Autonomy Questioned : Namibian Regime Facing Crisis Over Police Control

After only one day in office, Namibia’s autonomous administration faced a major political crisis Tuesday that could determine its popular acceptance and its success as a “transitional government of national unity.”

Even before its first meeting, the eight-man Cabinet was confronted with charges that police had brutally beaten hundreds of people leaving an anti-government rally outside Windhoek on Monday while the new administration was taking part in inaugural festivities on the other side of town.

Sixty-seven people were injured, according to the rally’s organizers, as police fired tear gas into the crowd of 2,500, charged into it with batons and whipped people with quirts in a melee that continued for 90 minutes in Katutura, a black township outside Windhoek.

The police acknowledged using tear gas, batons and quirts to disperse what a police spokesman called an illegal march toward white areas of Windhoek after the crowd ignored two warnings. The spokesman said that only 20 people, including a policeman, had been slightly injured.

Deny Approving Action

Several Cabinet members, speaking Tuesday at a news conference, said they had no knowledge of Monday’s incident and denied having authorized the police action. However, they acknowledged the need to assert the newly appointed administration’s authority over the police and other internal security forces immediately--or be taken as “puppets” of South Africa.

“These allegations must be investigated, the facts determined and considered and appropriate action taken,” said Moses K. Katjiuongua, president of the South-West Africa (Namibia) National Union and minister of manpower, health and welfare in the new government.

“Beyond this incident, however, we as the Cabinet must review internal security policies and police practices and make the necessary changes, some of which are years overdue.”

But Ebenezer van Zijl of the right-wing National Party asked: “What were those people doing there (at the rally) in the first place? I am not sure where the fault lies.”

Issues Shape Debate

Although the Cabinet is already under heavy pressure to establish its authority and independence, the debate over the Katutura clash could quickly divide the six-party government along political lines of right versus left rather than racial lines because of the issues involved. Among them:

--Of what value is the bill of rights incorporated into the interim “constitution” under which the new administration operates?

--How serious are its calls for reconciliation with the South-West Africa People’s Organization, which has fought a 19-year guerrilla war against South Africa’s continued occupation of the territory, a former German colony?

--Will the new government really have the broad powers of self-administration that South Africa has promised in place of independence and be allowed to exercise them fully?

A previous Namibian government, which also had promises of autonomy, collapsed over lesser issues in 1983 after challenging South Africa’s power here.

‘Their First Test’

“It’s their first test, and a nasty one since it concerns security,” said a Windhoek business executive who follows Namibian politics closely. “If the government does not have authority over the police, then it is just local boys doing South Africa’s work, acting as front men. Their credibility is already limited, and failure to act forcefully now could destroy what little they have or hope to have.”

Several Cabinet members had already declared their intention to disband Koevoet, a special police counterinsurgency unit that has been repeatedly accused of atrocities, and to revoke the severe internal security laws. Koevoet members, brought down from the northern border region, were on duty at the Katutura rally Monday.

But such promises have not persuaded the South-West Africa People’s Organization, known as SWAPO, and its allies to forgive those parties that joined the new government rather than continue to push for full independence under a plan laid down by the United Nations in 1978.

“For us, this government is simply another toy that South Africa has decided to put into this country to rule Namibia,” Daniel Tjongarero, the chairman of SWAPO, told a press conference Tuesday. “We will have nothing to do with them.”

Tjongarero called the police action at Katutura “a brief glimpse at what is happening in the north all the time,” and asked: “Just what does this interim government plan to do about it? What can it do about it?”