I returned to the service station to collect Hosea, still studiously consulting, for us to make our way to Okatana where we would stay overnight before the curfew would take effect.
Okatana is a Catholic mission station and school nestled in a grove of huge indigenous fig, leadwood and acacia trees, lending it an air of tranquillity amid the prevailing turbulence in the area. A warm welcome from Father Hubrecht was followed by a hearty dinner. Upon my enquiry, he said that the generator would stay on until 9.30 pm. Hosea and I continued to work on the affidavits until then. The generator was switched on again at 5.30 am the next morning, in time for the mission station to prepare for morning mass. We continued our work on the affidavits from then until breakfast time. Hosea dictated details while I typed as quickly as I could.
As we left the mission station, schoolchildren of varying ages were converging upon it from all directions. The energy in their approach may have had something to do with the morning’s freshness following the rain of the previous late afternoon and evening. This energy was also no doubt because of how strictly the impending school starting time was presumably enforced, given the influence of German Catholicism. We continued to encounter them for some distance, demonstrating how far away some of the children lived from the school, with latecomers scurrying with even more urgency towards the mission station.
We returned to finalise the remaining affidavits and spent some time going through them with the various deponents. We also noticed that the numbers of people had begun to swell in the course of the morning while we were carefully checking details and contents with deponents. Samson explained that they also wanted to consult with us. Some of them had a relative detained at Mariental; others knew of people who had a relative detained there; still others wanted to discuss disappearances or detentions unrelated to the Mariental detentions. All said that they had received word of the case and had come to support it.
Hosea and I tried our best to explain in a respectful manner that affidavits from everybody would not be neither necessary nor possible in the time available to us. But we assured them that, if the case were to succeed, all the detainees at Mariental would have to be released. We agreed to take down their details and those of their relatives who were in detention or who had gone missing, and promised to do what we could. We also thanked them all for their support and willingness to come forward, expressing our appreciation and respect for their courage in doing so in difficult times. An elderly man in the group stepped forward as a spokesperson and movingly thanked us on behalf of all present. We then went to the Oshakati branch of Standard Bank where the manager commissioned all the remaining affidavits without demur. In all, 21 affidavits had been completed since the day before.
A light lunch awaited us at Okatana. As we approached the mission station, the children toiled homeward in small groups mostly defined by their size, their languid movements no doubt the consequence of the heat and humidity that had long since replaced the day’s early freshness.
The fast pace of our progress back to Windhoek was only temporarily interrupted by the frequent military and police checkpoints which were negotiated without incident. We encountered a few showers along the way. At sunset, we stopped to stretch our limbs alongside the road near the Omatako mountains midway between Otjiwarongo and Okahandja.
The presence of some clouds in the west served to accentuate the range of colours of the sky as the sun set to spectacular effect and disappeared behind those near-symmetrical mountains, which stood out dramatically from the seemingly endless plains of surrounding farmland. The sight was so splendid that we stood there for some moments, marvelling at the timeless beauty of the scene and reflecting on the past 36 hours. The serenity of this spectacle combined with sheer exhaustion stirred our emotions, which ranged from relief to a sense of elation at eventually having secured sufficient evidence to take the case to court. But we also had a deep sense of uncertainty and foreboding about what was to come, not knowing what the consequences would be for our clients and witnesses, and what would happen in the case. We spoke briefly about our thoughts – which were strikingly similar, our having worked together on the case for some time. For most of that time, we had not made much progress, and then this flurry of developments. We travelled the remaining hour and a half mostly without speaking as we each contemplated these themes to the strains of Bob Dylan, Ry Cooder and Bob Marley playing on some tired cassette tapes in the background. We were both physically and emotionally drained on our return to Windhoek that night.
I spent time the next day preparing a draft of my own affidavit. I also approached the Anglican Bishop of Namibia, James Kauluma, to join the application as an applicant to apply for the release of those detainees whom it had been admitted were in Mariental and for whom we had not been able to trace any relatives. He was the serving president of the CCN, whose member churches represented some 85 per cent of the Christians in the country and over 95 per cent of those living in Owambo. He enthusiastically embraced the idea. It was the start of an enduring partnership in human rights work. As he was about to head for Owambo, he agreed to approach the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (ELCIN), Kleopas Dumeni, to do so as well. I was to speak to the Catholic bishop, Bonifatius Haushiku, on the Monday after the ensuing weekend as he was out of town at the time.
Our approach was to argue that the three bishops would have standing to apply for the release of those for whom family could not be found. The courts had acknowledged about ten years before in a leading case that the Anglican Bishop of Namibia had standing to interdict the flogging of activists by state-supported tribal leaders in the north because of their political activism.25
I travelled that weekend to Cape Town to consult Jeremy Gauntlett. He agreed to spend Saturday settling my own and Bishop Kauluma’s affidavits and the terms of the notice of motion. My own affidavit essentially set the background and the enquiries I had made, and the responses from the military. It also dealt with the further steps taken to obtain affidavits. Jeremy excellently embellished upon my rather ordinary draft for Bishop Kauluma, dealing with the question of standing in the following way:
During the course of the tragic hostilities in South West Africa, and notably Owamboland, I have often been approached by members of the civilian population who have asked me to assist them in their search for lost family and friends, caught up in the war, some of whom have been held by the South African Defence Force (the SADF) or the South West African Territory Force (SWATF). By the nature of my vocation as a bishop, the vows I have taken to serve God and man in the dictates of the Christian Gospel, I have sought to assist where I can … I consider it my duty to coordinate and consolidate the activities of member churches and to promote and protect the several interests of member churches, the membership of such member churches representing 85% of the population of South West Africa, and to act on their behalf …
I have read the Notice of Motion and all other supporting affidavits filed herein. I am personally aware of the circumstances at present prevailing in Owamboland which make it most difficult to find family or friends of the abovementioned detainees; the fact that some of the areas concerned fall within the war zone, the great distance, the lack of means of communication and the general atmosphere of fear.
After careful reflection, I consider it my duty to join in this application on behalf of the aforesaid detainees.
It was certainly necessary to set out the claim for standing in detail. Our experience by then, and repeatedly confirmed subsequently, was a deliberate strategy on the part of lawyers acting for the security establishment to take every conceivable procedural point they could to persuade courts to find for them without the need to go into the merits of cases. They relished making it as difficult as possible for detainees and their families to have access to the courts (and tried to avoid going anywhere near the merits of cases, given the nastiness of security force action).
I dropped off the draft affidavit for Bishop Kauluma with the Dean on my return that Sunday. He would take the draft to the Bishop in Tsumeb the next day. I then met with the Catholic bishop, Bonifatius Haushiku, the next day. His support was likewise emphatic and enthusiastic. His assistants’ initial resistance to the case had in the meantime given way to wholehearted support, once they became aware of the headway we had made and the scale of case. After he and Bishop Kauluma