By Kuvee Kangueehi
Windhoek
Namibia’s Prime Minister Nahas Angula has said acts of violence committed by Swapo Party during the liberation struggle were not premeditated but a result of the total onslaught that the then racist South African regime declared against the party.
Contributing to the Motion on National Reconciliation in the National Assembly, Angula said the “Swapo spy drama and dungeons detentions” took place at the height of the liberation struggle when South Africa declared a total offensive on the Swapo Party.
He said one part of the South African tactics was to infiltrate the party and Swapo started witnessing bases being attacked out of the blue. He said some people were definitely spies as sensitive information was being leaked to the enemy.
“We had to take a painful decision to protect the struggle and isolate some of our own people that were accused of being spies.”
Angula said Swapo also decided not to kill the suspects because they could not prove beyond reseasonable doubt that they were indeed spies and agreed to keep them alive then released them when the ceasefire was signed.
“I really feel pain for people like Honourable (Kalla) Gertze who has gone through this painful experience but at that time, one could not even trust their own shadow.”
Angula said the Lubango Dungeons episode represents the tragedy of the war of liberation and is a painful experience for everybody.
He noted that it is an experience everybody wants to forget and avoid.
“People suffered, lives were lost, property destroyed and (it was) a very painful period.”
The Premier said since its inception, Swapo had always wanted to avoid war and during the late ’50s and early ’60s adopted a struggle of non-violence, which was advocated by Mahatma Gandhi.
He added that Swapo later adopted the nationalist approach, which led to Ghana’s independence spearheaded by its first President Kwame Nkrumah.
“Swapo even tried the legal way and lost its case for Namibia at the International Court of Justice at The Hague in the Netherlands.”
He added that the party only agreed to go to war after South Africa refused to sign a ceasefire in 1981. The enemy imposed the war on Swapo.
Angula said the policy of National Reconciliation evolved with the Swapo Party during its years of liberation and was not meant for the South Africans but to reconcile with fellow Namibians.
He said Swapo has always been reconciliatory and even some party members who took part in the rebellion of 1975 have been accepted back into the party and now occupy high political offices in the party.
“If Swapo had a choice, it would never have gone to war and we accepted the policy of National Reconciliation because it is the hope for the future.”
He noted that the “spy drama” was a security machinery and sometimes the machinery consumes its own life.
Motivating his motion, Tsudao Gurirab said he has witnessed an increasing unhealthy and intolerable tendency to hijack or appropriate national reconciliation for party political ends.
He said mostly Government and its front organisations attempt to portray national reconciliation as an act of benevolence, which is within Swapo’s gift to grant or hold.
“Worse still, it is used as a policy of cowardly blackmail which can be dispensed with, should Government or Swapo or its organs be displeased by political or civic actions of Namibians.”
The debate continues today.