb, they did not intervene and said that they could only do so in the event of violence being threatened.
The Tsumeb dispute was described by a local newspaper as 'the biggest single strike for a long time', and one which 'once again illustrated the unity in the ranks of South West Africa's mine labour task force'.
A month later, workers at Rössing Uranium reported that 84 truck drivers at the mine's open pit had staged a wildcat strike for the duration of one eight hour shift. The action had been prompted by dissatisfaction with a supervisor.
The Rössing management, however, denied that the strike had even taken place and claimed that the dispute had been settled by agreement through the mine's industrial relations system.
ARRESTS FOR VAGRANCY
Increased unemployment has prompted the authorities to take steps to remove those without work from the streets and public places.
Despite the supposed abolition of the pass laws in Namibia, substantial numbers of people continue to be arrested by the police in Windhoek and other urban areas, as 'vagrants', 'illegal lodgers' or for illegal entry to premises. Many of those picked up are unemployed.
The police claim that their raids - which they tend to mount in the middle of the night - have enabled them to solve a number of criminal cases on their files. They can also serve as a pretext for apprehending suspected SWAPO sympathisers.
Over a weekend in July, for example, over 200 people described as 'unemployed blacks' were picked up by police in Windhoek during 'an anti-crime and anti-urban terrorism swoop'.
Seventy five people were arrested on 16 July and 238 (sic - the figures appear to conflict with the total reported) on 15 July. Most were released once they had 'proved they were employed', according to a police spokesman.
CHARGES PENDING
It is illegal to publish any statement 'regarding the SAP or any part of the force, or any member of the force' in relation to the performance of their functions without having reasonable grounds for believing that the statement is true.
GERMAN CITIZEN FINED
While the media are clearly the main target of police action to prevent the publication of damaging reports, any person found to speak of incidents relating to South Africa's illegal military presence in Namibia is likely to find him or herself under attack.
A West German citizen, resident in Namibia for two years, was found guilty in June in the Windhoek Magistrates Court of spreading rumours about the Defence Force. Hans Henning Schreiber (24) was sentenced to a RIOO fine or 10 days imprisonment under Section 118 of the South African Defence Act.
Schreiber first appeared in court on 15 April on charges that he had harmed the SA External Relations Department and alarmed members of the public with comments made in Windhoek about activities of the SADF. The State also alleged that Schreiber had contravened the Official Secrets Act by making use of information gained through a government contract in the 'operational area'. Schreiber worked for a company dealing in photographic material. The state claimed that Schreiber had used information 'to the disadvantage of South Africa'.
