Conflicting attitudes towards the Namibian liberation struggle were brought sharply to the fore at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) earlier this year, when a former SWAPO guerilla, now working with the security police, was invited to address a meeting on campus.
He was described as a 'sell-out' and the meeting itself brought to a standstill by students singing freedom songs, chanting pro-SWAPO slogans and protesting their solidarity with the Namibian freedom struggle. Security guards intervened and dozens of student members of the Black Students' Society and the Azanian Students Organisation (AZASO) had their names taken.
The lunch-time meeting in July had been organised by the conservative Students' Moderate Alliance as a protest against pro-SWAPO views on campus and to 'bring to students an alternative point of view on the Namibian issue during Namibia week'. The Alliance's chosen speaker, Nestor Heita, had been captured by the SADF in October 1982 while fighting with the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) and was now living in Namibia as a 'businessman'. His arrival at the meeting, accompanied by a private security guard, was greeted by AZASO and Black Students' Society members, who constituted three-quarters of the audience, with hisses, chants of 'traitor', 'sell-out' and 'viva SWAPO', and black power salutes. Some students retaliated by tearing up SWAPO flags and posters, and scuffles broke out. The clash ended when university security guards told the protesters that they were taking part in a 'riotous assembly' and began taking down names.
The president of AZASO and the Black Students' Society, Tiego Moseneke, said afterwards that 'we had no intention of any physical confrontation. Our mission was to register a protest as proof of our solidarity with the people of Namibia'. He described the invitation to Heita as 'a provocative act'. The South African government bans and detains our people so why should we listen to a traitor', he said.
A few weeks later, at Stellenbosch University, a debate on Namibia being organised by a prominent student society was banned by the university's rector on the grounds that it was biased towards SWAPO. The speakers at the meeting, called by the Studente Aktuele Aangeleendheidkring (SAAK), were to have been a former special adviser on Namibia to the South African Foreign Minister, the bureau chief for Nasionale Koerante in Windhoek, and SWAPO's newly-elected Secretary for Foreign Affiars, Nico Bessinger. The rector had argued for the inclusion of a fourth speaker from one of the 'internal' Namibian political parties. It was later reported that disciplinary action might be taken against the SAAK executive.
