Police raids on union offices and workers' hostels during June and July appeared to be part of a policy aimed at undermining recent gains by unions affiliated to the National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW).
Many of the residents of the raided hostels were involved in disputes in sectors where the Namibia Food and Allied Workers Union (NAFAU) had established itself.
In June a two-week strike ended with the reinstatement of some 600 meat-workers, dismissed after an overtime ban related to wages grievances and after a stoppage over the victimization of NAFAU branch officials. Employers also agreed to negotiations about pay. The strike took place at two depots of the meat processing company Swavleis, in Windhoek and Okhandja.
The company tried to break the strike by flying in scab labour from Cape Town in South Africa. The strikers, however, received strong support from local church groups and Katutura businessmen who stated they would boycott the company if the dispute was not resolved. Swavleis was forced to concede because the strike dramatically affected the availability of red meat in the territory and was estimated to have cost the company R200,000 per day in lost revenue.
Swavleis agreed to discussions about wages, but 12 NAFAU members who took the initiative in the early stages of the dispute were not reinstated.
Luderitz, a stronghold of NAFAU, where earlier strikes in the fishing and chemical industries took place, was the centre of new disputes in late June and July. A strike called to protest at the dismissal of a worker who failed to wear a faulty safety mask spread during successive shifts at the Taurus Chemical plant. In all, 270 workers were involved. By the second week of July (a month later) talks with employers were still deadlocked. The dispute triggered further actions over wages and dismissals by workers at Atlas Organic Fertilisers, a small guano-collecting concern, and among members of a trawling crew in the harbour. The secretary of the NAFAU Workers Committee at Taurus, Hosea KAULINGE, was briefly held for questioning by the police.
In early June the 1,500-strong workforce at the TCL copper mine near Tsumeb launched a boycott of white-owned business in the town. Co-ordinated by a local committee and the Mineworkers Union of Namibia (MUN) it was directed against a new sales tax on consumer goods, but demands also included wage increases and an end to South African military activities in northern Namibia, where families of most of the workforce live. Local newspapers reported that the boycott had spread from the TCL hostels to the local township of Nomtsoub. Miners and residents were shopping only at black-owned businesses in Nomtsoub and by mid-July the boycott was still continuing.
In mid-June, the authorities launched the first in a series of attacks on the unions involved in the disputes in the food and chemicals sector. The actions appeared to be a co-ordinated strategy to undermine the unions. The NUNW offices in Windhoek were raided by security police. The home of lawyer Anton LUBOWSKI, a member of the NUNW Steering Committee, was also raided and searched. In a separate incident the NAFAU chairperson, Macdonald KANTLABATHI, was detained under Proclamation AG9 (providing for interrogation). He was later released.
A more systematic form of repression emerged when hostels housing contract workers were raided. Two of these raids, in Luderitz and Kuisebmond, appeared to have been directed against workers involved in disputes. NAFAU general secretary John Pandeni said he believed the police actions were part of a 'campaign to prevent workers from organising effectively' and of 'forcing striking workers back to their jobs'. In another raid at Katutura, no such direct link could be made, but the residents of the hostel had a history of militancy and had been boycotting food in the hostel canteens. They were also campaigning against the proposed closure of the hostel which accommodates 10,000 workers because they had nowhere else to live.
In early June, armoured troop carriers sealed off the Katutura hostel. In a seven-hour operation heavily armed troops and police searched the complex room by room. Many workers were beaten. More than 75 were injured, some by rubber bullets, eight so seriously that they were not hospitalised, and 45 people were arrested on a variety of charges. Police officials gave conflicting reasons for the raid. Some said it was to trace illegal weapons – although, aside from knives and pangas, none were found.
Local newspapers speculated that the raid was part of an investigation into the death, near the hostel, of Elias SHIKONGO, a contract worker. He was shot when unidentified assailants opened fire on a mini-bus bringing workers back to the hostel. Police claim he was shot by SWAPO because used AK-47 cartridges were found near the scene. Local residents alleged, however, that Koevoet personnel were responsible. In the past Koevoet are known to have posed as SWAPO guerrillas, using captured AK-47s in killings to discredit the organisation. Police had earlier claimed that the raids on the NUNW office were also part of an investigation into the Shikongo killing.
A raid on the contract-worker hostel in Luderitz, also in early July, where over half the 3,000-strong population of the town live, appeared to be directed at the Taurus strikers who lived there. In their raid, lasting five hours, police beat workers with 'quirts' (plastic whips). After the raid 'blood was spattered on the walls, pools of blood lay on the stairwells, and the stench of spilled homebrew permeated the air'. Spent rubber bullets and rifle bullets were found. Eight people were injured, four by live rounds, the rest by rubber bullets. One worker, Philemon KALANGULA, later died in hospital from 'intra-cerebral bleeding'. At least 50 others received injuries in beatings. Many of the 208 workers detained were Taurus strikers.
Teargas was used and 2,000 workers detained in a similar raid at the municipal compound in Kuisebmond where 4,000 local workers are housed. The raid appeared to have been connected to a worker boycott of bars run by the municipality.
After the raids the NUNW unions were contemplating legal action against the police for injuries sustained and property damaged and lost.
Disruption of rallies and action against education campaigns marked further attacks by the authorities on organised resistance, in addition to the attacks on unions and workers described above.
Two SWAPO rallies were disrupted by police in July. In Windhoek police tried to prevent people from attending a SWAPO Youth Rally in Katutura on 5 July. Police rounded on groups trying to reach the rally, beating them with batons and quirts. Teargas was used in the ensuing clashes. Twenty youths were detained and eight people later hospitalised, two with gunshot wounds. In the event 3,000 people attended the rally. Although SWAPO public meetings have been legal since a court ruling overturned a ban, many have been disrupted by police or vigilantes.
At the end of July a Koevoet unit broke up another SWAPO rally in Arandis and fired rubber bullets into the crowd. Police had earlier raided a lunch attended by the organisers. Several people were detained under Proclamation AG9 including Asser KAPERI, Vice-Chairperson of the Metal Workers Union of Namibia, an affiliate of the NUNW.
The latest campaigns in the struggle against conditions in Namibian education were also repressed. Following a boycott of government schools in the area of Berseba in June, parents in co-operation with local churches set up an alternative school independent of the authorities. SADF troops dispersed a religious service held to open the new school in mid-July, using teargas, rubber bullets and whips.
In mid-June police and army units firing teargas and wielding batons also broke up a demonstration by striking students at the J A Nel Secondary School in Keetmanshoop. Three students were arrested and later sentenced in the local Magistrates' Court on charges of trespass. Earlier students at the school had addressed a letter listing several of their grievances to the education authorities. These included racial abuse from the mainly white teaching staff, demands for an elected students representative council, free choice of school subjects and an end to the prefect system. The authorities responded by expelling most of the pupils. Most of the students indicated they would not return when the school was scheduled to re-open on 14 July. They called on their parents and local churches to assist in setting up a private school.
