Africa-Press – Namibia. DR PANDULENI ITULA WE first met in 1974 at Augustineum when he was in Matric and a prefect and I in Form 1. He was a marathon runner who collapsed after winning the Augustineum Marathon in 1974 for his yellow team.
He went on to South Africa to study in 1975 and returned as a teacher at the then Katutura Secondary School, now Shifidi. It was at his two-room house in Gemengde 2 near AE Steenkamp Primary School, that we held SWAPO youth league (SYL) meetings.
It was at these two rooms that we were squashed whenever we gave the would be escapees their final orders before transporting them to Gobabis and the Botswana border en-route to Francistown and Lusaka.
In these two rooms he shared with Charles Sihani and Crispian Matongo after the latter two were made persona mon grata in the then Caprivi. We were elected together at Mandume in June 1978 to the Windhoek branch with others such as Immanuel Mwatara, Jeremia Nambinga and Christopher Haukongo as chairperson.
It was at his two-room house that we the youth departed in a bus to town to hold a “Silent Demonstration” against the DTA on 3 December 1978, were many youths including ambassador extraordinaire Janet Isaacs were beaten and arrested.
At the beginning of 1979, we were both arrested on subsequent months under the Terrorism Act, AG 26, for the so-called prevention of political violence and AG 9 terrorism.
We shared the same prison cell in Gobabis’ Cell 2 in 1979, together with Rev. Tjirimuje, Rev. Karuaera, Immanuel Mwatara, Jeremia Tjizo, Esegiel /Uirab, Hans Boois, Ida Jimmy, Lucia Hamutenya, Melangton Kaukungwa, Steve Goliath and Jonathan Goliath, Axel Jackson Johannes, John Shaetonhodi, Israel Kalenga, Dr Ihuhwa, Augus Gaeb, Arthur Pickering, Trosky, Henry Bonsaaier, Nangolo dha Mukwiilongo and Nangolo dha Jakob, Leonard Chaka and 86 other internal SWAPO leaders from all over Namibia.
We were then transferred to Windhoek Central Prison in November 1979 and placed under solitary confinement most of the time and released under house arrest in January 1980. He was re-arrested several times in Osire.
Some 37 years later, we were to start the Swapo Party School together as rector and lecturer on legal and Constitutional governance. Never have I felt a loss of a struggle companion as much when this potentially curable disease is allowed to engulf and rob our country of some of our best institutional memories. Go well cell mate, the battle is long to be won Panduleni F.B. Itula (Prisoner No. AG 26- 82)
