Gabs ‘Uukwangali waHanyangha’ Kashe was tired of always avoiding the authorities and decided to join the struggle for Namibia’s liberation.
This was 1974.
However, Kashe’s Swapo activities in the country started during 1968 as a youth.
The journey started with his group crossing into Angola. They then travelled through Ondjiva, Lubango, Wambo and Mussuma before crossing into Northern Rhodesia (Zambia).
In Zambia, the group first went to a camp at Yuka before proceeding, in Swapo trucks, to Satota (also referred to as Oshatotwa).
“It was my first day at Oshatotwa, when Maxton Mutongolume pointed me out and sent me on a mission back to Yuka,” Kashe recalls.
He was not a trained soldier, nor was he familiar with the area. But Mutongolume saw something in him.
“Maxton didn’t know me before that day,” he still recalls how strange the experience was.
The senior commander then gave Kashe, a newcomer in the camp, a team of soldiers and drivers. The mission was to find a group of Namibian women who got lost in the Yuka area and never made it to the Swapo camp.
The group of primarily women and children was found. Among them was the wife of prominent Swapo leader John yaOtto. The women and children were then transported to Senanga.
After the mission, Kashe returned to Satota. It was a new camp, and the new arrivals would rotate between building accommodation blocks and other camp infrastructure and military training. “The building was even harder because we had neither equipment nor tools; everything was improvised,” Kashe said. Training consisted of tactical training and weaponry training conducted by meme Freddy Shipopyeni, while Nande Shafombabi was conducting engineering and explosives classes.
He was then sent for further training and joined the likes of Julius Namugongo, Nangula Kapele, Billy Mwanyengage, James Auala and Elly ‘Shingwalulu’ Shilomboleni.
After training, Shingwalulu and his team left and marched towards the Bwabwata area, while Kashe went further southwest into the Sambyu and Gciriku areas to find a suitable area to establish a base.
He was under the leadership of Hamunyela Shalali, who was deputised by Haganee Katjipuka, while Billy Mwanyengange was the commissar. Navigating that area and crossing the Kwandu River was no easy feat, as it is characterised by swamps and marshlands. The group always had to find a dry island to sleep on. At the time, everything was in short supply.
Even AK47s were reserved for commanders, ordinary soldiers like Kashe were issued Carbine rifles. This mission had to be abandoned after fighting broke out in the Bwabwata area. The team had to retreat to Luyana in Zambia after they discovered they were being targeted by the apartheid forces. They knew they were outnumbered and laid an ambush not far off to be prepared for a fight.
The ambush worked, and the South African forces retreated.
But not for long.
The next day they returned.
For the following six days, Kashe, now elevated to Katjipuka’s deputy, was engaged in battle with the enemy troops.
“We realised that the enemy was using planes to spy on us, and Jackson Hamupembe shot one down with a DSHK machine gun,” he recalls.
The plane fell out of the sky into the river. But this seems to have made matters worse; an attack by choppers came shortly after. They were followed by the South African ground troops.
“The heroes of the day were the group of our boys shooting at the planes,” Kashe remembers.
The next day fighting continued, and in that battle, Mwanyengange got shot but survived; unfortunately, their medic, known as Ndjakeke, did not make it.
The Plan fighters also ran out of ammunition and had to make their way back to Zambia.
As if fighting the Boers was not enough, after several missions, Kashe found himself in even more confusion.
Plan was on the verge of imploding.
He recalls that it all started when he was with a group escorting commander Katjipuka, who was now promoted to regional commander level.
“Then we heard on the South African radio that our own troops led by Lazarus Hamutele and Isak Kanyamukwiyu had effected a mutiny and were going to capture Plan’s Kaunga base. Things were now getting complicated,” he recalls. Three days later, a group led by Hamutele and Andreas Iimalwa caught up with them.
The group had come to seek help and reinforcement to defuse the situation at Satota, which was an attempted mutiny, which is today referred to as the Shipanga rebelion. However, Shipanga was not at Satota but in Lusaka.
“They realised that we were very hostile to them,” he said.
Kashe recalls that Hamutele had to explain himself and win the trust of his comrades by stating that he is not part of the problem but impressed upon them that things are very tense at Satota, hence the need for reinforcement.
Upon arrival, they found that Kaunga-mashe, also known as Kaunga Base, was now captured by the pro-Shipanga group, and Satota was still in Plan’s hands.
“I was then sent to Kaunga to collect those who did not wish to be part of the Shipanga group. The majority of them were women, and I took them to Satota,” he recounts.
Kashe said it was around 12 June 1976 in the early morning hours when the Apartheid forces attacked the Satota base.
“We had no guns. They were taken away by the Zambian army,” he points out. Kashe said an attempt was made to get some of the weapons back from the Zamibian military base nearby. The guns were jamming because the Zambians threw them into a sand pit.
“We lost many soldiers that day, and I still hope we erect a shrine there,” he said with a sorrowful look.
The enemy knew they had no weapons to defend themselves and massacred the defenceless base.
Kashe was to move back to his military operations of crossing into Namibia, mounting an attack on the enemy, and escaping back across the river into Zambia.
He remembers the day they lost Katjipuka. Kashe was on a different flank.
When the news came that Katjipuka had found himself behind enemy lines and was killed, the Plan fighters decided to retaliate.
“We hit several bases afterwards,” he said.
School Mine Base, Nova base and Mpacha were some of the South African military bases hit by Plan in retaliation and they also claimed the lives of two SWATF commanders in the process.
During 1977, Kashe was sent to the Soviet Union for further training, and upon his return, he was sent to the Tobias Hainyeko Training Centre. He held several positions, training battalion commander, training brigade commander and then chief of staff dealing with training.
In the 1980s, he went back to the battlefield until independence.
After independence, he first joined the police Special Field Force as an inspector.
Ironically, he was first posted at Mpacha airport, the same base he once attacked.
He later joined the NDF because he was more comfortable with the rules of engagement. He went on to serve his country in peacekeeping missions in the DRC, Liberia and he also participated in Operation Mandume, which sought to defend Namibia against a Unita threat.
