Towards the middle of April 1985, I decided to travel to Windhoek. Tate Kaupa Mwatotele – the man who had helped me acquire a South West Africa identification card at the Ondangwa civic affairs office – arranged my trip.
My plan was to go and immediately start setting up the supporting network and identify possible candidates for cultivation and eventual recruitment into the PLAN urban guerrilla units. We travelled by minibus from Ondangwa to Windhoek. On the way, we passed through numerous checkpoints and roadblocks at Onathinge, Okatope military base, Omuthiya, Oshivelo control point, and near Tsumeb. At the Tsumeb-Grootfontein-Otavi road junction, we came across a permanent roadblock where I encountered trouble.
When we arrived at the roadblock, violent Koevoet members ordered everyone to disembark from the minibus. Each passenger was also ordered to remove his or her luggage from the bus. Passengers were pulled left, right and centre, back and forth, and were also hit with batons without questions asked.
The Koevoet took us into a big tent with a spotlight where we were asked to line up. As we moved towards the tent, people were pulled like goats tied with ropes around their necks. One Koevoet woman held my jacket pushing me towards the big tent. “Move fast, ek moer vir jou nou,’’ she shouted. Suddenly, she threw a punch to my head and as I tried to block it, she drew her bayonet and stabbed me on my right shoulder, claiming that I was not moving fast enough as she demanded. After she stabbed me, one young Koevoet member came to my rescue.
He started quarrelling with the woman and later took all of us to a white man who was seated inside the tent. There she was again harshly reprimanded and asked to explain why she stabbed me without being authorised to do so by her commander. The white man requested someone to treat me and bandage my wound before I joined the queue. Later, about five black soldiers whom I suspected to be captured PLAN fighters moved along the line trying to identify possible ‘terrorists’ in the queue.
We were all asked to produce our national identification cards before we boarded the minibus to proceed with our journey to Windhoek. We had left Ondangwa at midday on 27 April 1985 and arrived in Windhoek late evening the same day. Someone, whose name I could not remember, collected us from the bus station near the old compound and took us to one house in Soweto before we were again taken to another house in the same location.
The man who collected us from the minibus ranks was an acquaintance of Tate Mwatotele. However, since his house was too small to accommodate us, he took us to another house where we spent the night. The following morning, the same man took us to the house of the late Comrade Joseph Kambangula, the then Internal SWAPO Secretary for Transport for a visit.
Since Tate Mwatotele knew Cde Kambangula, we spent the entire day discussing issues on the intensification of the liberation struggle both inside and outside the country. Without my saying so, Tate Mwatotele suddenly introduced me to Cde Kambangula as a member of PLAN on a special mission in Windhoek: hence Cde Kambangula was happy to receive me. It appeared Tate Mwatotele was carried away after taking a few beers; thereby violating my instruction never to tell anybody about my connection to the armed wing of SWAPO, the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN).
I cautioned the former secretary never to discuss my presence in Windhoek with anyone without my authority, as he was the only person who knew that I was a PLAN fighter. I cautioned him that the top SWAPO leadership in Angola knew that I would meet him in Windhoek, therefore he should treat my presence as a top secret. I also warned him that if he revealed my presence to anyone and later something bad happened to me, he would be to blame.
Cde Kambangula promised never to discuss my presence in Windhoek with anyone again. Four days later, before Tate Mwatotele left for Ovamboland, we went back to Cde Kambangula’s house where we found the then internal vice president of SWAPO, the late Cde Nathanael Maxwilili.
This was my first time to meet Cde Maxwilili. We found him seated in the guest room behind the house, with a whisky on the table. He was talking to Cde Kambangula about one SWAPO member who was allegedly arrested by the security police at Walvis Bay because of his involvement in liberation politics. Comrade Shityeni, who accompanied us, introduced both of us as SWAPO activists from Ovamboland. Later, as we continued with the discussions, Cde Shityeni told the vice-president that I am actually a PLAN fighter who was in Windhoek for an unexplained assignment. Unshaken and as if the vice-president had heard about me before, he shook my hand firmly, looking me in the eye before he shouted, “Aluta continua, victory acerta!” He then said that he hoped I was in Windhoek for a cause that would advance the liberation struggle.
The vice-president, seemingly overjoyed by the revelation, then continued to probe me with many questions. He asked why PLAN fighters could not use big guns to destroy the ‘makakunyas’ once and for all; how the president of SWAPO was doing and so on. Cde Shityeni did not introduce Tate Mwatotele to the vice-president, as they knew each other already. However, Tate Mwatotele informed the vice-president that he was visiting the capital city on a party mission. “We have a few tasks to accomplish here before I return home tomorrow afternoon,” said Tate Mwatotele.
During my first week in Windhoek, I felt the need to start laying the groundwork for my supporting network. On the third day in the capital city, I went to the Katutura compound where migrant workers were housed. The compound housed a variety of workers mainly from the northern part of the country. This was the ideal place to identify radical and militant workers, who were ready to sacrifice their lives for a just cause.
Moreover, I was looking for people to cultivate, recruit and train to become PLAN urban fighters. One would hardly find people supportive of the apartheid regime in the compound. Those who were known to be sympathetic to the colonisers had no place in the compound, as they were considered traitors.
I decided to visit the compound from 08h00 to 17h00, spending time with the unsuspecting workers there, mainly listening to their views about their suffering, and analysing what they had to say about the liberation struggle in order to identify potential candidates for recruitment into future PLAN urban units.
• The book is available at the Book Den near Polytechnic of Namibia in Windhoek, Etunda filling station in Otavi, Omuthiya filling station, Okapana filling station in Ondangwa, Highway filling station (Selector) Ongwediva, Spar Shop Ongwediva, Book of Namibia in Ondangwa, Oshakati and Outapi, Hosea Kutako International Airport and at Bush War Publication in Durban South Africa