On 20 and 21 June an estimated one in three workers in Namibia participated in a two-day stay-away in support of students boycotting their schools. The students were demanding the removal of military bases from the proximity of schools.
Despite widespread repression including the detention of activists by police and the breaking up of meetings with teargas and rubber bullets, the protests were on a scale unprecedented since the general strike by contract workers in 1971-2.
Boycotts of schools took place in various parts of the country between March and July around a range of issues. Most of them were centred around the existence of military bases near schools. There were also protests over disciplinary action taken against pupils and teachers who participated in the Kassinga Day stay-away on 4 May and against increases in school fees.
Hoping to discourage PLAN combatants from attacking its forces, the South African Defence Force (SADF) has located some military bases in the northern war zones near schools, hospitals and churches. In the past several pupils have been killed by the SADF. Pupils have also been the victims of harassment and brutality by troops stationed at the bases.
In 1987 boycotts at secondary schools in the northern war zones led to the removal of bases from Okahao and Tsandi. However, bases remained near other schools in the region and some new ones were constructed. At its 1987 annual conference, the Namibia National Students' Organisation (NANSO) adopted the theme 'Decisive Action against Militarisation' for the year. Several seminars on the questions of compulsory conscription, the militarisation of education and the location of army bases were held in various parts of the country in 1987 and early 1988.
The boycotts began in March at Ponhofi Secondary School, near a Koevoet police base at Ohangwena, and spread to other schools at Ondangwa and Ombalantu, also close to bases. In May and June at most other schools in the north students either came out in protest at bases near their own schools or acted in solidarity with others. Some students left school premises, while others gathered in school-grounds.
The boycotts were endorsed by teachers and parents. A wide range of organisations also supported them, including the Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN), NANSO, SWAPO, the SWAPO Youth League and SWANU-Progressives. Solidarity boycotts later spread to Tsumeb in the north-east and then southwards to Berseba, Windhoek, Swakopmund, Arandis and Gibeon. By June some 25,000 pupils were participating.
The authorities refused to concede pupils' demands. After consulting with the South African State President, the SADF and officials of the South African-installed MPC Administration, the Administrator-General stated that the bases would not be moved. He indicated that the authorities might construct bomb shelters at the affected schools. Andrew Matjila, the official responsible for education in the MPC Administration, said the boycotts were being 'incited by activists from South Africa'. In his view they were seeking to create the impression that Namibia had become ungovernable. He implied that if the boycotts continued a state of emergency might be declared.
In an attempt to break the boycotts, the authorities adopted increasingly repressive tactics, detaining students and activists, dispersing meetings with teargas and rubber bullets and attacking students on school premises.
Restrictions on reporting prevented detailed coverage of the response to the boycotts in the northern war zones. However, in early June The Namibian reported that members of Koevoet had attempted to abduct a group of pupils from the Oluno Secondary School during a night-time raid on dormitories. They managed to escape when fellow students came to their aid. The Koevoet members opened fire as they withdrew, damaging school buildings.
At the end of May the boycott spread for the first time outside the main war zone when students at Otjikoto Secondary School near Tsumeb came out in solidarity with those in the north and over their own grievances. These included shortages of prescribed text books and the behaviour of white school teachers, who came to classes with firearms and used offensive racist language when addressing students.
On 31 May police using sjamboks and teargas dispersed a gathering of students in the school grounds. At least four people were injured. Two days later heavily-armed police surrounded the school. Security police then entered the premises and detained Hileni KAIFANUA, NANSO branch secretary. When her fellow students attempted to accompany her to the local police station, police blockaded the school entrances and baton charged students, beating them with quirts (long batons) and sjamboks. Five more students were arrested and subsequently appeared in court on charges of public violence. The five - Euthopia (Eusebiu) VAHEKENI, Nikanor MATHEUS, Desmond UNDJUA, Berthuel MUSHONGO and Godfried KAMINDJO - were released on R100 bail each and the case was postponed to 17 June. Kaifanua was released without being charged. After the incident the school was closed by the authorities.
In early June, the boycott spread to the Windhoek area, and then to Arandis and as far south as Gibeon. Police repression of activity in Katutura, Windhoek, was especially severe.
On 6 June in the worst incidents police attacked without warning students who were gathering to discuss the schools boycott in the grounds of Katutura Secondary School. They broke up the crowd with sjamboks and batons and as clashes spread into surrounding streets used teargas and rubber bullets. Andreas MWATELAI, a worker, was admitted to hospital in a serious condition, with a rubber bullet lodged in his brain. At least 10 other people were injured.
Forty-three people were detained: 38 were released on the same day, while four remained in custody under legislation providing for detention without trial and one for allegedly assisting a policeman. They were named as Ignatius SHIWAMENI, NANSO Secretary General, Chief ANKAMA, a trade unionist, Ignatius DEMPERS and Immanuel TJIVIKUA both secondary students. All four were released on 22 June after going on a hunger strike in protest at their conditions. They had been in separate cells at Seis, 50 kilometres from Windhoek. Released with them was Thomas GIDEON from the Ongwediva Training College. One report also mentioned that Rapuu TJIPURA was released with them.
Another confrontation took place at the Andreas Shipena Secondary School. Students had refused to participate in an 'operation clean-up' organised in connection with International Environmental Day. A prize by a Windhoek soft-drink concern of 50 litres of Pepsi Cola had been offered to the class which performed best. Students objected to the sponsorship of the company because it also supplies soft drinks to organisations linked to the SADF. Police arrived and attacked students with sjamboks and batons. Shortly after these incidents, police reinforcements were drafted into Katutura.
There were boycotts at at least another four schools and colleges in the Windhoek area. On 8 June a meeting in Windhoek was attended by over 2,000 parents, students and pupils. A resolution was passed supporting the boycotts and condemning the location of police and army bases near schools. The meeting demanded their removal as a condition for pupils returning to school, and elected a committee to co-ordinate the boycotts. In mid-June it sought a meeting with the Administrator-General. However he reaffirmed his earlier refusal to make concessions.
Protests at schools around the country over other educational issues took place at the same time as the boycotts.
Students at the Rundu Senior Secondary School in the Kavango bantustan walked out of the school in late May when disciplinary action was proposed against 15 students, identified by bantustan authorities as 'ring-leaders' in stayaways to mark Kassinga Day on 4 May. A boycott over the same issue also took place at Kandjimi Murangi, west of Rundu, where twelve teachers were dismissed for participating in the 4 May stay-away. The authorities were forced to allow the teachers to return.
In mid-June several people were detained in the Rundu area. They included Marius NEKARO, principal of the Rundu Senior Secondary School, Dominee MBAMBO and Sebastian KANDEMA, teachers at the school, Mathews MUKOYA, the school matron, and Martin KUTENDA, NANSO branch chairperson and a student at the school. Two members of the school's Parents' Committee, Bonifacius WAKUDUMO and Simon MARUTA, were also detained, as were George MAKUKI, William TWEYA and Karara TANISLAUS, students from the Academy in Windhoek who live in the area. Police also detained an employee of the Kavango bantustan administration, Raymond MUTUMBI. Nekaro, Mbambo, Mukoya, Tanislaus and Mutumbi were released by the end of the month while Wakudumo and Makuki were released by 11 July. Tweya, Kutenda and someone named as David NDJAMBA were then reported to be still in detention under Proclamation AG9.
Pupils in schools run by the Herero bantustan administration boycotted schools in protest at the raising of school fees to bail out the bankrupt administration. Parents also called for the transfer of the schools to the central administration. They said the bantustan administration had proved itself incapable of running the schools, which were characterised by dilapidated buildings and shortages of teachers and books. The segregation of education and its control by several separate bantustan authorities have been a longstanding grievance. A delegation of parents met with the bantustan authorities who refused to meet their demands. The boycotts at most schools were called off after two weeks.
Pupils at the Drimiopsis Secondary School near Gobabis demonstrated in mid-May over excessive corporal punishment and the expulsion of three students who left their classroom during a study period. The school was subsequently closed by the Tswana bantustan administration who control it and students ordered to re-register when it opened again in mid-June.
In early June the 60,000 member SWAPO-affiliated National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW) threw its weight behind the student boycotts. According to Ben Ulenga, NUNW executive back student demands was first raised by Katutura shop stewards. He said that workers 'arrived home in the evening to find their children had been teargassed, beaten or arrested. As parents this alone was sufficient reason for concern. The vast majority of migrant workers have children in schools in the north and the presence of the SADF and the proximity of its bases are a constant threat to the lives of their children. What affects their children affects them too.'
NUNW officials contacted workers in branches throughout the territory and found widespread support for a strike. Following a national report-back attended by representatives from more than 80 companies and businesses on 11 June, the union resolved to pressurise employers to intervene with the authorities. It also drew up a list of demands. If these were not met by 17 June, workers would stay away from work on 20 and 21 June. They demanded that: * SADF bases be removed from the vicinity of schools in northern Namibia; * All detainees be released immediately; * Koevoet and its allies end their terror against students and be withdrawn from the townships immediately.
The authorities failed to act on any of the demands and workers responded to the stay-away call in large numbers. In the industrial area of Windhoek many firms experienced absentee rates of between 50 and 80 per cent. In other urban centres there was also a high level of participation. An estimated 75 per cent of the workforce stayed away in Luderitz and Swakopmund and 70 per cent in Walvis Bay. In Okahandja, union officials said that 80 per cent stayed away.
The strongest action in support of the stay-away was on the mines. There was an almost 100 per cent stay-away at Consolidated Diamond Mines at Oranjemund and at the Rossing Uranium Mine near Arandis. However, the response was much weaker at the Otjihase and Kombat mines where workers were threatened with summary dismissal if they participated. Between 45,000 and 50,000 workers stayed away nationally.
The stay-away succeeded in spite of repression. On the morning of the first day of the stay-away members of Koevoet and the SADF's 101 Battalion armed with automatic weapons were drafted into Katutura. They broke into houses and the single sex quarters, dragging people from their beds and ordering them to go to work. Those who were unemployed were told to go back to the Ovambo bantustan.
In the view of many observers the successful stay-away and boycotts provided the basis for an active and continuing alliance between students and workers and the beginning of a new phase of resistance. Shortly after the conclusion of the stay-away NANSO's Fourth National Students' Congress was held at Dobra College in Windhoek. A resolution was adopted committing the organisation to 'concretise our relationship with the workers organised under the banner of NUNW'. It further resolved to establish labour committees to give concrete substance to 'this worker-student alliance'.
