Julian Rademeyer
20 November 2005
Johannesburg — SCATTERED across Northern Namibia, from Ruacana to Oshakati and Ekongo, lie the forgotten graves of soldiers from the South West African People's Organisation (Swapo).
Hundreds of bloated corpses -- torn apart by heavy weapons and left to rot in the sun during pitched battles fought over nine days in April 1989 -- were unceremoniously piled into trailers and dumped into mass graves dug deep into the red earth near South African military bases.
The burials, conducted in many instances by the South West Africa Police under the watchful eye of the United Nations Transition Assistance Group (Untag), were far from secret. Press photographers were on hand to record what observers said was a shredded "mess of guts, legs and Christ knows what" at grave sites and mortuaries. The images flashed around the world.
Rudimentary postmortems were conducted amid allegations that some of the dead had been "executed". Many of the corpses were individually photographed for "identification purposes".
But in the 15 years following Namibian independence, amnesia set in. The Swapo government under President Sam Nujoma did nothing to exhume the corpses of the men whose "blood watered our freedom".
Then last week, construction workers laying sewage pipes near Eenhana found bones, skulls and rotting uniforms. Soon two other mass graves were unearthed.
Namibia's President Hifikepunye Pohamba appealed "to those who served in the colonial forces and know about this ... to please come out and tell us".
Minister of Defence Ndahu Namholo said: "I want to know who is buried here ... I want to know what happened to those who went missing."
As more graves were uncovered, headlines spoke of a "deepening mystery".
But human rights campaigners -- who have been calling for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Namibia since the '90s -- were dismissive of the government's sudden interest in the ghosts of the past, accusing Swapo of "political expediency".
"The graves were not a secret whatsoever," said Phil Ya Nangoloh -- a former People's Liberation Army of Namibia (Plan) soldier and executive director of the National Society for Human Rights in Windhoek . "The graves were there, but nobody could give a damn because it wasn't politically expedient."
Identification of the bodies would be difficult, Ya Nangoloh said. "What should have been done by Plan when sending soldiers into battle was take their names down, and afterwards you could reconcile the numbers. Records were not kept."
The key to the "mystery" of Namibia's graves lies in history, in yellowed newspaper clippings, the souvenir "happy snaps" of South African soldiers, and the memories of old soldiers and the hardmen of Koevoet, a South African-raised police counter-insurgency force.
In military chat rooms on the Internet and obscure websites, the discoveries are being hotly debated. Pictures of the graves taken by "troopies" have been posted on sites over the years, along with accounts of their military experiences.
It was Saturday, April 1 1989 -- supposed to be the first day of peace in war-torn Namibia. South African troops and the surrogate South West Africa Territorial Force had either been withdrawn, demobilised or were confined to their bases.
The same was said to be true of Plan, which was camped out in southern Angola.
UN special representative to the country Martti Ahtisaari had arrived in Windhoek the day before, telling journalists that April 1 marked the beginning of a new era.
At 7.45am a radio in the police control room in Ruacana, northern Namibia, crackled to life: "This is Zulu Five Juliet. We have picked up 50 tracks at [map reference] VL0873. Direction south. Chevron [boot prints] and barefoot."
Some thought it was an April Fools' joke. Confined to base at Oshakati, troops with an infantry battalion were clustered around a radio when the urgent cry of a Koevoet operator burst through the static: "Contact! We have contact!"
It was the beginning of a savage series of pitched battles, later dubbed the Nine Day War. Despite being assured of the free and fair election they had fought for, hundreds of heavily armed Plan fighters -- some estimates put the figure at 1700 -- had crossed the border into Namibia, breaching all agreements.
The reasons for the "invasion" are still a matter of contention. Some Swapo men said they had been ordered to cross the border to "liberated areas", to report to UN "assembly points" and hand over their weapons. But there were no liberated areas or assembly points, and many who crossed the cutline went to their deaths.
The South Africans contended that Plan was staging a final push in a bid to establish bases and seize the country. Photos taken at the time show Plan fighters armed with RPG-7 rocket launchers, rifle grenades, surface-to-air missiles and AK-47s.
With the blue flag of the UN flying overhead, six battalions of the South West Africa Territorial Force were reactivated in terms of an agreement between Louis Pienaar, South Africa's administrator-general in Namibia, and Ahtisaari. They fell under the command of the South West Africa Police, which at that stage included Koevoet.
General Jannie Geldenhuys, commander of the South African forces in Namibia, said this week that the UN "begged us to come back and we rescued the situation".
According to Peter Stiff, author of The Covert War, a recent book on Koevoet that chronicles the experiences of its small contingent of white officers, there were 63 "contacts" over the nine days. "Koevoet killed 294 insurgents and captured 14 ... The army, while acting in support of the police, killed another 18 and captured 26."
In the worst fighting seen in Namibia, 26 South Africans died, including 19 Koevoet members.
Swapo later criticised Ahtisaari, saying his hands were "dripping with the blood of innocent Namibians killed by him using South African forces".
Buried in a mass grave at Oshakati along with the bodies of Plan soldiers is the right leg of Herman Grobler, then a sergeant in Koevoet. He lost it on the second day of the conflict when an RPG-75 hit his armoured car during a firefight.
It is an incident he doesn't speak about much. But according to other accounts, he continued firing at the Plan soldiers. During a respite in the fighting he used a bush knife to amputate the remains of his leg.
This week, Grobler said the bodies of dead Plan fighters had been taken to the nearest South African bases and buried. "We shot them. Then we left them in the bush where they were because we were still following up other groups. Untag said it was inhuman and that they had to be fetched again."
Grobler said the commander of the Oshakati police station, chief inspector Chris de Wit, was assigned with Untag to fetch the corpses.
"Some weren't found because the locals had already buried them. And, because the bodies stank so badly, they were not all taken to one central point. They were taken to the nearest army or old police base.
"Postmortems were conducted on all those bodies under the supervision of Untag. The graves were dug while Untag was present, there were photos taken of each one of the corpses, and they were buried while Untag stood there. A church service was also held. The Koevoet members weren't involved in that process, it was handled by the police."
Earlier this week in an interview with the SABC, Ahtisaari-- now a special UN envoy to Kosovo -- said he could "not believe those mass graves occurred while the UN was there ... I sincerely hope this will be properly investigated and I think it is obvious that the best answers can and should be [had] from the South African military."
Grobler said Ahtisaari's claims were "absolute rubbish". "They physically monitored the whole thing," he said.
Koevoet's operational commander, Colonel Willem Fouche, who says the Swapo death toll in the nine days could have been as high as 1000, this week rejected Ahtisaari's comments. He said the focus of Namibian authorities on SADF involvement in the battles was incorrect. "The SADF had nothing, but nothing, to do with it.
"Untag was in charge and they had orders to ride with us but they were too scared. We had sweet fanny-all to do with the burials. Chris de Wit from Swapol [the police] had to assist Untag with the burying of the bodies.
"I think we made the first mass grave at Oshakati, but Untag said it was not acceptable. So we told them, 'Dig them up, we are busy with war and don't have time for funerals,'" said Fouche.
Commenting on the allegations that some of the Plan soldiers were "executed", he grew angry. "All those people died in contacts, all of them!"
Geldenhuys said Ahtisaari could not deny knowledge of the graves. "This took place under the UN flag and Ahtisaari must now start to give a reckoning over the role he played. He can't say he didn't know about [the graves] because it was in the press at the time."
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