Education continued to be a main focus of resistance in Namibia during early 1988 with a school boycott in the north of the country involving 7,000 pupils by the end of May.
The boycott was aimed at the immediate removal of military bases from the vicinity of school premises. This has been a long-standing grievance because the armed forces, under constant attack from the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), have increasingly based their camps close to schools hoping to make it difficult for PLAN combatants to attack, and in order to control pupils.
The boycott began on 17 March at Ponhofi Secondary School with some 700 students protesting about the nearby Ohangwena Koevoet base. During 1987 two students were killed and seven others seriously injured by mortars apparently fired from the base. Parents whole-heartedly supported the student body in its action. The community was in conflict with the local headmen, officials appointed by the regime, who had expressed their support for the occupying forces by encouraging five more bases to be built in the area.
As the boycott started soldiers from the Etale base were said to have arrested seven pupils named as K. KASHIDULIKA, Haimbodi WILLIBARD, Kashimba OSCAR, Kashimba PAULUS, Haihambo TIMOTHEUS, N J H SAMUEL and N JASON. they were said to be still searching for H LAZARUS, N LAZARUS and H LAMECK.
Boycotts soon followed at Ongha Secondary School, near Ondangwa, and Ombalantu Secondary School. The latter was damaged on 12 April following a PLAN attack on the nearby Outapi base - two days later the one thousand students refused to start the new term. The next school affected was Eengedjo School, Ombalantu, where all the students, between five and six hundred in number, walked out. On 21 April the army liaison division in Windhoek reported that 60-100 schoolboys as well as teachers had been abducted from the school by PLAN guerrillas. Some were said to have escaped, and others taken to Angola. Local sources contradicted this story, saying that the military had abducted some 30 pupils and taken them across the border into Angola. They assumed this was done for 'propaganda' purposes, to make a case for maintaining military bases to 'protect the children'. Subsequently the names of a number of pupils and teachers detained at the time became known. (See List) By early June there was no sign of any easing of the boycott.
RELEASES
The following people whose detention was reported in FOCUS 76 were released from detention by May:
Ndelefina ABRAHAM, Kandenga HERMAN, Julius KAPULA, Protasius LEVI, Albine MULYAU, Haili MWEETAKO, Daniel Israel NAMWANDI, Nathaniel Stephanus NDATYAPO, Andreas SHIVUTE, Shipingana SHIVUTE and Moses ERRKI (ERIKI) who was released and restricted to his home.
[Table of detainees omitted]
