Namibia’s forgotten political prisoners

Namibia ranks among the top performers on the African continent in surveys measuring good governance on the basis of democracy and human rights criteria. In marked contrast, the country also holds the negative record of the longest serving political prisoners in the SADC region. They are rotting behind bars without being sentenced for now almost a decade. The victims of this justice delayed are facing charges of high treason and find no mercy in their treatment. Most of the more than a hundred men have been detained since August/September 1999. Bail has been refused. In the meantime, the same amount of them have died in custody as the number killed during the rebel attacks they are accused of being affiliated to.

THE CAPRIVI AS COLONIAL LEGACY

2 August 2009 marks a decade since a failed secessionist rebellion in the region called the Easter Caprivi caused havoc. The spook was over within a few days, during which the security organs of the state in a heavy-handed clampdown on everyone suspected to have sympathies with the rebels regained control. But the country was bruised: The shock, outrage and anger by both political office bearers and the wider public over this inconceivable challenge to the national and territorial integrity of Namibia ebbed away only after months. Ten years later, there seems to exist a general amnesia on what had happened and a disinterest in the fate of those since then incarcerated for a high treason trial dragging on seemingly endlessly. Invisibly, the ghosts are haunting a nation, beyond whose surface simmers the inability to deal with such a challenge in a way, which would seek to address if not to eradicate the root causes.

These accused are the remnants of a colonial legacy, which in its origin dates back to the so-called Helgoland-Zanzibar Treaty entered on 1 July 1890 between the German and British Empire. Not only did it exchange the erstwhile German colonial ‘possession’ of Zanzibar for Helgoland, but also added a narrow slice of territory to ‘German South West Africa’ stretching for several hundred kilometres to the Zambezi River. It was named after the then German chancellor Leo von Caprivi, who had signed the treaty, as Caprivi Strip. The geographical monstrosity was created to pursue the German obsession to connect via land and water with the East African colonial territories. Due to the ignorance of the colonialists concerning the natural realities on the ground this plan turned out to be among the many naive illusions cultivated in the spirit of the assumed colonial omnipotence.[1]

That the Caprivi Strip also included several different groups of people from adjacent communities into German colonial territory was a by-product the authorities never bothered to care about. They were henceforth subsumed under the general label of ‘Caprivians’. The Caprivi Strip and the Caprivians exist until today in various official documents of the Namibian authorities. Decolonisation had in this regard not reached the geographical area or the official mindset. But it existed as a desire for autonomy among some of the local people, who wanted something else than a nation state not so different from the colonial foreign rule.

THE SECESSIONIST COUP ATTEMPT

The Caprivi case is rather exceptionally illustrating the challenges of the colonial legacy with regard to the nation building process inherited by Namibia as a sovereign state. Failure by the central authorities to deal with the particular circumstances of this case ended in disaster. In the early morning hours of 2 August 1999 an armed assault against institutions of the state and its representatives caused panic and disorientation, paralysing Namibia for a short moment. Confusion reigned when a group of insurgents tried in a surprise attack to take over relevant parts of the infrastructure in Katima Mulilo, the only town in the region. They stormed the police station. Fighting also erupted over the local radio station of the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation and for control over the Mpacha airport. Special police units and the Namibian Defence Force responded swiftly. President Sam Nujoma declared in a televised speech an indefinite state of emergency, the regional police commander in the Caprivi announced a curfew for residents of Katima Mulilo. In a matter of days, if not hours, the security forces of the state regained control. In the end, at least 14 people, among them five policemen and three soldiers, some insurgents and civilians caught in the fire, were killed.

It came as a shock that this could happen in a country praised for its relative peace, stability and order. But the Caprivi region was long-since a ‘problem area’. Evidence indicated earlier on that something was utterly rotten in this part of the state of Namibia. Dissenting views vis-à-vis the liberation movement about to become the legitimate government were visible already during the final stages of the decolonisation process. The United Nations supervised elections for a Constituent Assembly in November 1989 showed majority support for the South Africa friendly and anti-SWAPO coalition of the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA), in marked contrast to the liberation movement’s national score of 57 per cent of votes. Notwithstanding such signals of mistrust into the new government, no visible confidence building measures were taken to reconcile the perspectives of local people with the views ‘from above’. Instead, residents continued to indicate by the mere degree of non-conformist votes cast until the late 1990s, that the support for the party in political power has been markedly less than anywhere else.

THE PRELUDE AND THE AFTERMATH

Alarm bells should have rang at the latest, when in October 1998 Namibian security forces discovered a training camp for the Caprivi Liberation Army (CLA), the military wing of the newly created rebel organisation Caprivi Liberation Movement (CLM). In the ensuing eagerness to trace and arrest suspected secessionists, the civilian population was treated with little respect. This was hardly a successful counter-initiative to win ‘hearts and minds’. Some 2,500 people fled to neighbouring Botswana. Until June 1999 several hundred of them were repatriated, while the majority found asylum as political refugees. The leading figures of the CLM on the run included Mafwe Chief Bonifatius Mamili and the former SWAPO official in exile and later leader of the DTA Mishake Muyongo. Both received refugee status in Denmark. Others who left for Botswana before the end of 1998 included a number of high-ranking local civil servants, government officials and elected political office bearers. Furthermore, the chief of the Kxoe people joined with some thousand of his followers, the refugees in Dukwe camp.

Despite the large-scale movement of people into exile the government decided to go ahead with the regional elections scheduled for December 1998. As a result of the incapability of the DTA to replace the defectors within the short time, SWAPO scooped all six seats. In the three constituencies from which the refugees mainly originated, less than 20 per cent of registered voters cast their ballots. By the end of April 1999 the Namibian President alerted the public in his State of the Nation Address to the secessionist plans. The subsequent assault on the territorial integrity of Namibia was none the less perceived mainly as irrationality on behalf of the rebels. Evidence suggested moral and practical support from groups located in neighbouring Zambia and Angola. UNITA was said to be of direct assistance to the operations, as well as the Zambian Barotse Patrotic Front (BPF). There were also sympathies in Botswana. But this regional backing beyond Namibia’s borders was less coherent or determined as often suggested.

The grave violation of law by the separatists, who killed for an unrealistic vision based on some fantasies of power-hungry individuals out of touch with realities, was met with no mercy by the state organs and the overwhelming majority of Namibian citizens elsewhere. An ironic comment of the time, in the light of the parallel homophobic obsessions, stated poignantly: ‘Heaven help gay Caprivians…’ Security forces committed heavy-handed acts of violence against the civilian population. Suspects were treated unconstitutionally, including torture while being interrogated or in prison. The evidence forced the Minister of Defence to publicly admit human rights violations, though none of the perpetrators were since taken to task in court.

The near 130 originally accused were ultimately charged with high treason and 274 other counts. The trial was only opened after several years and postponed time and again. The authorities originally refused to provide the accused legal aid, though this is a constitutionally enshrined right. An appeal to the High Court and a subsequent verdict by the Supreme Court ruled in mid-2002 that they are entitled to adequate legal representation at the expenses of the state. The delayed judicial procedures, with the trial being opened only in 2004 and ever since then marred by delays, collide with Article 12(1)(b) of Namibia’s Constitution; that trials should ‘take place within a reasonable time, failing which the accused shall be released’.

In August 2003, Amnesty International (AI) published a critical report on the treatment of the detainees.[2] AI expressed deep concern about the violation of the pre-trial rights of the accused, which might undermine their right to a fair hearing based on international standards as defined in the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR). It also observed violations against the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). It expressed concern over the failure of the authorities to investigate and prosecute allegations of torture. AI also expressed concern over the undermining of the rights of the accused to the presumption of being innocent through the misuse of the ‘common purpose’ doctrine under which all the defendants were charged among others with high treason, murder and sedition. According to AI, at least 70 among them ‘may be prisoners of conscience, arrested solely based on their actual or perceived non-violent support for the political opposition in the region, their ethnic identity or their membership of certain organisations.’

AI also cast doubt over the official versions concerning the deaths of the then 12 defendants incarcerated and suggested that unsanitary prison conditions and medical neglect were contributing factors. In a press release it called on the Namibian authorities ‘to immediately and unconditionally release all prisoners of conscience and ensure that the remaining defendants are tried in a fair manner’.[3] The appeal had no effect and the Caprivi treason trial seems a case in point that ‘justice and fairness are not necessarily fully achieved through political independence’, as a law scholar then lecturing at the University of Namibia put it. ‘Those in power, and society at large, need to recognise and, consequently, safeguard and nurture mechanisms capable of dealing with competing interests without causing undue frustration.’[4]

Instead of taking such advice serious, there is a striking disinterest in the rule of law among political office bearers and the wider public alike when it comes to this dark chapter of Namibia’s post-colonial failure in nation building. There is no indication that, since then, a political will would exist to address the root causes of the grievances, which provoked the acts of treason. The notion of national reconciliation stressed so often on other occasions when it seems opportune as a guiding principle to secure stability and shared identity among different people seems to be irrelevant in the vendetta. But this will not eliminate the grievances, nor foster legitimacy and identification with those perceived as invaders, representing the central authorities in a far away place.

As Thandika Mkandawire stated in an article on African rebel movements: ‘… fatally flawed and morally reprehensible though these movements may be, one needs to take their political roots and ideological cognitive components seriously, even as their banditry confounds their political agenda. The failure and even degeneration of these movements should not lead us to deny or downplay the objective conditions that create the discontent, which is the fuel of conflict.'[5]

TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY

The near on 30 years of organised liberation struggle for Namibia’s Independence under SWAPO cultivated as an antithesis to the divide and rule of the Apartheid system the slogan of ‘One Namibia, One Nation’. With Article 2 (‘Endangering the Territorial Integrity of Namibia’) of Revolutionary Decree No. 1/77: Crimes Against the Namibian People’s Revolution, SWAPO’s Central Committee adopted on September 24, 1977 an uncompromising position: ‘Any act aimed at detaching parts of Namibian territory by force or in any other manner contrary to decisions of the United Nations Organisation, decisions of the Organisation of African Unity, decisions of the SWAPO movement and/or decisions of the established Namibian State shall constitute a felony.’

This signalled, similar to other neighbouring countries, a firm and uncompromising commitment by the leadership to a unitary state. With Independence in 1990, ‘One Namibia, One Nation’ was constitutionally enshrined with the protection of the territorial integrity of the country while at the same time officially supplemented by the slogan ‘Unity in Diversity’. It accepted and recognised the factual existence of historically shaped ethnic-regionally based cultural identities as much as the need for a policy of reconciliation among and between different ethnic-regional groups and socio-economic classes within a deeply divided society.

Despite the creation of these formal frameworks, even two decades into Independence, it still seems too early to offer a valid answer to the question: to what extent could the two potentially conflicting paradigms be in harmony with each other in everyday’s social and political realities? The Caprivi separatist movement was a challenge, which has been met with an uncompromising execution of state power. It seems still a long way until deviating views questioning fundamental principles might be accepted within the public and political sphere as a provocation requiring engagement instead of mere repression.

The secessionist coup attempt was indeed high treason and the acts of violence were serious crimes, including murder. But the pursuance of justice is not necessarily identical with the fiercest punishment of suspected perpetrators, who are supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty - even more so if they are accused and incarcerated for a common political desire but no other criminal acts.

POLITICAL-CULTURAL IDENTITY

The character of a nation-state formula based on exclusivity draws increasingly more internalised, as well as external, borderlines with the tendency not to integrate but to separate. This is not an encouraging sign concerning the learning abilities of post-colonial systems of power and rule and shows more weakness than strength. The structures of such rule still reflecting a heritage for which the colonial foreign rule has to bear considerable responsibility, show also in the case of Namibia, once more, the limits to an imposed concept of nation building; both from the point of view of centralised state authorities and from the perspective on the ground.

The late Cedric Mutabelezi, coming from the Caprivi region and then serving as the curator of anthropology at the National Museum of Namibia in Windhoek,said this in an interview in June 1996 in the following local perspective: ‘The people in Caprivi weere originally from Zambia but now they are Namibians. Many such people exist and they will not care about nationalism except that they have to care about the laws of the country in which they live. As for the people in pure rural areas, nationalism is not of a big concern since there usually is no contact with others. They care more about the region in which they are living.’[6]

Such locally rooted identity expresses that the people want to live in peace. But the indifference towards a nation state concept might offer a fertile ground for agitation, manipulation and, ultimately, mobilisation among those, who, at best, feel neglected by the remote central authorities and their local state agencies and, at worst, threatened and under siege. This is no justification for the separatist aims of the CLM and the devastating results of the attacks undertaken by its armed wing. But it should offer enough reason to explore further what contributing factors ultimately supported the rebel initiative. As in many other cases, the growing concerns over securing a living and the feeling of marginalisation confronted with the influx of people from other neighbouring regions might certainly have been factors, which could easily been exploited by those with other, ulterior motives.

Ironically, only a few weeks prior to the attack on Katima Mulilo, an empirical survey on Namibia’s political culture produced the highest degree of identification with the executive organs of the state among the respondents in the Caprivi. The exceptional score of a mean 72.3 per cent in the confidence and trust index (compared to a national average of 59.6 per cent), ‘viewed all institutions, with the exception of the opposition parties, in a very positive light’.[7] This is even more remarkable, since the Caprivi region then ranked with a Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.517 lowest among all 13 regions in Namibia (which had an average HDI of 0.648).[8]

THE CHALLENGE OF NATION-BUILDING

The perceived threat among the local residents in the East Caprivi, coming from the central authorities and their representatives, was a fertile breeding ground open for manipulation and exploitation. By reducing the matter to a mere issue of maintaining law and order, consolidating its own political control over the state organs and institutions and resorting to rigorous punishment of the suspected perpetrators, the government failed to explore the deeper root causes in a truly nation building perspective.

The decision to ban with effect of 1 September 2006 the United Democratic Party (UDP), which as a political organisation in the East Caprivi promoted self-rule, shows the tendency to seek elimination of political challenges through declaring them illegal. In other democracies, political wings of secessionist regional movements (even those operating with militant wings executing violence) are allowed to fully participate in the political contestation of votes as long as the political party itself is not involved in any criminal acts violating the laws. This is an approach that, as some of the examples show, ultimately stands chances to integrate rather than to polarise further.

In marked contrast to the Namibian authorities, an independent public intellectual courageously opinioned a more enlightened view: ‘Shouldn’t we perhaps cast a long gaze beyond the law to argue that this is not a legal but a political problem although it has been ignored in mainstream philosophical and political discourse in Namibia?’ he suggests. Referring to the forthcoming parliamentary and presidential elections towards the end of this year, he argues further, ‘this might be an opportune moment for President Pohamba to make that hard decision by granting a pardon to these men who, after all, have spent years in jail without a conviction’.[9]

As he concedes, this might be an unpopular decision unlikely to happen, even though he received, of late, some unexpected, moderate, indirect support from the SWAPO Youth League’s Secretary, who suggested - though somewhat reluctantly and undecided if and to what extent this should indeed be implemented - that, ‘the crime of secession is intolerable, but the discussion for seeking remedy should be encouraged’.[10] Seemingly afraid of his own courage, he hastens to continue blaming the secessionist elements and neighbouring Botswana for not showing sufficient remorse to justify a forgiving attitude.

Unfortunately it seems likely that appeals for seeking a political solution instead of a fierce legal persecution of all suspected to sympathise with Caprivian autonomy are likely to fall on deaf ears. But as Thandika Mkandawire argued (with no direct reference but a lot of relevance to the case of the Caprivi): ‘incoherent as the rebels’ objectives may sound, they reflect a serious urban malaise that should not be lightly dismissed by reducing the members of these movements to simple criminals. These rebels … are unlikely to attract analyses that seek to understand the sources of their grievances. The temptation is to dismiss their political motivations. But we must not lose sight of the political factors behind such conflicts. The view that these conflicts are merely driven by greed is not only cynical, but can only lead to fatal political blindness.’[11]

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* Dr Henning Melber is executive director of The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala/Sweden. He was previously director of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek from 1992 to 2000. He has been a member of SWAPOP since 1974.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] For further details on the history and cross-references to substantiated evidence as well as a comprehensive bibliography see the academic long version of this article published in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies (vol. 27, no. 4, October 2009).
[2] Amnesty International, Namibia. Justice delayed is justice denied. The Caprivi treason trial. AFR 42/001/2003, August 2003.
[3] Amnesty International, ‘Namibia: Authorities Must Ensure a Fair Trial for Caprivi Defendants’, Press Release, 30 October 2003.
[4] Sufian Hemed Bukurura, ‘Between Liberation Struggle and Constitutionalism. Namibia and Zimbabwe’, in: Henning Melber (ed.), Re-examining Liberation in Namibia. Political culture since Independence. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute 2003, p. 35.
[5] Thandika Mkandawire, ‘The terrible toll of post-colonial ‘rebel movements’ in Africa: owards an explanation of the violence against the peasantry’, Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 40, no. 2, 2002, p. 182.
[6] Quoted in L. Lindsköld, Nationalism and Identity in Museum Activities: Namibian Examples. MA Thesis, Göteborg University/Department of Environmental Science and Conservation 2000, p. 35.
[7] Christiaan Keulder/Antonie Nord/Christoph Emminghaus, ‘Namibia’s Emerging Culture’, in Christiaan Keulder (ed.), State, Society and Democracy. A Reader in Namibian Politics. Windhoek: Gamsberg Macmillan 2000, p. 258.Namibian Human Development Report 2000. Windhoek: UNDP Namibia 2000, p. 156.
[8] United Nations Development Programme, Namibian Human Development Report 2000. Windhoek: UNDP Namibia 2000, p. 156.
[9] Alexactus Kaure, ‘Between Legality and Politics: The Caprivi Case’, The Namibian, Windhoek, 20 February 2009.
[10] Elijah Ngurare, ‘Letter from the Caprivi Region’, New Era, Windhoek, 17 July 2009
[11] Thandika Mkandawire, op. cit., p. 208.