the demand
for
freedom

By William Pomeroy

A. the question of independence for the
Portuguese African colonies is brought
nearer to realization, with the liberation
movements in Mozambique, Angola and
Guinea-Bissau pressing their struggle
without let-up to make certain that the
new regime in Portugal will carry out a
real solution of the colonial problem, the
first serious reactions of alarm have been
displayed by the oppressive apartheid
regime in South Africa.

The liberation of Mozambique and
Angola will bring Africa’s freedom move-
ments directly to the border of the apart-
heid state, which has collaborated with
fascist Portugal in the past to keep a colon-
ial buffer of white supremacy between
itself and the independent African peoples.
Since the overthrow of the fascist Caetano
government in Portugal, therefore, the
white dictatorship in South Africa has been
tightening its suppressive system.

In the coming ‘period, a free Angola will
present the greatest problem to the South
African rulers. For nearly a thousand miles
the southern border of Angola touches the
northern part of Namibia, the South West

. African territory that is controlled illegal-
‘ly by South Africa. A Namibian independ-
ence- movement, including a guerrilla liber-
ation army, is strong precisely in this
region, and it has good relations with the
Angolan liberation movement, the MPLA.

This movement is called the South West
African People’s Organization (SWAPO).

It has its greatest support among the
Ovambo people, who comprise 342,000 of
the 856,000 Black inhabitants of Namibia,
although it has backing among the other
tribal groups of the territory as well.

As part of its apartheid policy, which
not only divides Black from white but also
seeks to split the Black population, South
Africa has created segregated ‘‘Bantustan’”’
areas on a tribal basis, supposedly with a
degree of autonomy. In Namibia this has
also been done, and Ovamboland has been
carved out as a Bantustan, headed, as has
generally been the case, by hand-picked
conservative tribal chieftains who collabor-
ate with the white rulers.

Ones has a 250-mile border with
Angola: It is one of the colonial borders
that criss-cross Africa, arbitrarily estab-
lished by the imperialist powers, cutting
across tribal areas and dividing related
communities. Traditionally there has been
much disregarded crossing of borders in
normal herding, trading or shifting agri-
culture, but it is only the recent movement
of liberation forces that has made South
Africa’s apartheid rulers consider it a
“security frontier.”’

For the past three years Ovamboland
has been a center of independence ferment.
Ovambo contract laborers, hired and sent
out to work in the United States, British,
and West German-owned mines and in.
dustries elsewhere in Namibia, were the
main participants in the precedent-setting

. Strikes that occurred throughout Namibia

beginning in 1972. SWAPO played a leading
organizing role in the strikes, which were
against the semi-slave contract conditions,
and the militancy they produced augment-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1974—PAGE 10

ed independence demands and a struggle
against the collaborator tribal Bantustan
chiefs themselves.

SWAPO. for a number of reasons. has
had both a semi-legal and an ufderground
character in Namibia. The United Nations

~ has given a certain legitimacy to SWAPO

by endorsing independence for South West
Africa (to which it gave the name Namibia.
not recognized by the South African rulers)
and has formally demanded that South
Africa relinquish its control over the terri-
tory. South Africa’s refusal to heed the UN
demand, and its arrest and imprisonment
of SWAPO leaders on the notorious Robben
Island, forced the movement to adopt guer-
rilla armed struggle for liberation. Never-
theless, it has still sought to pursue every
possible legal avenue, in Bantustan elec-
tions, in court battles. in representation
before UN bodies, and other ways. ;
The chief area of guerrilla struggle has
been in and around Ovamboland, and in the
Caprivi Strip, the neck of Namibian land
that reaches across the top of Botswana to
Zambia and Rhodesia. In the Caprivi Strip
in particular, South African border police
have suffered innumerable casualties from
SWAPO ambushes and mining of roads.

[. Ovamboland the growing strength of
SWAPO has brought harsh retaliatory
measures from the South African apartheid
regime in Pretoria. The white commission-
er-general, Jannie de Wet, appointed from
pretoria as the actual power in Ovambo-
land, encouraged the Black ‘‘front’’ chief
minister of the Bantustan, Chief Philemon
Elifas, to carry out mass punishments
of SWAPO members and supporters. In the
latter part of 1973 public floggings were
introduced, ostensibly for an alleged com-
mitting of ‘‘crimes.”’

Both men and women, with trousers
lowered or dresses lifted, were severely
beaten with 15 to 30 lashes from the flat or
ridged side of a hard palm cane. Over 100
people were flogged in this way, a brutal
punishment that evoked international pro-
test of such scope that when Bishop Rich-
ard Wood: of the Anglican Church and
Bishop Leonard Auala of the Ovambo-
Kuvano Lutheran Church filed a petition
against the practice in the territorial
Supreme Court in Windhoek, the Court is-
sued a temporary interdict to halt the
floggings.

Testimonial affidavits signed by many
of those punished showed that the floggings
were inflicted for membership in SWAPO,
for singing SWAPO songs, for wearing a
shirt in SWAPO colors or with a SWAPO
emblem, and for merely calling South
West Africa “‘Namibia.’’ One youth who
contributed 20 cents to SWAPO was given
15 strokes with the cane.

A woman nurse in a mission hospital in
Ovamboland told what happened to her
and to a fellow nurse: ‘‘Rachel was the
first to be flogged. She was compelled to
lie over the chair in full view of all the
members gathered, of men, women and
children. Four policemen held her each by
a limb...She was flogged with extreme
violcnce. The policeman wielded the cane,
using two hands, which he raised high in the
air before striking. . .I was flogged in the
same way. After my flogging I was hardly
able to walk.”

This form of treatment has not stopped
-the spread of SWAPO and its demands for
freedom. The increased prestige of the
MPLA in Angola and the prospect of inde-
pendence for the people just across the bor-
der, fellow tribesmen in many cases, has
raised higher the hopes of the people in
Namibia.

South Africa has shown its awareness
of this in its new security moves. On June
14, the police units stationed in the Caprivi
Strip were pulled out and replaced by reg-
ular army units, the South African Minister
of Defense, Piet Botha, announcing that
“guerrilla warfare is endemic in the area
now.’ On June 30, it was announced that
the first South African army officer, a
regular army lieutenant, had been killed
by guerrillas in the Caprivi Strip.

At the same time instructions were

sent by the Pretoria regime to vat
land's collaborator chiefs. directilB yy)
recruiting of Black guards to pat
border with Angola. This was part® is
general crack-down in Ovamboland ag
SWAPO. is
Floggings have been resumes vf
temporary court order expired al
ginning of March 1974. First of t
wave of floggings was a 20-stroke Pg
ment delivered to a SWAPO na
Salmon Ndulita. for calling the 7
‘minister of education” a ‘Black Bo k
Fresh trials of SWAPO leaden a
the vicious South African Terrorist

began simultaneoulsy in Windhoek. oi

on trial were David Merero. nation “f
man of SWAPO in Namibia. E2e v4

opi, chairman of the SWAPO |
eeagic: Joseph Sashea. the Youth Vi
secretary, and others: the a f
League leaders have been held I cal)
conditions of solitary confineme
their arrest in January. | rere 3)
The terror in Ovamboland. bi ph Fe
sorship has prevented full deta eit thy
known, has led to an exodus from aj
of increasing numbers of people. ret Ch
July up to 600 had crossed the b?
Angola. Among them was the Aa A
leader in Ovamboland. John ©) ail
said the people were fleeing the ves
of the tribal rulers’ and the “SY P
of political opposition.” fs
More significant than the nur
the exodus (which South Africas icf (
tempt to conceal the real sup PT he i
sons, declared was intended for oja |
ing by SWAPO instigators 1n ae ia |
force against their people in Ova cll I
is the fact that they reportedly © : in Py ai
most all the educated Namiblal ig a
northern part of the country a é is] Uti
post office workers, clerks, nUIS 9 i Pre
employees, vocational students 4 pres k
South Africa’s new wave of ert yr] a
measures and terrorism in Nam sl Me
scores the need for internation4 int Dey
for SWAPO's freedom strueey bn
need for the United Nations © aif
its previous demand for South AM it i} bs
out of Namibia and to reinfor’ ye 1,
sanctions against the apartheid!

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