Namibia - The difficult Years

Helmut Lauschke

Namibia - The difficult Years

The most critical time

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

The blown-up bridge over the Cuvelai has been restored.

Horrific thunderstorms and apocalyptic lightning

A young superintendent in major’s uniform

A civilian successor as superintendent

The brigadier intervenes in the morning meeting

The final battle was in full swing

Visit to the Mission hospital in Oshikuku

Dr Johan spoke about ophthalmology

Crippled children and adults were waiting along the passage

A brutal night raid of Koevoet

Impressum neobooks

The blown-up bridge over the Cuvelai has been restored.

The most critical time

All bridges of the strategically important tar road in the north from west to east through the Ovamboland were guarded by the military. The situation was tense. The conflict came closer and the war was escalating. PLAN (People’s Liberation Army of Namibia), the military wing of Swapo, and its allies were fighting for an independent Namibia against the occupying South African colonial power and white apartheid regime of Pretoria which was supported by the majority of white people who fought for the white privileges in a status quo.

The black population did sacrifice tremendously and the number of victims has become uncountable. People were brought to the hospital with lacerations, bloody wounds with bloodshot marks on the chest or back, on arms and legs after they were interrogated by the special forces of Koevoet (Afrikaans for crowbar) on the field or in the villages or at the police station. Since Koevoet had recruited black people, it often happened that black Koevoet men beat and tortured their brothers and sisters, if the white captain was of the opinion that the person was a supporter of Swapo. It were most innocent people who became victims of the brutal stick treatment. The suspicion was enough to get beaten, tortured and deported. It was the spiral of force and violence which was cruel and awful. It was seen on the bodies of victims, who came to the hospital for treatment. If there was a suspicion of collaboration that for instance a PLAN-fighter was hiding in the kraal, the heavily armoured Casspir vehicles flattened the kraal down that the inhabitants with the old people and their children were literally left behind with nothing on the open field.

This civil war lasted for more than ten years and became more destructive the longer the war went on. The insecurity in the north and the military struggle in the close-to-border region to Angola escalated. The white perspective became increasingly critical what had consequences for the hospital as well. Dr Witthuhn as the civilian superintendent was removed from office and replaced by a tall man of the mid-thirties with the dashing uniform of a major. The new superintendent was a medical doctor, but this in second line of smaller importance. He spoke Afrikaans and English eloquently and juggled between the languages ‘ad libitum’ and made repetitions ‘ad infinitum’. He repeated a sentence in English five times and added the repetition of the same sentence in Afrikaans ten times. With each repetition the sentence got stretched longer up to a chewing gum hanging out of his mouth without any further meaning. The nouns were colourfully decorated with adjectives and the verbs were attached with numerous adverbs, thread-like appendages and other threadbare substitutes like empty shells that in the end the core was gone, and what was ‘invisible’ in the beginning were hidden in the end behind all these nonsense decorations.

The verbs about what had to be done what gave the noun the meaningful substance, had disappeared in the trapdoor. Subject and predicate were buried under a jumble of useless decorations and word rubbish. The sentences became irrational that one could not find out what was first and what not or what the superintendent in his dashing major uniform did try to say, not to mention what he was thinking under his word covers. It became clear that this man enjoyed to juggle in a erratic manner from one language to the other and back without speaking a short and meaningful sentence. His eloquence had the format of a barrel organ. People attending the morning meetings were confused and little later bored as well by the bilingual splits that he did not stop, and of the fact that they could not understand what he liked to say. So it became practice that the attendees looked at their watches, though the meeting was not far from the beginning or in the middle. The question was when would the superintendent stop his endless nonsense with the swinging empty shells and threadbare ingredients in a salad which was tasteless and meaningless. If somebody asked him a question, a torrent of words started again until the question had been crushed and chewed that nothing was left, but an answer did not come.

Meanwhile I had got a small flat allocated by the Bantu-administration. The flat had a small sitting room, a one-bed room, a very small kitchen with a semi-automatic washing machine, a veranda with a mosquito screen and a shower room with toilet. I did appreciate this improvement, especially that the sleeping room was spacious and not packed with cardboards from the bottom to the ceiling.

The first what the new superintendent in uniform of a major did, he let move the desk and swivel chair to the opposite site in the office. The old white painted asbestos board was hanged on the opposite wall where a telephone connection plug was put on as well. It was the side where the matrons and pharmacists took their seats when Dr Witthuhn was the civilian superintendent. That was the time when the lean white chief matron complained of the urine stench on the hospital square assisted by the short black matron who pulled the grimaces of disgust. It was also the time when the chief matron gave in one morning meeting an impressive speech regarding the team spirit by understanding each other and each other’s problem to work trustfully together in the very interest of the patients despite the many shortcomings under the poor hospital conditions in the critical circumstances of war. Her intention became a stillbirth by undermining and the false activities of Dr Hutman whom I soon recognized as the lieutenant of the devil.

Dr Witthuhn was moved down on the post of principal medical officer to the department of internal medicine. He took it cool without any effort of resistance, because he needed the regular income by the monthly salary. Above this, he was of the strong belief that the madness of the white arrogance and desperation would not last long. It also was no degradation salary-wise, since the white Bantu-administration had put him only as an acting superintendent on the previous chair and that for a short period of time. The military had mistrusted him as civilian superintendent because of his liberal, but ethically correct way of acting.

He made now the ward rounds as the other doctors did and was respected by the nursing staff as a friendly and understanding doctor with a human face, who made his notes with the big handwriting on the sheets in the patients’ files. Dr Witthuhn had a big heart and also big problems. It was part of his personality that he made big excursions when he was far away in his mind. He was a person, who was not simply to measure in the range of normal standard. He rejected the small-minded attitude of jealousy and malevolence, but was alert against people who were false and sly. He sat behind a small table in a small consulting room in ward 7 and examined the outpatients. A running ventilator stood on a chair opposite to him for some air circulation. It was a room of humbleness also in diagnostic terms as he sat back listening to the patient’s complaints and following the excursions in his mind. It was the case that he had to be touched for coming back to the world’s reality in this small consulting room with the smoothly running ventilator.

The health director sat in a flawless uniform of a colonel further and untouchable on the comfortable swivel chair behind his empty desk with the polished wooden plate in an air-conditioned office with the photo of the unyieldingly looking South African president in big format under glass on the wall. The director’s main concern were his teeth. His only work was to draw up decrees of what had to be done in the hospital and what not. So it was decreed and signed by this director that it was forbidden to treat Swapo-fighters and active Swapo-supporters. The Bantu-administration had no saying how the hospital had to be run. It was obvious that those white people remained indifferent about what was going on. They were not interested to look into the problems the hospital was confronted with.

It was the time when two officers of the SADF [South African Defence Force] occupied the chairs of the highest posts at the hospital administration. They controlled the medical work that had to be done under the most primitive conditions in using old and outdated facilities with the many missings. Nursing staff as patients and the population at large did not trust the military authority. The hospital got a strategic importance at the expense of being an open health institution for all the sick and injured people. Since the military had taken over the command in the hospital, the paramilitary Koevoet patrolled the hospital ground in nightly raids with their armoured Casspirs searching with floodlight for hidden PLAN-fighters up into each angle and corner.

The replacement of the civilian superintendent by the young major has not brought any improvement. The Sekretaris had not kept his promise given one year ago to send a clerk to look into the critical matters and to list up the most urgent points for repair and replacement. The conditions remained miserable under which the huge workload had to be solved. The old central sterilization unit broke down from time to time what caused long delays in performing the operations. The outdated operating table ready for the scrapyard was not replaced and the old and defective surgical instruments had still to be used. The overcrowded wards were old. Some toilets were clogged or otherwise not usable. The doors of the wards were battered and the door handles and locks were broken off. Panes were broken in many windows. New bedsteads of the basic standard did not exist. The old, torn and smelling foam rubber mattresses were not replaced.

The hose against the urine stench in the square was the single improvement after some battles of the former civilian superintendent with the stubbornly stuttering Sekretaris. This was possible after Dr Witthuhn had convinced the Sekretaris by describing the urine stench as smelling so bad that he pulled the skin on his nasal bridge and got hit by the strong feeling of revulsion.

What the new superintendent in his dashing uniform of a major did achieve, were a new ambulance and two small Ford-buggies with open loading spaces. The major who was proud of this achievement after his few weeks in office reserved one buggy for his ‘official’ and private purposes. The administration followed without any criticism the military command what did not result in a single move in improving the condition at the hospital. It virtually ignored the responsibility of making one substantially constructive input into the miserable situation. It was the heavily disappointing fact that the functional standard of the hospital was brought down by the white-run Bantu-administration.

If the whites themselves had a health problem they were served by plane to bring them to the specialist in Windhoek or South Africa where they claimed the high First World standard in medicine. These privileged people recognized the medical standard at Oshakati Hospital with the penetrating urine stench in the square and the primitive and defective ward facilities as obsolete. It was the hospital for blacks only. It was common practice that the whites used the quick and gratis transport by air for other things as well, when they had an appointment with the dentist or a medical doctor. Hairdressing and go shopping were included. Formal and informal communications with influential people in the floors of the central administration were of importance in the time of the increasing insecurity. One had to look forward to prepare the steps into the unknown future. What bothered white brains most it was the question how to maintain the high living standard when the apartheid system would collapse.

The morning meetings lasted longer by the bilingual jumps and countless repetitions of the new superintendent. The one black female colleague attended the meetings more often, but with a regular delay, who did not attend the meetings at the time of the civilian superintendent. She, who put the head in the civilian time through the open office door and back to make sure that the meeting was finished, took now part in the discussion in a more excited manner. She preferred her eloquence as the new superintendent did that the point to make got a smoke in the air. Dr Hutman had changed his cheeky and know-it-all behaviour, but kept covered with his intention to please the major. The outcome of the meetings remained poor and useless.

Dr Bernhard was a new colleague who was a specialist surgeon with a Swiss certificate. He had collected his experiences in traumatology on the hospital ship ‘Vietnam’ anchored in the harbour of former Saigon during the last year of the Vietnam war. Dr Bernhard came to Oshakati with his expertise and intention to help. He was a highly talented surgeon and took over the responsibility for orthopaedics, while I was kept responsible for general surgery. The new colleague was a relief from the huge burden. In the first year at Oshakati Hospital I did circa one thousand six hundred operations. I felt sorry that the friendly cooperation with Dr van der Merwe came to an end, who asked the major superintendent to be transferred to the department of surgery for the last months of his military service. The major promised to accept his request after new young doctors from South Africa has arrived for their military service in the north.

Dr Bernhard could not believe that Medical & Dental Council in Pretoria did refuse his recognition as a Swiss specialist. Like me he was put as a senior medical officer and both felt the degrading as a box round the ears. The administration promised to upgrade the position of both doctors after one year into the category of chief medical officers. A probationary period was compulsory, and that in a time when specialists with experiences were needed most. The arrogance of the Council in Pretoria got combined with the blindness of a stubborn-short-sighted administration. It was the discrimination at the first place and the clerks and other white stooges were at the hands of the Boers. This anachronism had exceeded Bernhard’s tolerance limit. In his second week he already decided to ignore this nonsense and prepared his return to Switzerland in the first year. He told that he is neither a donkey nor prepared that idiots can dance on his nose.

Dr Hutman remained covered. He visited the major in the superintendent’s office on a daily basis. The other army doctors did not trust him with personal matters. Van der Merwe told this in a conversation in his caravan one year ago in connection with the fourteen-year-old boy, who passed away on the operating table in the delayed craniotomy when Hutman had rejected my advice and assistance. There was a hearing in the director’s office when Hutman accused me of having caused the death of the comatose patient by disturbance during the operation. The hearing revealed that the accusations were false and insidiously calculated that the colonel director gave this lieutenant only a verbal warning, since Hutman was his extended ear. Now he had become the extension of the major’s ear as well.

This egocentric doctor was son of a wealthy family in Johannesburg. He had his personal career in mind, but not the needs of the black people to whom he showed an emotional abstinence. The careerist pleased his superiors who occupied a big part in his corrupt thinking. The specialists came twice per week from the military hospital in Ondangwa. They were flown up from the central military airbase ‘Waterkloof’ [water gap] north of Pretoria to the north and were replaced at the military hospital after two weeks. These specialists in uniforms of high-ranking officers were lecturers and professors at the medical schools in South Africa. In their two-weeks-service they had to ensure the surgical care of the combat troops.

Why these specialists still visited Oshakati Hospital was not fully understood, since the two civilian specialists, though downgraded to senior medical officers, worked in general and orthopaedic surgery. The army personnel got surgical treatment at the military hospital on the airbase in Ondangwa. It was thought that their visits had not only to do with medical support, but with the reconnaissance by searching for PLAN-fighters as well when they did the surgical ward rounds. This kind of intelligence service was easy for them by reading the history and evaluating the injury, since all the doors were open for the military authority which controlled the activities in the hospital. On the other hand it was true that Swapo enjoyed the broad support from the black population.

There was no illusion that any improvement in the working conditions would not come as long as the military and the whites ruled the regulations and mistrusted the hospital as an institution for hiding the enemies and Swapo-sympathizers. It was against the oath on the South African president and white apartheid flag to treat the enemy, whereas impartial and equal treatment was compulsory according to the Hippocratic oath. The gravity of the political schizophrenia became even more visible in the miserable conditions with the defective facilities. The many promises for repair and replacement from the white-run Bantu-administration and its stuttering Boer on top remained empty. It was an old and widespread political advice to keep up the white opportunism. The white stooges kept quiet when medical ethics became tortured and crippled. I thought of the psychological impact that should come on the young doctors after graduation from university with the ethical oath when they had become second lieutenants in the SADF and had to take the other oath on the South African president and the white apartheid flag. They stuck in the schizophrenic gap as they treat one patient and had to refuse treatment on the other patient. It was the excess after having lost reasonableness and humanity which caused the deep-going conflict between medical practice with medical ethics and its opposite by following the military order in regard to the political absurdity in the arrogant apartheid system.

The non-recognition of the specialist certificates of the two civilian surgeons and the languishing and depraved condition of the hospital were of great concern. The question was when would the hospital collapse due to the miserable conditions caused by mismanagement and white-political short-sightedness. The political formulas were implemented and administratively followed in an opportunistic and corrupt way against the majority what was the black population. Not much of nous was needed to understand the political baseness. The facts were visible and terrible enough without further proof of devastation. It was the time of the tensile tests in the conscience of each doctor and health worker, and this in the time when the big upheaval stood before the door.

In this difficult time Hutman kept himself camouflaged to play his insidious games against the civilian doctors, who worked hard and round the clock. His ambitions were selfish and traitorous without any sympathy for the black people. If there was an award for false denouncing of people, Hutman deserved it with the devil’s star for outstanding achievements as the opposite of bravery before he left for his family to Johannesburg. He was the only example compared with the other army doctors, who ruthlessly used the elbows and intrigue for his career. Since the privileged status had been taken away from him, Hutman put all his effort into the intention to harming me, who was responsible for the surgical department.

There were annoying word battles that I had to stand against Hutman who provoked the battles by arrogance and refusal to listen for reason. All the battles could be avoided, if basic education and respect against an older colleague were exercised and the rules of civilized thinking and speaking were practised. The first battle of this kind was in superintendent’s office when Dr Witthuhn called and confronted me with Dr Hutman. The superintendent sat behind piles of patients’ files on his desk and Hutman sat accompanied by two young army doctors on one of the upholstered chairs on the window front under the rattling air conditioners. One young army doctor sat right and the other young army doctor sat left of Dr Hutman.

What was the point? Hutman accused me of not seeing the patients regularly in the intensive care unit, since there were no notes made on some days. The superintendent looked through the files and could not deny the accusation. He asked me, if that is true. I told that I have seen the patients every day, but in the early morning and had made notes in the files only, if something important has occurred in the patient’s condition. A reason of having done this was the time pressure, since I tried to see the patients in the other wards as well without delaying the operations.

The truth came out and Hutman’ face became pale. Instead of searching the files for missing notes I have seen the patients before the early shift of nurses has started. The superintendent has asked Hutman how he saw his responsibility when he camouflaged as a doctor to destroy what others have built with great effort to help the people, who are in need for medical treatment. And in the critical situation of war, only a few doctors were available. The superintendent understood the point. He said to Hutman, who turned his head to the companions on the right and on the left, that he should look after his patients and stop intriguing against me. After this ugly confrontation I called Hutman an insidious trapper and lieutenant of the devil following Carl Zuckmayer’s “The Devil’s General”.

The other battle was the disciplinary hearing that the director in colonel’s uniform held in his office when I had to defend myself against the false accusations of Hutman in connection with the death of a comatose fourteen-year-old boy on the operating table. This army doctor delayed the operation of putting burrholes for brain decompression from a haemorrhage. Instead of this he drank tea and chatted with some young army doctors in the theatre tea room. Also his operative performance was far from skilful and professional. At the end of the long hearing followed by the civilian superintendent, the director gave Dr Hutman a verbal warning, though he had deserved a strong written one which never came.

However, the lieutenant of the devil did not give up and continued his role as schemer of a low and corrupt character camouflaged as medical doctor. The devil sat on his neck and rode his bad character in a furious gallop. He was not interested in the damage he did by his traps and lies. His dark eyes remained restless. The immoderate arrogance expressed the psychological abnormality in a sense of a magnified ego in the mirror of an obsessional neurosis which was incalculable and unpredictable. The ego of Hutman and his restless agitation had stirred up the mistrust of the military against the civilian and had certainly contributed that Dr Witthuhn was removed from the superintendent’s chair and replaced by an eloquent but meaningless major-superintendent. The obsessed personality of Hutman was the main reason that the team spirit emphatically propagated by the dedicated chief matron had become a stillbirth.

The working climate became even more tense with the major on the superintendent’s chair and the dark machinations of the neurotic lieutenant of the devil as an extended military ear. The contra-productive activities inside the hospital gave the mirror image of a neurotic strategy combined with nervously shaking military and paramilitary activities in an exhausted apartheid system outside the hospital as well. The conditions were miserable and the medical facilities were defective. The wards were overcrowded and some funnel-shaped zinc toilets did not work or were clogged. The water pressure was weak and the old water pipes were rusty and furred up. There were hours and days that the hospital was without water when the pipes outside the hospital were broken and the repair took longer than told. Was the water pressure high, the water squirted through the holes of rusty water pipes. If not the water, the power was cut off with a negative impact on the operative work in the theatres, the central sterilization unit and the work at large. Excrements as diarrhoeal or piled were lying in the children’s ward and outside the wards marking the unhygienic state of emergency.

I criticized the indifferent behaviour of the people in charge, whether they were civilians or people in uniform who have neglected or ignored the problems of the toilet conditions and of the lacking hygiene in and around the wards. It was the academic status that these people did not put their noses over the badly smelling toilets or have looked into the filled-up funnels. But hygiene in general and in a hospital especially starts with the toilet conditions. If a doctor kept the hands clean by washing them after various procedures, he should understand the importance of cleanliness that includes the ward toilets as well. A medical doctor has not only to keep his hands clean, he also is responsible for the cleanliness in the wards where he does his daily round to see and examine the patients. It was one basic obligation that the doctor’s responsibility should not come to a halt without considering the smelling and otherwise malfunctioning toilets. The question is justified how patients should respect doctors who impose the unhygienic and smelling toilet conditions on them.

The new superintendent neglected the hospital and its needs and imposed his unreasonableness with the state of dilapidation on the patients, the nursing staff and medical doctors. The Bantu-administration run by white clerks did nothing to correct the mismanagement that lasted too long. No single administrative ‘arse’ came to the hospital to look into the vast number of burning issues what the stuttering Sekretaris with the square face had promised several times and long ago. The people in the administration had given up their interest and responsibility to restore the hospital to a better condition. They sat back in their comfortable and air-conditioned offices and kept the faces of innocence when they took their coffee and tea breaks every day at the same time and of the same duration by following up their private interests that were substantially pleasant and profitable. The personal advantage lay in the centre of their thinking that they did not ‘waste’ their time on public issues like the anyway neglected hospital. If the phone line went through, administrative people consistently complained of work overload, though they finished office hours always in time and returned home, if no private business after hours were to handle. The doctors with their work-related small salaries without car and other allowances had still to work hard in seeing and treating patients waiting in huge numbers or to perform the unexpected emergency procedures.

One question remained: Where is the money allocated in the budget for maintenance, repair and replacement in the hospital? This question came periodically up, at least once in a year when the miserable conditions with the big number of lacks and shortcomings were pressing on the eyes and depressing the minds of those people who did the hard work with dedication on the patients. In which direction had the money disappeared? This question answered itself by observing the lasting situation of the critical conditions and by getting insight into the administrative mismanagement by measuring the scale of corruption. If book keeping were done in transparent ways, money could not simply disappear. Where were the pockets, bags and other containers that were filled with money what was allocated for the hospital? The question remained unanswered in all the years. But in wartime it is known that things went missing without coming back. The fire-reds of sunsets and sunrises indicated that something new was on the brink that could be expected very soon. The old time ran out and the whites met their measures, if things were not handled timely or would go wrong.

That unprotected black people suffered most, it did not bother much the apartheid-privileged people who kept focused on their lives and properties often with a collection through the years and that in contrast with the poverty of the black people, who were hoping for a better future by getting rid of the forced degradation and discrimination by the apartheid laws and regulations. So signalled the fire-red over the horizon for the ones the change with the hope for betterment by liberation and release from the white chains, and for the others the change was packed with worries and fears how the way would go into the uncertainty of an irrevocable future.