Dei earen6 onein Dei earen6 onein Northwestern University Library Evanston, Illinois 60208-2300 ii11L The Devils \I Haremm The War for Namibia Zed Books Ltd London and New lersey The Devils are Among Us - The War for Namibia was first published by Zed Books Ltd, 57 Caledonian Road. London NI 9BU. UK and 171 First Avenue, Atlantic Highlands. New Jersey 07716, USA. in 1989. Copyright © Namibia Communications Centre. 1989. Cover designed by Andrew Corbett, Photographs John Liebenberg and John Evenson/NCCT. Typeset by EMS Photosetters, Rochford, Essex. Printed and bound in the United Kingdom at Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd, Midsomer Norton. All rights reserved. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Herbstein. Denis. The devils are among us: the war for Namibia. 1. Namibia. 1. Title. TI. Evenson. John. 968.8'03. ISBN 0-86232-896-9 ISBN 0-86232-897-7 pbk Contents Acknowledgements v Preface vi Maps x 1. 'Give us back a dwelling place' - Namibia 1945-80 1 Political Organization 3 SWANU 6 SWAPO is Born 8 Exile 11 Armed Struggle 14 The Pretoria Trial 16 Courts, Churches, Unions and Chiefs 19 The Coup in Portugal 23 War in Angola 26 The Gang of Five 29 2. Partners in Liberation: SWAPO and the Churches 34 Divide and Rule 37 The Guerrillas 40 Total Onslaught 45 The Rough and the Smooth 47 The Churches 50 Exilitis 58 3. The Crowbar 61 'Sterk' Hans Dreyer 64 Namibianization of the War 69 Extermination 73 The Law 79 Information Gathering 82 Jonas Paulus 87 Death in Kavango 89 What Did Koevoet Achieve? 93 4. Life in the War Zone 96 Behind the White Wire 98 How 'The Other Half' Lived 100 The Women's Lot 104 Dusk to Dawn 106 'Ombili, ihena shili, otai twala, kombila' 110 Junior Revolutionaries 116 A Healthy Body 121 5. Namibia Inc. 125 Albion Commercial 125 South Africa's Vassal 132 Arms and Trade 133 Empty Notebook, Silent Camera 143 Dirty Tricks 146 6. The Deceitful Decade 150 Human Rights to Cold War 150 Low Diplomacy 153 The Puppets Can't Dance 159 Cuito Cuanavale to New York 170 Why South Africa Had to Go 175 Freedom Road? 178 After They Have Gone 183 Bibliography 185 Glossary 189 Index 191 Acknowledgements We acknowledge the contribution of Michael and Priscilla Hishikushitja, Andreas Amushila, Justin Ellis, Brian Wood, the Rev. Hidipo Shanyengange, Derek Forbes, John Dugard, who have provided information or commented on written material. At the London offices of the Namibia Communications Centre our work has been greatly facilitated by Hilifa Mbako, Protasius Ndauendapo and Christine Plezia. We also owe a debt to the skilful and often courageous advice offered by two lawyers in Namibia, David Smuts and Hartmut Ruppel. At Zed Books, John Daniel and Anne Rodford have been patient and constructive. Others have reported their experiences or offered insights from inside the war zone, but we feel it is still premature to mention them by name. August 1989 Preface This book has been written in Britain by two journalists whose names on the South African government blacklist have prevented them from working in Namibia. While we might have missed the atmosphere, the human contacts and visual insights vital to a reporter, there are compensating factors in doing an 'outside job'. The story of the war would have been impossible to ascertain under the rigorous conditions of censorship. The facts are more freely retold abroad. However, we make no claims to be presenting the definitive story of the struggle for liberation. That will follow when independence and peace - and access to the archives - are granted to this tragic land. The Namibia Communications Centre was established in 1984 as an ecumenical news agency to publicise the struggle of the churches and the people of Africa's last colony. The world formally favoured Namibian independence, yet the realization of the goal seemed as distant as ever. Hardly any news came out of the country, and what did was selected and fashioned by the mind of the South African military. The Centre quickly established a territorial network of church- based amateur and professional stringers able to supply news for transmission around the world. The offices in central London became a meeting place for Namibians living in Britain, and a stopping-off point for the churchmen and women, students, politicians, freedom fighters to-ing and fro-ing between southern Africa and the outside world. What we heard from our *spies' inside the territory, and Namibian visitors to London, forms much of the marerial in this book. Namibia is unique in the 20th century not for its experience of genocide, for there are the Armenians and Jews and Cambodians; nor for the apartheid shared with blacks in South Africa; nor are they a people starved of a motherland, as are the Kurds or Palestinians; while Eritreans would even dispute the territory's claim to being Africa's last colony. What makes it different is being the last surviving League of Nations mandate administered as a 'sacred trust of civilization'. This Preface status was unique in international diplomacy for not placing its faith in the good government of subject peoples, but in providing safeguards towards the fulfilment of that aim. It is one of the ironies of the century that the country given the most solid protection under international law should suffer the more for it. In the scramble for Africa, Europe's undignified carve-up of the'dark continent', imperial Germany gained Namibia. The German emperor proclaimed a 'protectorate' over its people. In the exercise of this 'protection', his representatives signed treaties with local chiefs which the Germans usually did not honour, but when blacks deviated from the 'contract' they were punished by armed poss6s, their land seized, yet more onerous treaties imposed. When the Hereros saw that their grazing lands would soon all be stolen, they launched a war of resistance. A well-trumpeted justification for German protection was to bring peace between Namas and Hereros, who had skirmished over land for a quarter of a century, usually with guns supplied by Afrikaner traders, and on at least one occasion by a German missionary. But joint resistance was not yet possible. In planning the insurrection, the Herero supreme chief, Samuel Maharero, wrote his 'let us die fighting' letter to Hendrik Witbooi of the Namas. All our obedience and patience with the Germans is of little avail, for each day they shoot someone dead for no reason at all. Hence I appeal to you, my Brother, not to hold aloof from the uprising, but to make your voice heard so that all Africa may take up arms against the Germans. Let us die fighting rather than die as a result of maltreatment, imprisonment or some other calamity. Tell all the kapteins [chiefs] down there to rise and do battle. [Drechsler 1980, p. 143.] Maharero asked Hermanus van Wyk, kaptein of the Basters (of Nama and European descent) to deliver the letter to Witbooi. It never arrived. Van Wyk handed it to the Germans. Even so, it is doubtful whether the appeal would have induced Witbooi to change his mind at that stage. Governor Theodor Leutwein later admitted he had been saved from 'disaster' at the beginning of the uprising because Herero and Nama were kept from joining forces for nine months, until October 1904. Divide and rule tactics in which real or imagined differences were played upon by their rulers became a hallmark of the colonial and South African style of government, with serious consequences for Namibia's liberation struggle. The second lesson which Namibians might have learnt at this early stage was the poisonous power of Western propaganda. In matters of warfare and culture, Germany was perhaps the most advanced Preface civilization the world had seen, though lagging behind the USA, France or Britain in democratic institutions. Yet the German conduct of the war in no way matched that of its 'uncivilized' enemy. Compare the two battle commands. The extermination order of General Lother von Trotha, the German commander-in- chief, issued after the defeat of the Hereros at Hamakari: The Herero people will have to leave the country. Otherwise I shall force them to do so by means of guns. Within the German boundaries, every Herero, whether found armed or unarmed, with or without cattle, will be shot. I shall not accept any more women and children. I shall drive them back to their people - otherwise I shall order shots to be fired at them. These are my words to the Herero people. Signed: the Great General of the Mighty Kaiser, von Trotha. Von Trotha was not quite true to his word. By the end of 1905, some 16,000 of the original Herero population of between 60,000 and 80,000 were still alive, but 14,000 of these were in concentration camps, their land and cattle seized. The Namas suffered almost as badly. By 1911 they were reduced to fewer than 10,000, having lost one-third to a half of their numbers. In January 1904 Samuel Maharero issued his battle order.'In my capacity as Supreme Chief of the Herero I hereby decree and resolve that none of my people lay their hands upon the English, the Bastaards, the Berg Damara, the Nama and the Boers.' Nor were German women and children, unarmed German men or missionaries to be harmed. The order preceded the Geneva Convention on the conduct of war by four decades. Maherero was true to his word. After the war, a vengeful German public craved just one case of a rapedDeutscheFrau, or a child murdered by blacks.