An atmosphere of ”absurd paranoia and spy-obsession” ran so rampant within the South West Africa People’s Organisation that even president Sam Nujoma’s wife was once detained as a ”South African spy”. This revelation by a group of Swapo dissidents, while publicly denied by Swapo headquarters, has been privately confirmed by a top-level Swapo official. Persistent, detailed claims of torture and atrocities made by 237 former detainees who have returned to Namibia have led even longstanding allies of the organisation to rebuke Swapo and demand a full inquiry into the treatment of ”suspected spies” arrested between 1980 and 1989 and held at the Minya, Ethiopia and Kakuiya camps near Lubango in southwestern Angola.
The majority of the detainees now speaking out in Windhoek are former members of Swapo, many of whom held posts at politburo level. Most still subscribe to the aims of the organisation. They claim that members of Swapo’s internal security units conducted a ”McCarthy”-like spate of arrests’ against members of the movement, particularly in the mid-1980s, in which hundreds of cadres were imprisoned and called upon in tum to name further suspects. The detainees blame the security apparatus, headed by Solomon Hauala (known by the nom de guerre ”Jesus”) for perpetrating a wave of terror. It was sparked, they say, by jealousy and anti-intellectualism among the poorly educated security personnel – it is alleged that a large proportion of the detainees were Swapo students studying at universities abroad- as well as tribal rivalries, with the majority of the detainees not coming from Owamboland.
The story of the detention of Kowambo Nujoma – her maiden name was Katjimuina – emerged among the welter of allegations made by the returned detainees. According to former Swapo member Emma Kambangula, after she was taken to the Minya detention base near Lubango in 1986, one Hilma Mushimba arrived. Mushimba’s brother Aaron ”Mushimba, a former politburo member, and her sister Kowambo, the Swapo president’s wife, were also held at Minya on suspicion of ”spying”, as Kambangula soon learned. Hilma Mushimba said she had been forced, after interrogation, to say her sister was a South African agent. And at one point during her three years in detention, Emma Kambangula heard Swapo security guards discussing the detention of the president’s wife: they appeared confused, saying ”Sam Nujoma’s wife has been arrested for being a South African spy -who is going to be next?”
It is not clear how long Kowambo Nujoma was detained for, as she was reportedly held separately. She is now believed to have been reconciled with the movement. She is apparently in East Germany, and according to a Swapo official in Windhoek, will re¬ turn to Namibia with her husband. Other sources in Windhoek say they believe she was probably detained because she voiced complaints about the arrest of family members and friends. Kambangula said she saw Aaron Mushimba emerging from the ”torture chambers” at Minya, while she was serving a ”sentence” involving hard labour.
A Swapo official in Windhoek last week denied these claims, saying Aaron Mushimba was back in the Namibian capital and was an ”active Swapo member”. Swapo maintains that Kambangula’s allegations about the arrest of Nujoma’s wife are a result of her still being a South African spy, and ”continuing to do her work (for Pretoria). Whatever the truth of the particular case of Kowambo and Aaron Mushimba, it is clear that most of the returnees have not resolved their differences with Swapo, and they insist that several hundred detainees have yet to be accounted for. They have formed a ”Political Consultative Committee” to campaign for the safe return of the detainees they allege are still being held. Some of the stories have told of shocking brutality -including prisoners being held in underground pits, beaten with sticks, subjected to electrical shocks and burning – and groups ranging from the UN Transition Assistance Group, the Red Cross, Amnesty International and even political allies of Swapo such as the West German Green Party are pressing for Swapo to clarify its stance ”once and for all”.
Detainees’ representative Riundja Ali Kaakunga, a former deputy administrative secretary on Swapo’ s central committee, has denied that he or his fellow-internees were South African agents, and accuses the Swapo president of handing over the investigations into allegations of spying to ”dishonest, highly incompetent and trigger-happy members of the security wing of the organisation” Although it is accepted that South African agents may, over the years, have infiltrated Swapo, Kaakunga says an atmosphere of ”absurd paranoia and spy-obsession” was allowed to develop.
Responding to the criticism. Swapo’s head of foreign liaison in the movement’s election directorate, Theo Ben-Gurirab, said it had been discovered since the return of the detainees that ”some were tortured and that some of the officers charged with gathering information (from detainees accused of being South African spies) … had taken the law … into their own hands and have carried out brutalities against these persons which we very much regret”. Ben-Gurirab said the persons responsible would be held to account if they ”were found within the existing structures of Swapo”, but both he and information and publicity secretary Hidipo Hamutenya denied claims that many more detainees were still being held.
Swapo challenged the international Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and other concerned parties to ‘ travel to Angola and Zambia to identify the camps where further detainees were supposedly imprisoned. In an open letter to Swapo this week, the Green Party – which describes itself as a supporter of the liberation movement ”for many years”, and hopes to continue to support a free and democratic Namibia after in¬ dependence – said it had learned of ”terrible conditions in your (Swapo) camps, torture and the arbitrary use of force, as well as of killings. ”We ourselves have talked to a number of former prisoners,” the party wrote. ”In describing the situation, some of them may have exaggerated, but there is hardly any doubt in our minds that the reports are essentially true.” The party said that while the ”human rights violations in Swapo camps” may not have been as extreme as those ”for which the South African regime is responsible”, this ”does not … justify what has happened. – Cassandra Moodley and Weekly Mail Reporters
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
