Nationwide school boycotts have made children and young people targets of South African repression in Namibia. In London at the end of October a conference on 'Children, Apartheid and Repression in Namibia' heard testimonies from children involved in the boycotts.
The conference, organised by Southern Africa - The Imprisoned Society (SATIS), and attended by 350 people, including representatives from Namibia, considered all aspects of the repression of children and young people. From birth, black Namibian children are denied basic security, health care and adequate education. Half the country's population is under 18 years of age - they are especially vulnerable to the consequences of apartheid inequalities and injustices, and suffer from the systematic violence of the South African occupation.
The conference was told that malnutrition and ill-health is widespread amongst Namibian children. A 1986 survey, for example, found that a quarter of pre-school children in one area were malnourished, 11 per cent acutely. Most black families live in inadequate and overcrowded accommodation and have incomes below the minimum subsistence level.
Namibia is under one of the most intensive military occupations of modern times, and few black Namibian children are unaffected by the harsh realities of the occupation and its effect on all aspects of life. Namibia's children have suffered incalculable damage through death, injury, exile, the disruption of education and health services, the destruction of homes and crops, the forced population removals, the loss of parents killed in the war and the social dislocation and break-up of families which are an inevitable result of war and foreign occupation.
Dr Soiomon Amadhila, senior paediatrician at the Oshakati hospital in northern Namibia explained the detrimental effects on children of the grossly inadequate and unequal provision of health facilities for black Namibians. He gave examples of how health was further adversely affected in the north of the country by the activities of South African troops. Many of the children admitted to Oshakati hospital were the victims of shootings by South African soldiers, or had been maimed by explosive devices left lying around by troops.
Education in Namibia is segregated and unequal, and the conference heard of the effects of this on Namibian children from school students and a teacher from Arandis Primary School, Balbini Hauses. 'If we look at the education system in Namibia', said Hauses, 'we can clearly see that things are not equal: different education systems for different population groups. The facilities like school buildings, classrooms, libraries and laboratories are of unequal quality. Unequal distribution of the resources is another factor... Even the drop-out rates as well as Matric results of blacks are a clear indication of the inequalities.'
In 1986-7, nearly four times more was spent on each white child than on children in schools falling under the Ovambo bantustan administration, the largest black education authority. There was a shortage of 3,000 classrooms in black schools in 1987; classes of 80 to 100 pupils are not uncommon; the majority of teachers are underqualified and have not themselves completed secondary school.
The South African armed forces exert an oppressive influence over education. Soldiers have been deployed as teachers, military and police bases have been set up next to schools, students have been singled out for intimidation and attempts have been made to 'win the hearts and minds' of children through cadet training and youth camps.
The siting of army bases near schools sparked nationwide school boycotts after March 1988, when students at Ponhofi Secondary School in the north of Namibia began a boycott demanding the removal of a nearby Koevoet police base. Pupils at Ombalantu and Oshigambo schools soon joined them and the boycott spread throughout the country. A 16-year-old student from Oshigambo, Aune Shilongo, explained in her testimony the reasons for the boycott:
'There is a big South African military base about one and a half kilometres away from Oshigambo High School. The soldiers from that base always come to our school to disturb us. We cannot go for walks freely without being harassed by the soldiers. They are always molesting us, threatening us when we refuse their sexual advances and in some cases some girls have either been beaten or even raped by these soldiers.'
'Our teachers are also beaten and intimidated by the troops which accuse them of teaching us to support SWAPO. Things become worse if the base comes under SWAPO attack. The troops take their revenge on us and the local population whom they accuse of being SWAPO supporters and sympathisers.'
'When we heard that our friends at Ponhofi and Ombalantu Secondary Schools had gone on strike in demand for the removal of military bases next to their schools which were a threat to their lives, we automatically joined the strike because we suffer the same threat.'
'We refused to go back to school until the bases were removed from near our schools. When we were on strike, the Makakunyas, as we call the occupation troops and their local conscripts in Namibia (a word meaning scavengers, for that is what we think they are) used to roam around, looking for and beating up students who were out of classes, especially boys whom they accused of being so-called SWAPO terrorists. Any school-going kid they met was victimised. They were searching from house to house and life was quite hot for us. Many students were beaten, others arrested and some disappeared without trace after being taken for questioning by the Makakunyas.'
By June, the school boycotts had spread to the south. Jacobina Ndalikokule, a 16-year-old, studying at Dobra High School, 17 kilometres north of Windhoek, told the conference: 'Most of us at Dobra were conscious of those developments in our country because we had an active students' association at our school... When the strike started to spread in the north therefore, we were able to monitor the situation closely because we also felt that the fate of our brothers and sisters in the north was also our own fate. What was happening to them was bound to happen to us one day as the war was steadily spreading southwards.
'We therefore decided to organise a demonstration of all students from schools in and around Windhoek... On the night of June 5, 1988, we slipped out of school premises and walked the 17 kilometres to Windhoek, braving the cold weather. The whole school, 350 of us, walked that night.
'In the morning of June 6, we arrived in Windhoek. As we reached Shipena School, in the black township of Katutura, we were joined by students from other schools. The combined schools' demonstration attracted about 5,000 pupils from Windhoek schools...
'As soon as we gathered at Shifidi Square, the racist police and soldiers, who had also converged at our meeting place in Katutura, decided to strike and break up our peaceful meeting. Until the security forces intervened, there had been no violent incidents...
'All of a sudden, the police started attacking us, firing rubber bullets, teargas and beating every student in sight. It was here where I and many other students fell victims of that unprovoked attack against the peaceful young children. Most of those wounded were those who were holding placards demanding the removal of SADF and Koevoet bases near schools, and I was one of them.
'I was shot in the thigh with a rubber bullet and I had to spend seven days in Katutura hospital, although it was not easy to be admitted as police gave instructions that wounded students should not be treated. I was shot early in the morning, but I could not get medical attention because the police made it impossible to go to the hospitals and clinics which they had sealed off. If any injured student went there, she or he was immediately arrested. I therefore had to wait until nightfall when I was able to enter the hospital...'
'The police crackdown on our rally was brutal and terrible. I saw a young girl of eight years being beaten to the ground by a gang of Koevoet who surrounded her. Several children collapsed from the teargas and when one tried to help them, the occupation troops attacked with whips and clubs. Many students were injured. More than 40 students were also arrested, among them Ignatius Shihwaameni...'
Shihwaameni, General Secretary of the Namibia National Students Organisation (NANSO), was present at the conference. After his detention in June, he had been released, only to be detained again in August with another 36 students from the Academy in Windhoek. They were released on bail after being charged under the Protection of Fundamental Rights Act.
Shihwaameni said that the suffering of Namibia's children would only end with Namibian independence, but stressed the need for international aid and support for children, in liaison with SWAPO, local trade unions, churches and student organisations. He told the conference that hundreds of students had been detained and thousands expelled from schools and that children were 'being hunted' by the police and army.
The conference noted that 'the greatest threat to Namibia's children is South Africa's occupation force'. Namibia's children suffer from the effects of the South African military occupation especially from attacks on civilians by the army and police.
David Smuts, a Namibian lawyer and founder of the Human Rights Centre in northern Namibia, referred to numerous examples of atrocities perpetrated against children by the occupation forces. As a result of legal actions, the authorities had been forced to pay large sums in damages in respect of some of these atrocities, but this had not led to a discernable decrease in such attacks, he said. However, he hoped that the Human Rights Centre, which is based at Ongwediva in the heart of the main war zone, would result in damages actions being brought on a more systematic basis.
Children were also affected by detentions, said Smuts. Official statistics for November 1977 to April 1983 - the only period for which figures are available - showed that 5,507 people had been detained under Proclamation AG9 which allows for detention without trial - only eight of these people were ever charged. 'Although the vast majority of those detained are not children, children are of course affected by detentions of their parents, particularly in the areas of the far north of Namibia where detentions for periods of a year or more have not been uncommon', he said.
Rape was common in the war zones, reported Smuts - at Oshakati hospital there were about ten cases of rapes a month by members of the occupation forces. He concluded that the wide powers given to soldiers in the north of Namibia had led to a 'virtual state of lawlessness on the part of the security forces'.
A 17-year-old Namibian girl, Ipawa Jacquiline Haipingje from Ongwediva, wrote in her testimony that on 1 January 1986 South African police had tried to rape one of her best friends, Christophina Thomas, a 16-year-old.
Ipawa also reported another rape attack by soldiers: 'This year at our school, the Makakunyas forced their way into our hostel after midnight... They hammered on our doors ordering us to open up, but we didn't. Unfortunately, one girl, Sarafina Hangula, had earlier gone out to the toilet. When she was coming out of the toilet, she ran into the Makakunyas who grabbed her and started to rape her. She was screaming for help, but we were all afraid of the Makakunyas. The Makakunyas then left to raid the other hostels. The girls there who had heard noises from our hostel fled. Unfortunately, some of them were caught by the soldiers and were either severely beaten up or raped.'
'I remember the day when members of Koevoet... came to our home. They came at 6 o'clock on the morning of 15th March this year and woke us up with sticks and fists. They asked us what time the so-called SWAPO terrorists had passed through our millet field. We told them that we had not seen them. This negative response angered them and they dragged us from our beds, out of the house and into the field to show us the alleged footprints [which] happened to belong to our brother and when we pointed out this, they said they would kill us for telling them lies.
'One of the soldiers in the group picked up his rifle and hit my 19-year-old elder sister Ndahafa on the back and kept hitting her until she fell down. They also hit my 15-year-old kid sister Meameno on her left eye with a rifle butt, saying that it is better to harm her eyes because she has seen nothing. Up to now my sister has poor vision in the left eye because of that assault. They also beat me up and kicked me with their boots until I stopped screaming. They then left us lying down helpless and threatened that next time we would join our father, meaning they would kill us, because our father is dead.'
The conference was informed of many cases where children had been killed, assaulted and tortured by the occupation forces. Children had been shot by troops or police enforcing the dusk-to-dawn curfew in the north; crushed to death by military vehicles; killed inside homes raked by bullets or set alight during South African army operations; blown up by land mines, grenades and unexploded mortars left lying around by the army and police; and tortured in many brutal ways, including beatings, electric shocks and burning.
Sixteen-year-old Erastus Haitengela told the conference of his experience of the curfew: 'One day my friends and I were just scrolling around our school premises when suddenly we were surrounded by SWATF soldiers. They asked us where we were going so late, but truly it was not late, it was only five o'clock in the afternoon. They started to ask our identities. When we told them that we left them [identity cards] in the dormitory, they started to beat us with steel wires, claiming that we were breaking the curfew. They beat us until we fled into the dormitory. I have a scar on my chest from the incident...'
Erastus also described how he had seen two of his fellow students being blown up when they stood on 'a live shell' which had been left lying in the road by soldiers from the SADF's 101 Battalion, and of a raid by South African soldiers on the girls' hostel at his school, Oluno Secondary. The soldiers had broken into the dormitory pretending to be SWAPO guerrillas and had taken some of the girls at gunpoint to their base, where they raped them. The students also told of booby-traps set by the South African forces, and of school buildings being blown up by soldiers. Other children gave evidence to the conference about how they or their friends had been beaten by troops who suspected they had information about SWAPO guerrillas.
The children who gave evidence at the conference left Namibia as a result of their experiences during the 1988 school boycotts, which affected most Namibian pupils. At the time of the conference, hundreds of children were still boycotting school and it was unlikely that many would write exams at the end of the year. Many schools were operating with less than half their pre-boycott enrolments, while others were closed for the rest of the year.
Hundreds of schoolchildren were reported to have left Namibia for exile in Angola or elsewhere. Many of them intended to resume their education at SWAPO-run schools, such as the one at Kwanza-Sul in Angola which caters for 8,000 pupils, or the SWAPO secondary school at Loudima in Congo. According to one press report in early November, 430 people had crossed the border into Angola 'in the last few months'. Three-quarters of these were said to be children. SWAPO reported that some of the fleeing children had been attacked by the SADF - 14 children from a group of about 50 were killed in early August when they were strafed by a South African aircraft while crossing the border.
