Khwe
in West Caprivi Innocent
Victims in Cross-Border War
In
2001 the Khwe in West Caprivi had to deal not only with the disheartening
denial of official recognition of their Traditional Authority, but also
with verbal aggression, harassment, assaults, arbitrary arrests and detentions
perpetrated by members of the Namibian Defence Force (NDF), and attacks
by Angolan UNITA forces. WIMSA received numerous reports from Khwe community
leaders about Khwe being killed and robbed by UNITA rebels, and about
Khwe men being arrested by the NDF on the grounds that they had been collaborating
with UNITA.
Specific
Cases of Harassment of Khwe
The LAC,
WIMSA and staff of Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation
(IRDNC) in the Caprivi worked closely together to shed light on a specific
incident in Mutc'ku in the Caprivi in July 2001, in which the NDF had
arrested five Khwe men who were alleged to have weapons hidden on an island
in the Kavango River. One of the men was Hans Dikua, whose corpse was
recovered from the river seven days after his arrest. A Khwe man told
The Cape Times that "They [NDF] put him [Hans Dikua] in a dugout
on the river and then the people heard a shot."6 NDF personnel claim
that he drowned, but relatives testified that Hans Dikua grew up along
the river and could swim. They accuse the army of shooting him, and an
IRDNC report states that the NDF had "refused a post-mortem and organised
for the body to be buried immediately. The other four detainees remain
in custody at the Omega police cells."7
The case
of 15 young Khwe men who had gone missing after being rounded up by NDF
soldiers on 16 August 2000 was filed with the High Court by the LAC acting
for the Acting Khwe Chief and 13 relatives of the missing men. The Court
found on 5 December 2001 that it had not been proven that the missing
men were still in government custody.
Acting Khwe
Chief Thadeus Chedau reported to WIMSA on several occasions that the situation
in West Caprivi has been less tense since the killing of UNITA leader
Jonas Savimbi on 22 February 2002. The majority of Khwe families which
had fled to Botswana plan to return to their homesteads soon and plough
their fields, and it is hoped that the landmines there will soon be cleared
so they can gather food in the bush again.
Khwe
Refugees at Dukwe Camp in Botswana
At the request
of Khwe elders in Omega current WIMSA Chairperson David Naude conveyed
to the Khwe refugees at the Dukwe Refugee Camp in Botswana the message
that they should return home. David managed to speak to a few Khwe men
on the telephone but was unable to establish the state of affairs with
camp officials. The Khwe men he spoke to emphasised that the majority
of the Khwe refugees would like to repatriate particularly because a number
of them were very ill and were not receiving proper treatment. A report
on the situation at the Dukwe camp which Amnesty International headquarters
in London had received and forwarded to WIMSA mentions Khwe refugees'
suffering due to negligence at the Dukwe clinic, their cramped housing,
and social ills such as abuse of women and girls, alcohol abuse and a
lot of violence as other problems experienced by Khwe at the camp. In
December 2001 the Pretoria-based UNHCR office announced that the repatriation
process had been set in motion. At the time of writing a tripartite agreement
between the UNHCR, Botswana's Ministry of Presidential Affairs and Namibia's
Ministry of Home Affairs was signed. This agreement will guarantee the
"safe and dignified return" of Namibian refugees.
San
in Tsumkwe West Threatened by
Plan to Relocate Refugees
Namibia's
Minister of Home Affairs recently announced in the National Assembly that
the Government intends going ahead with its plan to relocate approximately
21 000 refugees (chiefly Angolan) from the Osire Refugee Camp (70km south
of the town of Otjiwarongo) to a site in the M'Kata area of Tsumkwe District
West. He said:
We know that the donors are opposed to the move. I am planning a meeting
between the donors and the farmers whose animals are being killed. Just
because they [the donors] give food, they can't have a final say. That
is a cheap argument. We are going to move it [the camp].8
Minister
Ekandjo did not mention that about 4 500 !Kung living in Tsumkwe West
are strongly opposed to this plan. Yet, from as early as February 2001
!Kung Chief John Arnold has been telling the Government and UNHCR Namibia
office that his community has serious concerns about and objections to
the plan.
First
Round of Community Consultations
In February
2001 WIMSA agreed to co-operate with Chief Arnold in conducting a community
consultation around the plan. In April 2001 Chief Arnold and WIMSA consultant
Richard Pakleppa embarked on a community consultation process to inform
the people of Tsumkwe West of the Government's plan for M'Kata, to facilitate
community discussions about the possible implications and to gauge what
the people thought and felt about the plan.
From 5 to
21 April 2001 Chief Arnold and the WIMSA consultant held meetings with
members of the !Kung Traditional Authority, village leaders, members of
the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy Committee and women and men in all but
two of the 24 villages in Tsumkwe West. They also travelled to the heart
of the targeted resettlement area, meaning M'Kata, Luhebo and Mangetti
Dune, to meet with individuals and smaller groups of San. At the end of
this first round of meetings traditional leaders and conservancy committee
members from all the villages gathered for a joint meeting at M'Kata.
The consultation
meetings all followed the same format, which entailed sharing information
on:
- who the
refugees are;
- current
conditions at Osire, e.g. water consumption of 21 000 people is about
400 000 litres per day,9 and Osire has a sanitation problem;
- official
reasons given for the plan, e.g. Osire is said to be getting too small
for the refugee influx and neighbouring commercial farmers have reportedly
complained about environmental degradation and threats to their livestock;
- the Government's
plan as a principled decision, not a final one; and
- the communities
constitutional right to influence government policies, and their right
to assemble and voice their views.
Discussion
during the meetings focused on the advantages and disadvantages of the
proposed resettlement of refugees in terms of what it could bring to and
what harm it could do to the communities of the whole Tsumkwe District.
It was clarified at the outset that the village meetings were not called
to make decisions but only to discuss the issues and consider options.
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