Hey comrades!

listen, i am a young Namibian, however such as many other i have the right to vote therefor i am as powerful as any persons who has the right to vote.

It may be my vote thats the determining factor one day, therefor i would like to ask this.

What is the issue with the Lubango Dungoens? we never read about this in our history books, we read about casinga, hence we probably have a cassinga day.

Those in power dont want to talk about it, those who say they suffered drop tits & tats of info. but the whole story neva gets talked about.

i remember one gentleman from a tribe in the kavango region, complianing that their history neva got recorded in any history book on the chat show, upon which another caller called in and said 'my brother stand up, get pen and paper and write the book'

why dont you write, talk & sing about... i would definitely like to know the caliber of leaders i have chosen and make changes next time if need be!


The COD chiefs say they want to talk about it... in parliament, but those who you want to talk to are the accused perpatrators,are they not...meaning they already know.

SO my friends talk to me, talk to us the youth let us know, let both sides come with their side of the story

if anybody reading this has insight to this let me know i want to hear from both sides and then conclude by myself... the question is not only that you were detained in dungoens, WHY WERE YOU DEtAINED?

BOTH SIDES OF THE STORY?

HULYK?

Short answer to Cassinga: Yes, 4th of May every year since after independence.

Further to Cassinga:

Cassinga – The Reindeer of Hell


In 1978 the SADF carried out an airborne assault on Cassinga in Southern Angola. The South
Africans claimed that Cassinga was a key SWAPO military headquarters, training camp and logistic
base. SWAPO claimed it was a refugee camp and that the approximately 600 people who died in the
attack were innocent civilians. The SADF said it had dealt SWAPO a significant military blow;
SWAPO said the SADF had carried out a brutal massacre of old people, women and children. This
dissertation focuses on the military dimensions of the raid, examining first the military situation in
southern Angola and northern Namibia at the time, then looking at Cassinga itself before reviewing
the airborne capability of the SADF, considering the decision that was made to launch the attack,
describing the planning and preparations, the actual assault, a Cuban counter-attack and the
extraction of the South African paratroopers. It concludes with the propaganda claims of both sides
before assessing the military significance of the action.



The reason for the atrocious, and humanely totally unwarranted, attack on the Cassinga refugee camp in Southern Angola on Ascension Day, 4 May 1978, traces its origin to the unmitigated SADF disaster at Eheke on 28/29 October 1977, when a group of special forces paratroopers were parachuted into Angola to attack a SWAPO base called “Eheke” or “Heque”. The operation went all wrong, and the South Africans suffered severe casualties, losing many men killed in action or dying of wounds, and suffering many wounded - all of them highly trained specialist commandos.

It was a serious psychological defeat for the SADF.

SWAPO was now seen by the world at large to be an effective liberation movement with a successful military record, whilst the South Africans were anxious to regain the initiative and give SWAPO a bloody nose. Militarily, SWAPO was acquiring conventional capabilities, whilst the SADF was losing its already limited conventional capacity’s edge.

The SADF therefore felt a need to hit SWAPO hard where it would hurt, not only at its forward bases near the border, but also further back where the damage would have a more lasting, strategic effect.

The most feasible target for such a strike was located at Cassinga (sometimes misspelled “Kassinga”), a small mining town in southern Angola. It was located in Huila Province on the dirt road running northwards from the Namibian border at Oshikango, about 75km south of Cuvango and some 260km north of the Namibian border.

Code-named Operation Reindeer, the Cassinga raid formed only part of the operation. There were also attacks on a number of Swapo facilities in and around Chetequera (an area known to Swapo as "Vietnam") where more than 300 Namibians were killed and a large number captured.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Area Office in Brazzaville produced a report, just two days before the raid on Cassinga, on a visit to SWAPO refugee centres in Angola during April.

They described Cassinga as becoming the first centre for refugees and that the government of Angola had turned the former mining town over to SWAPO in 1976 who needed a transit camp for the many Namibian refugees escaping terror in their country and seeking safety in free Angola.

At the beginning of May 1978, Cassinga was inhabited by about 4,000 – 5,000 Namibians, mostly young people, including students and families with many children waiting to be sent to schools in Angola or abroad, or to some more permanent resettlement area. The facilities at the camp included a clinic, a school, a sewing factory, a vehicle repair workshop, a kindergarten, a food store and agricultural implements.

Most of them had been at the camp for only a few days or weeks. Because so many of the refugees had only very recently escaped across the northern Namibian border into exile, many of them had not been trained in even the most basic techniques of self- defence.

A limited force of armed personnel was maintained at the settlement for defensive purposes but there were no military installations as such.

The massacre was planned with brutal cynicism to forestall a breakthrough in negotiations with the United Nations which might have led to free and fair elections in Namibia.

The final approval for the raid was given on Tuesday, May 2 1978 and early on the morning of Thursday, 4 May 1978, the four Canberra bombers passed over the camp at 500 feet above ground level at precisely 08h02.

South African Military Intelligence must have provided the information that had led to the timing for the air strike . Most of the camp's 4,000 odd population had gathered at the usual morning meeting to be assigned daily work in the agricultural field or in the construction of shelters to accommodate the flow of SWA/Namibian refugees. The flags of free Namibia and Angola had been raised, the children were marching off to school while work within the Camp and in the fields around was being assigned to various groups of refugees.

The air-strike was a finely co-ordinated movement, delivering an awesome total of 1,200 anti-
personnel bombs, 30,000 pounds of high-explosive bombs and a devastating two-aircraft strafing run with 30mm high-explosive fragmentation shells. Though some of the anti-personnel bombs failed to explode and several of the 1,000 pound bombs missed their targets, the strike sowed death, destruction and terror amongst the occupants of Cassinga.

The parachute drop was very inaccurate, with most of the assault force landing on the wrong side of the Culonga River. The result was a delay of about an hour and a half after the air-strike before the ground assault could take place. This, together with the gaps around Cassinga caused by the poor parachute drops, probably enabled large numbers of the occupants to escape.

From the time of the drop until the assault force had moved about half way through Cassinga, there were numerous skirmishes between SWAPO and the paratroopers, but the latter experienced no significant resistance.

Many civilians were encountered by the paratroopers, including women and children. The paratroopers collected weapons and documents, blew up ammunition and burned down whatever buildings they could.

The terror and panic amongst the inhabitants of Cassinga must have been frightening. A woman who claimed to be a survivor of the raid, only sixteen years old at the time, described how she experienced these initial moments when they were caught in the open at the morning parade:

"Our group was just next to the hospital and then everything started. Now we saw four planes coming this side. I ran into the hospital and stayed there for five minutes. When I went out I found people, some were cut, maybe on the head, some on the legs - some were already dead."

Another woman, who was a young girl at the time of the raid, described her horror: “We were going to the field that morning. When I saw the planes coming my way I lied down waiting for anything to happen because I realised that these people should be enemies, because they bombed the hospital and then the camp was on fire.”

After the air-strike the Buccaneer leader flew a circuit around Cassinga and reported that considerable damage had been done. Smoke, flames, dust, bodies and fleeing people could be seen everywhere. The strike aircraft immediately headed south and by 08h30 they were all safely back across the Namibian border.

Shortly after the bombing runs the paratroopers went in. They proceeded to overpower the settlement's defence unit and to overwhelm the rest of the refugee population, firing indiscriminately at everyone within range. Those who died at this stage were shot at point-blank range, many in the back, or in the head, or bayoneted. Many were killed as they tried to run away towards a nearby river or to escape in trucks.

No prisoners, or perhaps at most a handful, were taken from Cassinga.

The official death toll, according to an Angolan government White Paper, was 624, of whom 159 were men - only 12 of them soldiers - 167 women and 298 teenagers. In addition, 611 Namibians were wounded in the attack. These were largely victims of the initial bombing attack. The dead were buried in two mass graves.

Extracted from:

THE CASSINGA RAID
by
EDWARD GEORGE MCGILL ALEXANDER
submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in the subject
HISTORY
at the
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA
SUPERVISOR : PROF G C CUTHBERTSON
JOINT SUPERVISOR : DR F A MOUTON
JULY 2003

[What is the issue with the Lubango Dungoens? we never read about this in our history books, we read about casinga, hence we probably have a cassinga day]

Thanks Oneword

However what i meant was, its becuase we know so much of Cassinga and the sad events that unfolded their that we celebrate cassinga day.

So if we knew more about Lubango, if people talked, we could have a sort of reconcile and mourn for those that suffered and were lost in the dungeons? would it be worthwile? could we call that reconcialiation?

Thanks

I totally agree with this latter part. Very few of us do know about Lubango ... and those that do know, (usually) twist it to suit their own particular purpose.

I would also welcome a non-partisan, unbiased report on the matter.

At the moment we only get violent recriminations and and equally violent and vociferous defence.

On the other hand: If you really want to know more about the dungeons at Lubango, why not ask Phil Ya Nangolo (NSHR), or Adv Bience Gawanas, or Mr. Aaron Mushimba, or - so it has been alleged - Hidipo Hamutenya, etc...... I could go on for some pages on this


A vitória Ecerta!

My friend, my brother!

Thank you...if i only had their emails i could invite them to this discusion, or maby they are already in the shebeen..if so why not make yourselves heard?

Both sides should have their say? it would only be fair?

Further to the dungeons ..................

1. In March 1996 the publication of Namibia: The Wall of Silence, a book by German Pastor Siegfried Groth, a former SWAPO supporter, describing the detention and torture of people by the organisation during the 1980s, caused much controversy.

Nujoma publicly denounced the book as an attempt to discredit SWAPO, and accused its promoters of endangering national reconciliation. Nujoma and his party were, in turn, accused of failing to admit to, and apologise for, the alleged human rights violations in the SWAPO camps in Angola.

SWAPO subsequently published a book, entitled Their Blood Waters Our Freedom, listing about 8,000 SWAPO supporters who had died during the war. However, a ‘breaking the wall of silence’ committee continued to accuse the party of failing to acknowledge the alleged atrocities in its camps. When the South African truth and reconciliation commission requested permission to conduct hearings in Namibia in 1997, it was refused, on the grounds that the public discussions might hinder Namibia’s own search for reconciliation.


2. Observers have long taken for granted (and rightly so) that South Africa's regime and its collaborators were responsible for the vast majority of political crimes that occurred within Namibia during the era of apartheid. As far back as the mid-1970s, however, there had been numerous allegations of abuses within the ranks of SWAPO (operating then in exile). Many complaints were directed to clergy and administrators in Namibia's churches with the expectation they would act as intermediaries. There were charges that more than a thousand suspects were imprisoned in the SWAPO camp in Mboroma, Zambia, for example. Many more were allegedly imprisoned ("detained") and tortured elsewhere, particularly in Angola. Subsequent efforts by some SWAPO Youth League and PLAN (People's Liberation Army of Namibia) cadres to bring about democratic reforms within SWAPO were "ruthless(ly) suppressed," according to a 1985 study by anti-apartheid dissidents Erica, Attie, and Hewat Beukes.

Also during the mid-1980s, the Parents Committee of Namibia (PCN) was formed by former "detainees" to represent parents and relatives of thousands of missing persons who were last seen in SWAPO facilities. They too appealed to Namibia's clerical leaders, but to no avail. The Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN), established in 1978, apparently failed to respond to many poignant appeals for intervention on behalf of SWAPO detainees. One explanation for the CCN's failure was that leading clergy feared to discredit SWAPO during the war because that might help the enemy. SWAPO seemed to be the only viable alternative in the moral struggle against apartheid. Thus in the years prior to Namibia's independence, the CCN acted more as an arm of SWAPO than as an independent moral force within the colony. Within the country, PCN was virtually alone in their efforts to publicize the detainee issue. Abroad, Amnesty International recognized serious human rights abuses in SWAPO camps for the first time in their annual report for 1987.

The arduous struggle to achieve peace and defeat apartheid in Southwest Africa finally came to a climax with a ceasefire declared in 1988. The implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 435 required the withdrawal of South African military forces from the territory and the release of all political prisoners on both sides. On July 4, 1989, the first of SWAPO's detainees - 153 individuals - returned from one camp in Angola with stories of torture and disappearances. The following month, over a dozen more escaped, claiming that many more were left behind. Altogether thousands still remained unaccounted for. Thereafter, evidence that SWAPO officials had condoned or concealed significant and extensive abuses in their Angolan and Zambian camps continued to mount.

After SWAPO's landslide victory in the country's first election in 1990, the detainee issue was vigorously debated. It was at this point that a group of ex-SWAPO detainees in Windhoek organized the Political Consultative Committee (PCC). They publicized the issue with a "Report to the Namibian People," describing numerous atrocities and listing the names of thousands who were missing since the war's end. The PCC's protest against the controversial appointment of an official known to be responsible for crimes against many SWAPO detainees was bolstered by international human rights organizations, but the PCC's demand for a national investigation of the issue was circumvented by maneuvers in the new legislative body.

In the first session of Namibia's parliament (the National Assembly), MP Moses Katjiongua proposed the establishment of a Judicial Commission of Inquiry to probe into the detainee issue. After a spirited debate, Katjioungua's motion was defeated. Subsequently, in June of 1991 the Assembly passed a resolution requesting the government invite the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to carry out an investigation concerning those declared missing since the war. Many critics, including Katjiongua and the PCC, opposed that course of action, arguing it was inadequate. ICRC investigators were only allowed to gather and document information about the fate of the missing that the governments of South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, and Botswana agreed to provide. Although there was a surprisingly large response to a public appeal for Namibian citizens to submit information to the ICRC that generated 1,700 names, members of the PCC subsequently compiled a list of many (hundreds) more names of alleged detainees not included in the ICRC list. Finally, to the frustration of dissidents, the ICRC was not empowered to address the issue of accountability for those who remained missing. What could have been the beginning of a national inquiry turned out to be a prolonged stalemate.

After the ICRC investigation, Namibia's government simply declared a policy of national reconciliation had been accomplished. Consequently there were no national hearings nor was there any publicized, programmatic effort to investigate the cases of disappearances and allegations of SWAPO misconduct numbering in the thousands. The tentative and inconclusive ICRC report only served to exasperate former detainees and dissidents.

The most carefully documented report of problems within SWAPO in the aftermath of the country's first elections was published by the Africa Watch section of Human Rights Watch in August, 1992. The report, whose principal author was Richard Dicker, detailed many accounts of prisoners who were detained and tortured as suspected subversives. Dicker's analysis, based on many interviews, was balanced in the sense that many of the (more numerous) human rights abuses committed by South African authorities and collaborators were also carefully documented. What was surprising to many human rights workers and international scholars who read it was that so many crimes were reportedly committed by SWAPO officials as well. The Human Rights Watch Report had little impact within Namibia itself. Government officials in Windhoek claimed the issue had been resolved. Nonetheless the detainee issue continued to smolder.

3. Siegfried Groth is a German Lutheran pastor who, according to the foreword by Bishop Held, records here "not history, but stories" collected during his pastoral work in Namibia and with Namibians in exile. Groth mixes his own experiences with the stories of others, building a history of Namibia's liberation struggle around a very personal narrative. The particular concern of this work is to relate tales and circumstances of human rights abuses committed by the South West Africa People's Organisation of Namibia (Swapo) in exile against dissident members and those detained as spies during the 1980s. These excesses are contextualised within the spiralling vortex of violence and oppression that accompanied South Africa's presence in Namibia, and within a general framework discussing the historical role of the Churches in Namibia's liberation struggle. The express purpose of Groth's history is not to provide, but to invite, a proper investigation of aspects of Swapo's exile operations, and from this to contribute to the rehabilitation of ex-detainees within the national reconciliation process in Namibia. As a history written by a non-historian, Wall of Silence is a history without pretensions of being such, and it is also a history that is itself making history.

Particularly since its release in English translation, Pastor Groth's work has had an extraordinary impact on the contemporary Namibian political landscape. It has spawned an organisation (the Breaking the Wall of Silence Committee (BWS)), inspired a Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN) initiative for a conference on Swapo detainees, and incited a fiery national debate that refused to settle. Not least, it has provoked an intemperate response from the ruling Swapo Party that holds serious ramifications for the future of the party and for the future of Namibia's national reconciliation and democratisation process.

The most remarkable response was that of the Namibian President, Sam Nujoma, who appeared in a special state television address to warn the nation of Groth's "false history", and accused Christo Lombard, a theology professor, renowned anti-apartheid activist, and defender of Groth's work, of being an "apostle of apartheid" (The Namibian, 7/3/96). In the same month, Swapo's Secretary General, Moses Garoeb, called the Party to battle stations, declaring war on the "unpatriotic elements" and "foreign remnants of fascism" that had threatened national reconciliation by bringing the detainee issue into the open. Garoeb and other Swapo officials have argued that Groth's work and the issues it raised could incite a civil war in Namibia (The Namibian, 13/3/96). A little later, during Independence anniversary celebrations, Swapo supporters in its northern heartland reportedly called for the banning and burning of Pastor Groth's book (Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), "Action Alert Up-Date - Namibia: Call For Banning and Burning of Book," 27/3/96).

The controversy has also become something of an international issue with the detainee question being addressed in the US State Department's 1996 Human Rights Report - which, for this and other reasons, did not include Namibia in its list of 8 African countries said to have 'respected' human rights. The Report comments that the detainee issue "will likely remain controversial until the Government conducts a full investigation and releases its results" (The Namibian, 12/3/96).

It is likely that revelations of Swapo detainees contributed to costing the party its two-thirds majority in the 1989 elections, but in its landslide 1994 victory Swapo more than made up the deficit and its position is safe for some time. On the face of it, Swapo was unlikely to have been damaged in the slightest by Groth's work had it not felt the need to react in such an extreme manner.

Although he relates horrific tales of abuse committed under the auspices of Swapo and comes to identify entirely with Swapo dissidents, there is never a sense that Groth considers Swapo beyond redemption. .

The amount of critical and reliable research available on the area suggests that one need not seriously doubt either the bulk of the source material or the historical arguments offered by Wall of Silence. Sections of Swapo notwithstanding, it is generally accepted that there were indeed grievous abuses of human rights perpetrated by Swapo personnel during the struggle for independence. It is also reasonably clear that sections of Swapo utilised the very real problem of informers and spies to mask its heavy handed approach to internal dissent and factionalism.

The controversy is therefore quite evidently not so much around the factual integrity of Groth's work, but around whether Swapo need now acknowledge and offer apologies for the more problematic aspects of its history that are described in the text. Suggestions have been made, for example, that Swapo conduct something similar to the African National Congress' Motsuenyane Commission of Inquiry into abuses committed by its security section, 'Mbokodo'.

This is the crux of the historical and contemporary problem of Namibia. What disturbs Swapo, or at least parts of its leadership, most is to be challenged from within. A common contention that has survived into the post-independence era is that "denial of a Swapo government is negation of Namibian independence." (Alfred T. Moleah, Namibia: the Struggle for Liberation, Washington: DISA, 1983, p.300.)

(The latter extracted from: Review of Siegfried Groth's Namibia - the Wall of Silence: the Dark Days of the Liberation Struggle, by Timothy Dauth. 23 April, 1996)

... may this shows the other site of the story ... just a wee bit ...

Reviving Memories And Finding Closure

Klaus Dierks might reflect more light on this too, since he have were part of the clan, he could help out in The Hague too at the International Criminal Court, take a look at this

118-1976

Thanks, oneword. The mighty SWAPO has decided to procrastinate obstinately. They assume the position of powerful figures who came ahead of them, yet they are not that powerful. Pol Pot, N. Korean's Kim and other fascists. Even Mugabe or Idi, only similarity is perhaps the sense of brutality. SWAPO is relatively small and less sophisticated.

Note: Offensive language has been removed from this post by Shebeen. Phelakuti: Please be reminded of the rules that govern this community, to which you agreed when you joined: The Shebeen Forum Rules

Thanks for posting this material, Oneword. It is well worth taking the time to read it and learn from it. These are complex and emotional issues. But even complex and emotional issues have to be addressed at some time. I would have thought that by now SWAPO has realised that this issue just won't go away by itself, and would have the courage, wisdom, maturity, strength and braveness to act and do something akin to investigating the charges brought against it, and apologising where and when requried. To say the issue has been resolved is not true. Neither will it suffice to use the policy of national reconciliation as a figleaf for past atrocities. The fact is that real reconiliation can only take place if all aprties know the truth and know what really happened. It's time to wisen up, SWAPO. This one will keep coming back unless the party does some real soul-searching and accounts for its actions. And let me say this also: Some figures in the new RDP party have also been implicated, and so it will be interesting to see and hear whether they have the moral fibre to do what is right.