25 Jun 2007: ISS Today: Namibia: `Unprovoked Police Attack` On War Vets Condemned
25 June 2007: “Unprovoked Police Attack” On War Vets (Condemned), Windhoek, Tuesday 5 June 2007
On Tuesday, 5 June 2007, some 100 former freedom fighters of the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) marched on the recently established (2006) Ministry of Veteran Affairs in the Windhoek city centre, demanding large cash payments and other forms of compensation for their role in the liberation of Namibia.1 The march was a another sequel to a demonstration by 300 former combatants who had converged on the same government ministry on Monday 4 June, making similar demands of Namibian $32,000 (about US$4,500) for each year spent in the bush or a lump sum of N$500 000 for each veteran. Earlier, the Minister of Veteran Affairs, Ngarikutuke Tjiriange, had rejected this demand, saying “Read my lips, there is no money to give to anyone from anywhere”. This time round however, the 100 former combatants vowed to camp outside the Ministry until their demands had been met. As darkness fell, police, including those from the Special Field Force, swooped on the demonstrators, using teargas and batons to force them to disperse. Clearly this is not the end of the matter.
An interesting dimension of the incident was the composition of the ex-combatants demonstrating in Namibia. A significant number consists of women, many of whom are employed. This is a new feature not previously witnessed elsewhere, and suggests several worrying conclusions. First, the strike that includes employed people may well have arisen because of the real and perceived inequality of benefits received by other former combatants in different fields. In this regard, some may have received more generous financial benefits that are now being ostentatiously spent, in a manner that has drawn the ire of comrades who received minimal handouts and have since become impoverished. As a result, the same group has now come up with a new demand -- large sums of cash. Secondly, given the alacrity of the response to the plight of veterans by current President H. Pohamba in establishing a separate ministry within a year of taking office, this act may have raised expectations inadvertently. Thus, the striking group is now pushing its perceived advantage -- adopting a strategic posture to continue pressing home the point for even more generous and rapid compensation now that a more sympathetic administration is in office. Third, there may be a more sinister reason, being someone, a faction or group, bent on creating insurmountable challenges -- especially in the form of DDR -- for Pohamba in the political struggles that always dominate political life. Finally, the answer may actually lie with the low general income levels received from formal employment. On this view, incomes may be so low as to result in a situation in which the employed are scarcely better of than those without jobs. Of all these assumptions, we are not certain of which reflect the reality of the situation; only time will tell. But precisely what has been some of Namibia’s attempts to reintegrate former fighters into the rest of the society?
Confining ourselves to the Namibian experience for purposes of space, what is taking place in Namibia has implications for Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) especially reintegration, not only in Southern Africa but throughout the continent. On the continent, in most post-conflict reconstruction scenarios, ten years into independence, peace has collapsed, partly as a direct result of failed reintegration. As we have argued elsewhere, DDR is a complex, multifaceted and highly political as well as socio-economic process, whose success appears to defy national initiatives and can only be comprehensively addressed through a holistic regional and international effort supplementing clearly willing local political commitment, including concessions and realistic demands, including sacrifices, being made by the individuals affected. Without each of the identified stakeholders taking part, each process is almost destined to fail. But let us turn to the Namibian events and trace why the current impasse has emerged after nearly two decades in office of the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO), which has always been seen as politically committed to the successful DDR of, at least, its own former members of PLAN.
The first attempt in Namibia to carry out DDR took place in 1990 when ex-combatants were integrated into the army, police and prison services. According to a colleague, each received R10 at the time for transport from the assembly camps to the intended workplaces. Meanwhile, those not taken into the security sector were offered the opportunity for skills and vocational training under the Development Brigade Corporation (DBC). By 2000, however, it was clear that most self-employment and income generating projects were collapsing. The reasons for this included poor management skills, the resistance of the existing formal economy to provide contracts and opportunities to the DBC initiative, and outright corruption. There was no mention at this stage of the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which would have been a major factor militating against a consistent work ethic among the ex-fighters. In the first ten years of independence, then, a characteristic of war veterans complaints and demonstrations was the lack of formal employment.
Faced with the obvious failure to reintegrate former combatants, a second initiative was launched during the early 2000s. This was the Socio-Economic Integration Programme for Ex-Combatants (SIPE). The 1999/2000 Budget allocated N$255 million towards SIPE. SIPE also included a new initiative referred to as the ‘Peace Project’, targeting 12,000, mostly SWAPO, ex-fighters to be absorbed into the civil service. As part of this special dispensation, special units were created and attached to the Namibian Defence Forces, operating as the police’s Special Field Force (SFF). Given the advanced age of some of the former fighters, a provision was made, through the 1999 War Veterans Subvention Act, which established the War Veterans Trust Fund, the purpose of which was to serve as a vehicle for disbursing a monthly social pension of N$500 per month to those aged between 55 and 60. However, after recipients reached the age of 60, benefits ceased, and they were transferred to the national pension scheme.
In practice, how did this elaborate system deliver benefits to the intended beneficiaries? In a subsequent evaluation of the programme by the PEACE Centre in the report An investigation into the lives of Namibian ex-fighters, fifteen years after independence, it was found that only 15% of the former fighters benefited from the grants and pensions, leaving a high 85% not even able to access what was available.2 This is the reality of PTSD, in which individuals lack the capacity to exercise the basic life survival skills involved in filling out forms and making administrative claims. Despite the availability of the state benefits, most former fighters existed on the margins of the formal economy and society and were, therefore, unable to receive the available financial support. Viewed differently, unless the 85% of individuals receive serious attention in order to get them to respond to what is on offer, there is no guarantee that their impoverished condition will be addressed.
A broader characterisation of most former combatants still be mired in poverty gives ample evidence to support this view. In September 2005, for instance, a non-governmental organisation specialising in trauma counselling -- the People’s Education, Assistance and Counselling for Empowerment (PEACE) -- released a seven-month research report entitled: An investigation into the lives of Namibian ex-fighters, fifteen years after independence. In this, PEACE Director, Dr Gudrun Kober’s team found that 80% of ex-fighters were largely impoverished and traumatised – suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
PTSD has been defined as:
Person who has experienced an event that is outside the range of usual
human experience and that would be markedly distressing to almost anyone
e.g., serious threat to one’s life or physical integrity; serious threat or harm
to one’s children, spouse, or other close relatives and friends; sudden
destruction of one’s home or community; or seeing another person
who has recently been or is being seriously injured or killed as a
result of an accident or physical violence.3
The figures cited in the PEACE research took into account fighters from both sides of the political divide. In many of the cases, most had never received any form of counselling or rehabilitative medial support. The result was that many were, and continue to be, unable to cope with the challenges of transition and reinsertion into society. A majority exhibited signs of severe stress and, as a consequence, resorted to varying forms of socially dysfunctional behaviour and what was described as ‘an inability to integrate’. Furthermore, the gathered evidence also found that, given the inability to cope with the normal demands of a stable society, ‘a number had resorted to taking their own lives and those of loved ones, excessive drinking, crime, violence and constituted a high proportion of broken relationships’.4 The solution to this challenge of socially and economically disintegrating individuals did not lie, therefore, in simply offering them employment or severance packages, but demanded a more holistic approach to resuscitating their life coping skills as a priority before the other normal incentives could be offered. Stated differently, the behaviour of ex-combatants reflected the existence of a special category of people on the margins of society who, left to their own devices, would be unable to find and sustain entry points.
The sorry plight of ex-combatants from Namibia’s liberation war is not unique; other examples abound, especially within the SADC region. As if to confirm this, on Sunday, 10 June, Janine Stephen published an article on “Destitute ex-combatants ‘need more than houses,’” in the Sunday Independent.5 In this, she quotes an Umkhonto weSizwe Veterans’ Association member, Kebby Maphatsoe, as asserting that many ex-combatants had since died as paupers, even after being temporarily in gainful employment. Some 13 years after the first elections in South Africa, many of the now destitute members, in his view, needed “food, clothing and (again) work”.6 What was not mentioned, and is relevant, is how they had failed to reintegrate in the first place, even after some of these things had been handed to them. Fortunately, without too much interrogation, Maphatsoe’s sentiment found favour with the Minister of Housing, Lindiwe Sisulu. In her view, she announced that “it was necessary (for the state) to make a gesture of sincere gratitude” in response to the current plight of ex-fighters. In this vein, Sisulu informed the audience “government had taken the decision to set aside 30% of all new subsidised housing units for ex-combatants and ex-servicemen, as well as people awaiting repatriation from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process.”7 The reality from the available evidence, however, fails to support the Minister’s sentiment, as ex-fighters allocated houses have either sold these or simply abandoned them, gripped as they are by overwhelming mental stress.
The events in Namibia and South Africa affecting former combatants reflects a recurrent theme that is obviously not confined to these two countries experience. In fact, similar phenomena are to be found among all the former liberation struggle countries in Southern Africa such as Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola and the more recent addition, Democratic Republic of Congo.
To put this into perspective, in a related development, the significance of which is still to be fully appreciated, is the question of what has happened with 5,000 mostly white, former apartheid-era combatants who are now acting as foot soldiers, euphemistically referred to as ‘contractors’, in the dangerous Iraq war. Serving as ‘contractors’ reflects an understandable logic. For, in finding relatively high-paying employment in Iraq, the former apartheid-era soldiers have creatively found a niche that directly responds to their otherwise equally dire situation. In reality, this community is actually located in the unenviable place between the proverbial ‘rock and a hard place’. In other words, if we were to remove this fortuitous but dangerous and, of course, controversial opportunity, then we would not be surprised to find the same cadres sitting on government doorsteps seeking basic income support. As a result, in some perverse logic, involvement in Iraq has provided much needed relief from the shortcomings of South Africa’s DDR.
If the argument posited in this article is valid, then two things have to happen, almost simultaneously, to provide comprehensive relief without significantly upsetting what are now established national macro-economic policy frameworks.
The first is that policy makers have to recognise the need to make available post-traumatic disorder treatment to former combatants. In the process, a mechanism to continue monitoring response, impact and integration into society has to be put into place. This monitoring component is currently absent in all the processes reviewed. Significantly, the PEACE researchers, cited above, experienced minimal cooperation and enthusiasm from government officials in Namibia. Many of the latter were simply not prepared to take seriously the findings and recommendations coming from the elaborate research initiative. In fact, some of them had viewed with suspicion the work of the field researchers during the seven month period and even tried to place obstacles and impediments in their way. Consequently, recognition of the special malady is key to the next steps leading to a holistic response.
Second, there is the question of cost, much of it now not within existing national macro-economic policy frameworks, estimates or budgets. Consequently, because the phenomenon of ex-combatants affects most Southern African states, there is a greater probability of them reacting positively to something that also has regional connotations. This has to be considered, of course, against the background that so far no single country on the African continent has been able to undertake comprehensive and successful DDR following the end of conflict. In most cases, the demands to revive the economy and give attention to other more pressing sectors such as health, education, production, investment and growth have all tended to exhaust the available resources, leaving little for supporting the DDR processes. Hence, it is our conviction that, in the second round of DDR that is now comprehensive, harnessing the regional structures may be one way of augmenting resources without interrupting ongoing macro-economic support to economies.
Exactly what do we mean? The point we are making is that there are several large-scale developmental regional projects that have yet to be embarked upon and that could serve as the foundation to provide much needed (re)-employment for former combatants in a region that is already characterised by large sections of impoverished fighters within member states. If this suggestion were to be followed through, then pro-active action from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), in the areas of transport, public health, tourism and water-storage facility development, may offer sufficiently large infrastructural projects that can take up thousands, of relatively trained, but unemployed, former fighters. The model of recognising and dealing with PTSD supported by regional projects, we believe, offers comprehensive support to a solution of the problem of reintegrating former combatants. The key to this suggestion is to create new demands at the regional level that, hopefully, ultimately will enhance existing national macro-economic initiatives.
Martin Rupiya: Defence Sector Programme (ISS Tshwane, Pretoria)
1 ‘Unprovoked police attack’ on war vets, Independent Online (IOL) 2005 web, 5 June 2007, accessed at www.iol.co.za on 8 June 2007.
2 Summary of findings by PEACE Director, Dr Gudrun Kober in a document headed: Life in post-traumatic times available at www.peace.org.na accessed on 8 June 2007.
3 http://www.concernedcounselling.com.htm accessed on 19 June 2007.
4 Life in post-traumatic times.
5 Published in South Africa.
6 The Sunday Independent, p 4, a South African weekly.
7 Ibid.
