Military

DATE=10/30/00

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

TITLE=NAMIBIA / ANGOLA / BUSHMEN

NUMBER=5-47275

BYLINE=CHALLISS MCDONOUGH

DATELINE=MUTJIKU, NAMIBIA

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: The San people - sometimes called Bushmen - were some of the original inhabitants of southern Africa. Today, they have been pushed out of most of their ancestral lands. First by white settlers, then by other African tribes. Now, one San community in northern Namibia is facing a new threat. As Correspondent Challiss McDonough reports from the village of Mutjiku (mu-TEE-koo), the encroaching war in neighboring Angola is slowly pushing the local San people out of their homes.

TEXT: In Namibia's western Caprivi Strip, one branch of the San community is slowly eroding. Out of the roughly three-thousand Kxoe (KWAY) people who used to live here, Chief Thaddeus Cheddau is not sure how many are left. Some have fled south to neighboring Botswana. Others have simply disappeared - arrested by Namibian and Angolan security forces cracking down on anyone suspected of collaborating with Angola's UNITA rebel movement.

The chief says his people are caught in the middle of a war they have nothing to do with.

/// CHEDDAU ACT ///

The Kxoe people now, they are afraid. UNITA will kill them. Our [Namibian] security forces, they will beat on them too.

/// END ACT ///

The chief says the trouble started in December. That was when Angolan government troops began operating in Namibia in their effort to contain UNITA. He says the Kxoe have been attacked by both sides.

/// OPT /// Fear of landmines has forced villagers to evacuate one block of houses after a local boy lost a leg earlier this month. The local community center is still damaged after an attack several months ago, when a rocket-propelled grenade caved in part of the roof and knocked a hole in a wall. The local bar, known as Bushbabies, is riddled with bullet holes, where someone opened fire with an AK-47. /// END OPT ///

The Kxoe say they are never certain who exactly is attacking them. One of the chief's top advisers, David Naude, says the troops on opposite sides of the conflict wear each other's uniforms.

/// NAUDE ACT ///

That is the main problem, we cannot recognize which people are coming here, which people are shooting here.

/// END ACT ///

The situation has calmed somewhat recently. There are fewer firefights than earlier this year. Angolan soldiers have mostly left the area, and UNITA sightings are less common as well.

But the Kxoe people say Namibian security forces have continued to harass them. /// OPT /// The Kxoe leaders say security forces have arrested 13 young men from the community - including Mr. Naude's brother. They were picked up more than two-months ago, and he still has no idea where his brother and the others are. /// END OPT ///

The Kxoe leaders claim to have witnessed security forces beating prisoners and burying them in the sand up to their necks, but there is no way of verifying those allegations. Local police refused to speak to V-O-A about the charges.

The Namibian Defense Force has admitted that some of its soldiers have caused trouble for the San people in Caprivi. /// OPT /// Last month, a drunken man roamed through a local village in a UNITA uniform, shooting at random. The villagers killed him with a poisoned arrow, their traditional hunting weapon. They thought they had killed a UNITA rebel, but when Namibian troops came to investigate the next day, they discovered the dead man was actually a Namibian soldier. They beat up the villagers for killing him. Two soldiers were later court-martialed in connection with the incident. /// END OPT ///

A casual observer can find evidence of lower-level harassment without even looking. At the Bushbabies bar, a Namibian soldier casually grabbed the breast of a local girl - in full view of two reporters. She protested, to no avail.

But why would the Namibian troops harass their own people? Mr. Naude says the government troops believe the Kxoe are UNITA supporters because some of them worked as trackers for apartheid-era South African troops, who backed UNITA.

/// NAUDE ACT ///

They say that we, the Kxoe community, are working together with the UNITAs. That is why they are beating [us], and [say] we are the rebels now.

/// END ACT ///

There may be an ethnic aspect to the problem as well. Some observers say members of the majority ethnic groups see San people like the Kxoe as less than human. But the harassment appears to be somewhat confined to this particular part of the western Caprivi. The Kxoe leaders say the police and soldiers in other areas cooperate with the San community.

Chief Thaddeus Cheddau says he has complained to the authorities. He says the Namibian minister of prisons visited the area not long ago and reprimanded the security forces for their behavior.

/// CHEDDAU ACT ///

He said that you special field forces, and the police, and N-D-F [army], do not do this. If the president of this country will understand you are doing this, you will be discharged. But they are still doing this.

/// END ACT ///

The chief says hundreds of his people have already left Namibia for the safety of Botswana. But evacuation raises another problem - land tenure. If the Kxoe vacate their lands, other people can move in, and they might lose their right to call this their home. (SIGNED)

NEB/CEM/RAE