Swapo claims that Wouter Basson was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Namibians are being refuted by a group of former detainees
Tangeni Amupadhi
An organisation of former detainees of the South West African Peoples’ Organisation (Swapo) this week distributed a list of about 700 people as evidence that many Namibians disappeared while in the hands of Swapo during the liberation war.
The organisation gave the list to the media in order to refute a claim by Swapo this week that apartheid chemical warfare expert, Dr Wouter Basson, was responsible for the long-standing emotive issue of the “missing Namibians”.
Another Namibian organisation meanwhile accused Swapo of seeking to be absolved of its human rights sins at the expense of the man dubbed “Dr Death”. The Windhoek-based National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) challenged the Namibian government to set up a South African-style truth and reconciliation commission “if Swapo leaders have nothing to hide”.
The deaths in question, which took place in the late 1980s in camps run by Swapo, have been excused by some Swapo officials as the result of attempts to root out South African spies from the liberation movement. In fact, the killings are believed to have been carried out in an attempt to purge Swapo of certain factions.
Swapo, Namibia’s ruling party for the past 10 years, had by late Wednesday not responded to questions regarding calls for a truth commission, an idea that three years ago put it at loggerheads with the Council of Churches in Namibia – one of its major liberation-era allies.
Swapo said revelations in the Pretoria High Court by apartheid operatives that Basson ordered the poisoning of more than 200 Swapo fighters, that their bodies be dumped into the Atlantic Ocean, and that he produced cholera bacteria to be put in the water at the camp for returning Namibian exiles “explains the whereabouts of missing Namibians Swapo has been asked to account for.
“[Self-proclaimed champions of human rights] should in fact now go and demand from those who are making these disclosures to explain the whereabouts of the missing Namibians they have been calling upon Swapo to account for since independence,” the party said.
Paulina Dempers, chair of the former detainees’ organisation, Breaking the Wall of Silence (BWS), said this week: “Does it mean that Swapo handed over those people [arrested as being apartheid spies] to Basson?
“As far as we are concerned Basson’s trial has got no connection to what we are asking Swapo to account for. We are asking Swapo to account for the people they arrested and killed. The case is not closed at all. We will take Swapo to task until they account for the missing Namibians,” she said.
Dempers was detained and tortured in Lubango, southern Angola, during the late 1980s after being accused of being a South African. There was never a formal hearing for the detainees although they have been demanding to be put on trial.
In fact, the former detainees say they are gathering information to take their torturers to court. Dempers could not say when they intend to lay criminal charges but pointed out that BWS wanted to “have every piece of information that will be needed by the courts.
“Swapo is going to answer for its deeds, the atrocities they have committed against Namibians, their own members for that matter.”
Dempers said the list consisted of “people whom we know disappeared and died in the dungeons as a result of torture and illness”.
The list is also part of a May 1993 report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) compiled after an investigation by the international organisation undertaken before Namibian independence.
Although the ICRC said at the time it could find no evidence of missing people it gave a report to the Namibian government in which it stated it had asked Swapo to account for 2E161 missing people, but the ruling party could manage to explain what had happened to only 556. The government has never made the report public.
Swapo’s suggestions that Basson was to blame for all missing Namibians is the party’s new twist to the detention of suspected apartheid spies.
The party has in the past warned that anybody raising the spy saga would bear the consequence for “opening up old wounds” and destroying a skin-deep policy of national reconciliation “nurtured” by President Sam Nujoma’s request for Namibians on either side of the war to forgive and forget.
None of the apartheid security agents have been asked to account for human rights abuses committed before independence in 1990. Well-known security branch members serve in the top brass of the Namibian police as if nothing has changed.
But former detainees said they would not rest until their names had been cleared, and Swapo has refused to apologise or clear the people.
“This [Basson’s trial] has got nothing to do with detainees. When you make such a comparison you undermine the intelligence of Namibians,” said Dempers.
Basson is being tried for murder, drug dealing and fraud in a trial that has brought up some of the most bizarre experiments, some to produce poison that can affect only black people.
The South African high court last year ruled Basson cannot stand trial for crimes committed in Namibia because of an amnesty deal signed by South Africa’s last administrator general in that country, Louis Pienaar.