It was a hot October afternoon in 1979 at the Okahozu borehole, some 37 kilometres north of Opuwo. Commissar Raimo Movirongo, combat name Stalin, was taking stock of the spoils of war that he and his unit captured from a just-ended victorious skirmish with the apartheid military troops.
The People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (Plan) fighters successfully fought off a unit of South African forces who wanted to arrest them. The enemy fighters’ offence spiralled into a fleeing expedition not long after opening fire.
While some managed to escape, the liberators had sunk a few of them and took possession of two vehicles, an armoured carrier, a Toyota Land Cruiser, and loose items, including a two-way radio.
Stalin, being a communications specialist, took charge of the radio and realised the voice on the other end was asking for a status update.
“Stop calling this radio; it is now in Plan’s hands, and your radio operator is dead,” he told the voice on the radio, then switched it off.
He knew that this blunt move would invoke a manhunt, but he could not help himself and he just needed to make the enemy’s life uncomfortable by any means possible. He succeeded in getting the enemy’s attention even though his mission to Kaokoland was not to engage in armed confrontations.
His mission was to capture the hearts and minds of the local population and explain Swapo’s mission and plans for the country.
This part of the country was considered a no go zone for Swapo. Its inhabitants did not trust the movement, and it was Stalin’s role to build this trust.
After the events of that day at Okahozu, the Apartheid forces had to change their strategy as the unimaginable happened: Swapo had infiltrated Kaokoland.
“It was our first operation in Okaoko, and these fights won the hearts of the locals,” recalled Stalin.
He added that the community also started warning them about the presence of Koevoet units in the area hunting for the Plan fighters. While individual makakunya (black enemy soldiers) started hiding from the Plan fighters, whether they were alone or in pairs.
Under the leadership of Mandume Kayala and Movirongo as commissar, the group was to engage in a number of battles and close encounters with the enemy in the years to follow.
A year later, Movirongo and his team pulled off another daring counter offensive against the SWATF units, hunting them down. It was around Okavara, and by this time the local community had started assisting Plan and Swapo; some even wanted them to plant the Swapo flag in their villages to show the enemy.
At Okavara, the Plan unit got wind of being followed, and the enemy was planning to cut them off from the nearest water point. The Plan unit decided to plant landmines along the routes from Orumana and Opuwo. This would at least block and stall the enemy’s reinforcement.
As predicted, the enemy troops walked into the trap, and Movirongo and his team opened fire as soon as the first land mine went off.
“They suffered casualties,” he said as his face lit up from the memory. The enemy forces fled towards Opuwo, fearing that Plan was in pursuit and would inflict further damage. But the Plan fighters opted to leave the area, heading in the opposite direction, to preserve their limited resources.
Some of these daring moves, Movirongo said, were aimed at proving the enemy’s propaganda machinery wrong. That year, 1981, the enemy forces attacked Swapo and Plan bases in Angola in an operation code named ‘Smokeshell’. As part of this operation, they also attacked the Plan Operations Commanding Head Quarters.
Afterwards, the Apartheid government started reporting in the media that they had successfully dealt Swapo and Plan a defeating blow and that Plan’s presence in South-West African (Namibian) territory had been annihilated completely.
“Our successful attack on them internally was to prove that their propaganda was wrong and show them that we are still bringing the fight to their doorstep,” said Movirongo.
Although his deployment to Kaokoland (the Kunene region in modern-day Namibia) only came in 1979, it would appear his mission was two years in the making.
It was 26 August 1977 at Cassinga and Movirongo was barely a trained soldier. He had just crossed from Namibia to join Plan two months earlier. On that day Swapo president and Plan commander-in-chief Sam Nujoma was visiting Cassinga.
Movirongo was surprised to have been summoned to meet the president. A significant portion of their meeting was about Movirongo briefing Nujoma and a few commanders about the political situation at Kaokoland and conditions on the ground. This briefing laid the foundation for the decision to infiltrate the region and send someone familiar, in the person of Movirongo, to take up the daunting responsibility.
In 1981, after the Okavara skirmish, Movirongo was recalled from his mission, and he was to report back to Angola. He later learnt that he was becoming a problem for the local authorities when Swapo got wind of a plot to kill him.
These attempts also persisted during the lead-up to Namibia’s democratic elections, supervised by the United Nations, in 1989. At that point, Movirongo was Swapo’s regional election director for the Kunene region.
After his return to Angola in 1981, Movirongo continued to play an active role in the Plan structures and saw many other battles. This includes the significant 31 October 1987 battle of Indungu, where Plan successfully repelled a SWATF attack on a key northern front Plan base in southern Angola.
Movirongo had senior administrative responsibility as regional secretary. Every night, he was responsible for recording the base’s activities for the day. This includes accounting for all weapons and ammunition.
“I would get into a dugout and use a makeshift light using diesel, to write my reports at night,” he said, adding that, when the base was under attack, it was also his responsibility to ensure that all his reports and information did not fall into enemy hands.
After his return to Angola, Movirongo was sent to Bulgaria for political training for about a year, during 1982. Upon his return, he went back to the front, and after the battle of Iindungu, with the experience of having served as a regional secretary and regional commissar, Movirongo was part of the team that was flown to India during 1988 to study and understand the electoral proportional representation system.
The aim was to come back and prepare Swapo for the 1989 democratic elections.
By 18 June 1989, Movirongo was one of the members of Swapo and Plan leaders accompanying the late president Hage Geingob on the leadership flight that landed at the JG Strijdom Airport, now Hosea Kuutako International Airport, to prepare for the elections.
After independence, Movirongo swapped his uniform for a suit, and he was appointed to work in Nujoma’s administration at the Office of the President, where he held the post of deputy director until his retirement in 2012.
He has turned to farming in his twilight years.
