TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 2

Subsection 15

The case of Jona Hamukwaya

Mr Jona Hamukwaya was a thirty-year-old teacher in western Kavango province when he was detained by Koevoet on 18 November 1982. He died the same day.

Hamukwaya was arrested by a Koevoet team headed by Sergeant Norman Abrahams. Abrahams claimed that Hamukwaya was initially taken to a river close to the school from which he had been taken, and briefly interrogated. He was then taken to a police station at Nkurenkuru where, according to Koevoet members, he slipped on the top step of a seven-step stairway and hit the concrete floor with his head. Though he appeared initially to be unhurt, some twenty minutes later, according to Abrahams, he started “making gurgling sounds … I tried to give him chest massage. I was under the impression that he was having a heart attack … then I found that he had already expired.”⁶

Hamukwaya’s wife and other villagers gave a different version. They claimed that, while washing clothes in the river, they heard sounds of beating and screams which Mrs Hamukwaya recognised as coming from her husband. When she and others tried to go to his assistance, they were prevented from doing so by three Koevoet members.

Hamukwaya was a prominent community member and his case received considerable prominence and was taken up by a number of groups. The services of pathologists from Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town were acquired and the Catholic Archbishop of Durban, Denis Hurley, criticised Koevoet for atrocities committed against the civilian population of northern South West Africa, specifically citing this case. For this he was charged with the offence of “falsely accusing the police”.

At the inquest, the pathologists testified that Hamukwaya’s injuries “were incompatible with the story of the fall”⁷ and that he had been “subjected to massive trauma on his back, probably inflicted by a blunt instrument”⁸. This evidence was accepted by the magistrate who ruled that the death “was caused by “an act or omission that must be seen as a crime on the part of members of the unit known as Koevoet”.

Despite this ruling, no charges were ever brought. Ms Hamukwaya sued the security forces for compensation and was paid R58 000 in an out-of-court settlement. The charges against Archbishop Hurley were dropped.

123 In operational terms, Koevoet was a highly effective unit. It is said to have achieved a killing ratio of some one to twenty-five. According to an article by Mr Helmoed Heitman in Armed Forces (December/January 1984), in its first year of operations Koevoet lost twenty-three members and killed 511 “insurgents” – a killing ratio of one to forty-two.

124 A document supplied to the Commission by a one-time Koevoet member gives details of 1 666 “contacts” over a ten-year period by some 250 white former officers and is positive proof that the bounty system encouraged the killing of opponents and discouraged the taking of prisoners. Of these Koevoet members, fourteen were involved in more than one hundred contacts. One member, Warrant Officer L Kilino, notched up 221 contacts in which 346 people were killed and only twenty-three captured. For an unknown reason, this document did not include Eugene de Kock, who put his number of contacts at about 400.⁹ He gives no details of his killing rate but popular legend has it that it was the highest of all Koevoet operatives.

125 In toto, these fourteen officers were involved in 1 754 contacts in which 3 323 individuals were killed (an average of nearly two per contact) and only 104 prisoners were taken. The ratio of prisoners to fatalities was thus in the region of 1:32. Heitman describes as Koevoet’s “most successful single contact” an encounter in which “34 out of 34 insurgents”¹⁰ were killed.

THE COMMISSION FINDS THAT THE KOEVOET UNIT WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PERPETRATION OF GROSS HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN SOUTH WEST AFRICA AND ANGOLA. THESE VIOLATIONS AMOUNTED TO A SYSTEMATIC PATTERN OF ABUSE WHICH ENTAILED DELIBERATE PLANNING BY THE LEADERSHIP OF THE SAP. THE COMMISSION FINDS THE SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT, THE SAP AND THE MINISTER OF LAW AND ORDER ACCOUNTABLE. THE COMMISSION FINDS FURTHER THAT THE BOUNTY POLICY OF THE SAP, BY WHICH MEMBERS OF KOEVOET WERE MONETARILY REWARDED FOR CERTAIN OF THEIR ACTIONS, SERVED AS A POSITIVE INDUCEMENT FOR THE COMMISSION OF GROSS VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS, INCLUDING KILLING.