Hapless San caught up in war

2000-10-25 09:38

Mutjiku, Namibia - In a confusing world where opposing armies wear virtually identical uniforms and the soldiers and police of his own country routinely terrorise his small Bushmen community, Chief Thadeus Cheddau does not know who the real enemy is any more.

"When the Angolan army came here (to Namibia), they were wearing the same uniforms that Unita (Angolan rebels) wore in the old days," said Cheddau.

"And then they started accusing us of being collaborators, of helping Unita. But Unita is also killing us, and the army is beating us."

The Bushmen, or San, the oldest inhabitants of southern Africa, were originally nomadic hunter-gatherers. Those who live here in the Caprivi Strip -- a long finger of Namibian territory bordered by Angola, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe -- are caught up in the 25-year-old Angolan civil war pitting the army of President Eduardo dos Santos against guerrillas of Unita, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, led by Jonas Savimbi.

The Unita soldiers wear olive-drab uniforms, which are slightly darker than those of the Angolan army commando forces.

Of his formerly 3,000-strong Kxoe-speaking community, a small branch of the San people, Cheddau is not sure how many are left. On the way to his house, he stopped to point out the so-called Charlie Block, where dozens of small houses stand deserted.

"Don't drive in there, there are mines," he warned.

Last week, a young boy lost his leg there, and the day before, a cow set off another mine close by. As a result, everyone who lived there fled to live with relatives elsewhere, leaving their small fields and herds unattended.

But appeals for help from the army and police just invited more recriminations, with the Kxoe being accused of having helped unspecified "Unita collaborators" to plant the landmines.

The army demanded to know where the rest of the landmines were, and he was roughed up, Cheddau recalled sadly.

The Kxoe maintain they are considered disloyal to Namibia by the local security forces because many of them worked for the apartheid-era South African army, which supported Unita, as trackers in the 1980s.

With the Angolan army on the offensive against Unita along the border, hundreds of Kxoe have fled the Caprivi Strip for the safety of Botswana, about 50 kilometres to the south, Cheddau said.

But with uncertain land tenure rights, Cheddau and his remaining people would risk losing all if they also left for the safety of Botswana. And so they remain here at the start of the so-called "Golden Highway," a gravel road snaking north across the border into Angola that was used by apartheid-era Pretoria to supply Savimbi.

"The army does want to have any young (Kxoe) men here," said David Naude, an adviser to the chief. On August 13, Naude's younger brother was picked up along with 12 other young Kxoe men by soldiers from a nearby army base. He said he saw his brother being beaten by several of the soldiers after he tried to escape into the nearby river.

The 13 detainees were then taken to the base, where Naude said he saw them being buried in holes with only their heads sticking out. The local commander refused to hear the Kxoe's side, he said, and he has not seen his brother again.

Cheddau and Naude said they had complained to Prisons Minister Marco Hausiku, who threatened to dismiss police and soldiers found guilty of harassing the Kxoe.

Two weeks ago, the Namibian army sentenced two soldiers to two years' imprisonment -- suspended in its entirety -- for torturing some San people, including pouring boiling water over them.

But the harassment continues. In the local bar, a soldier sauntered up to a young Kxoe girl and grabbed her breast as she protested ineffectually. - Sapa-AFP.

- SAPA