Nujoma rejects calls for truth commission

SWAPO President Sam Nujoma says Namibia does not need a truth and reconciliation commission to settle the latest discovery of mass graves or other deaths that occurred during the war before Independence.

Nujoma said the reconciliation policy adopted at Independence was enough to help those with information on the mass graves to come forward and reveal such information. “Namibia is different from other countries.We adopted national reconciliation here.The Koevoet and former SWATF (South West African Territory Force) are considered part and parcel of the Namibian society and protected by our laws.Some are even employed in our Defence Force and Police,” Nujoma told a media briefing last week.He said Namibia will “never be a rubberstamp of any country” and thus rejected any inquiry along the lines of the South African Truth Reconciliation Commission (TRC).The TRC was set up in South Africa to help people deal with the atrocities committed by the apartheid SA regime and also revealed a host of information about killings and torture in Namibia.It blamed former the South African army chief, Lieutenant General Constand Viljoen, former air force chief R H Rodgers, and their political masters – the late prime minister John Vorster and then defence minister P W Botha – for the Cassinga massacre of 1978, in which over 600 people are estimated to have died.The commission described the South African Defence Force (SADF) raid on Swapo’s camp at Cassinga in southern Angola as possibly the most controversial single operation the TRC dealt with in its two-and-a-half-year mandate.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.All the planning documentation, including aerial photographs, indicated that the SADF command was convinced Cassinga was the planning headquarters of Swapo’s military wing – the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia – and thus a military target of key importance.The TRC also found that members of South Africa’s special operations unit, Koevoet, “killed people for kicks”.The police unit – set up by Brigadier Hans Dreyer of the South African Police’s Security Branch in June 1979 – was responsible for numerous human rights abuses in pre-independence Namibia.The Commission found that Koevoet was, in many respects, an archetypal counter-revolutionary unit – a means of fighting fire with fire.Its top echelon comprised battle-hardened veterans of the Rhodesian war – among them Colonels Eugene de Kock and Eric Winter, Captains Sakkie van Zyl and ‘Beachball’ Vorster, Lieutenant Frans Conradie and Warrant Officer ‘Snakes’ Greyling.Koevoet soon gained a reputation for brutality, largely because of its methods of interrogating local people, which invariably involved torture, and for the way its members careered around the operational areas in Casspir armoured vehicles, laying down heavy fire, flattening fences, driving straight through crops and even people’s homes, whenever they suspected a guerrilla contact.”Namibia is different from other countries.We adopted national reconciliation here.The Koevoet and former SWATF (South West African Territory Force) are considered part and parcel of the Namibian society and protected by our laws.Some are even employed in our Defence Force and Police,” Nujoma told a media briefing last week.He said Namibia will “never be a rubberstamp of any country” and thus rejected any inquiry along the lines of the South African Truth Reconciliation Commission (TRC).The TRC was set up in South Africa to help people deal with the atrocities committed by the apartheid SA regime and also revealed a host of information about killings and torture in Namibia.It blamed former the South African army chief, Lieutenant General Constand Viljoen, former air force chief R H Rodgers, and their political masters – the late prime minister John Vorster and then defence minister P W Botha – for the Cassinga massacre of 1978, in which over 600 people are estimated to have died.The commission described the South African Defence Force (SADF) raid on Swapo’s camp at Cassinga in southern Angola as possibly the most controversial single operation the TRC dealt with in its two-and-a-half-year mandate.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.All the planning documentation, including aerial photographs, indicated that the SADF command was convinced Cassinga was the planning headquarters of Swapo’s military wing – the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia – and thus a military target of key importance.The TRC also found that members of South Africa’s special operations unit, Koevoet, “killed people for kicks”.The police unit – set up by Brigadier Hans Dreyer of the South African Police’s Security Branch in June 1979 – was responsible for numerous human rights abuses in pre-independence Namibia.The Commission found that Koevoet was, in many respects, an archetypal counter-revolutionary unit – a means of fighting fire with fire.Its top echelon comprised battle-hardened veterans of the Rhodesian war – among them Colonels Eugene de Kock and Eric Winter, Captains Sakkie van Zyl and ‘Beachball’ Vorster, Lieutenant Frans Conradie and Warrant Officer ‘Snakes’ Greyling.Koevoet soon gained a reputation for brutality, largely because of its methods of interrogating local people, which invariably involved torture, and for the way its members careered around the operational areas in Casspir armoured vehicles, laying down heavy fire, flattening fences, driving straight through crops and even people’s homes, whenever they suspected a guerrilla contact.