This is a graphic description of the main features of the machinery of repression built up by the South African occupying regime, including first-hand accounts of detention and torture. An interview with one of the survivors of the massacre at Kassinga in 1978 is also given together with a list of convicted political prisoners. (Eriksen/Moorsom 1989).
It took the former South African Defence Force (SADF) less than four hours to kill more than eight hundred Namibian refugees at Cassinga on May 4, 1978. Thousands of survivors were left with irreparable physical and emotional injuries. The unhealed trauma of Cassinga, a Namibian civilian camp in southern Angola before the massacre, is beyond the worst that the victims of the attack experienced on the ground. Unacceptable layers of pain and suffering continue to grow and multiply as the victims’ grievances and other issues arising out of the aftermath of the massacre have been ignored, particularly following Namibia’s political independence. In this book, the afterlife of the victims’ traumatic memories and their aspiration for justice vis-à-vis the perpetrators’ enjoyment of blanket impunity from prosecution, in spite of their ongoing denial of killing and maiming innocent civilians at Cassinga, are explored with the aim to create public awareness about the unfortunate circumstances of the Cassinga victims.
A Trust Betrayed: There are few peoples who have suffered as long and as bitterly as the Namibians. For the past century they have been a minority people under the domination of an alien occupying power: first the Germans, and then the South African regime - itself an oppressor of its own majority people - who have illegally occupied Namibia for over 70 years. The Namibian people have been murdered, imprisoned and tortured, their country has been turned into a battleground for contending armies, their land and natural resources have been stolen and exploited. Yet Namibia has been on the international agenda for many years, first under a League of Nations mandate and later as a UN Trust Territory. It has been the subject of numerous resolutions from the UN and other international bodies, and yet no international political action has brought nearer any tangible moves towards true independence. Instead the South African government has procrastinated, manipulated and perverted any attempts to reach a peaceful, yet just, settlement. The Namibians, Minority Rights Group report 19, gives a detailed account of Namibian history and the present situation. Written by Peter Fraenkel and Roger Murray, it contains new sections on the international diplomacy which has surrounded the Namibian question, internal political developments, the war and human rights abuses. It focuses on evidence of the exploitation of Namibian land, resources and labour by outsiders. It reports also the continued resistance of Namibians to South African domination and their support for the liberation movement of SWAPO, and its allies, in that struggle. An invaluable guide to the complexities of a horrifying situation, The Namibians is essential reading for the media, academics, students, aid agencies and all interested in international affairs and current events.
Womens contributions against apartheid under the auspices of the Namibian liberation movement SWAPO and their personal experiences in exile take center stage in this study. Male and female leadership structures in exile are analysed whilst the sexual politics in the refugee camps and the public imagery of female representation in SWAPOs nationalism receive special attention. The partys public pronouncements of women empowerment and gender equality are compared to the actual implementations of gender politics during and after the liberation struggle.
The collection contains primary material from Swapo and about Swapo dating from the 1960s to 1990. It contains the history of Swapo and the Namibian liberation struggle.
