Pretoria: The courage Anna Nghihondjwa-Haipinge showed as a young woman helping PLAN fighters placed her directly in the sights of the South African apartheid soldiers, leading to torture and imprisonment. Now 77, retired nurse and war veteran, Nghihondjwa-Haipinge, remembers how, just 12 days after she got married on 4 October 1975, she was arrested when South African troops, whom she remembers as 'omakakunya', raided the Engela Hospital, where she was working as a nurse.

According to Namibia Press Agency, in an exclusive interview with Nampa ahead of Heroes' Day commemorations on Wednesday, Nghihondjwa-Haipinge narrates that the hospital was surrounded by South African troops armed with guns, spears and military caspirs. 'They had a list of nurses accused of assisting PLAN fighters. My name was on that list.'

Nghihondjwa-Haipinge joined Swapo a year earlier while working at the Engela Hospital. She and other nurses attended Swapo meetings, where they came to understand that the country was being colonised and that the South African apartheid regime was violating their human rights. As nurses, they secretly assisted PLAN fighters by taking them food to their villages. They also took medicine from the hospital to treat their wounds and soap. 'We saw them as our brothers,' she says lovingly.

Nghihondjwa-Haipinge and the other nurses would go to Ohaindo village, where PLAN's first forward operational base was established along the Namibia-Angola southern border. The fighters were led by Commander Dimo Hamaambo. 'Hamaambo would train them, and we would go there to assist them. Especially the injured comrades; we would give them medicine.' Nghihondjwa-Haipinge and a few colleagues contributed money towards buying them food and medicine from pharmacies when it was not available at the hospital. That assistance to the fighters eventually led to their arrest.

After the raid on Engela Hospital, Nghihondjwa-Haipinge and the other nurses were taken to a jail in Ondangwa, where they spent a month being interrogated. Their interrogators showed them pictures of Hamaambo and asked whether they knew him. 'I would deny knowing. They said if you knew him, they would behead you,' she recalls. The women were held in small jail cells with only one bucket to relieve themselves. They were tortured by their captors, who called them terrorists. She recalls how cold water was poured over them early in the morning and how dogs were made to bite them.

The women were later separated and placed in different rooms. 'We were tied upside down. We were electrocuted,' she remembers sadly. The interrogators wanted them to expose Swapo and reveal where the fighters were. Nghihondjwa-Haipinge says their arrest resulted from one of their colleagues who was friends with a white South African soldier. 'Little did we know she would sell us out.'

After a month in Ondangwa, they were taken to another jail in Windhoek. There, they were visited by Bishop Leonard Hawala and Bishop Cleopas Dumeni, who encouraged them and helped them get lawyers from the United Nations to defend them. They were later taken to Swakopmund for trial. Nghihondjwa-Haipinge remembers being tried alongside Aron Mushimba, Hendrick Shikongo, Andreas Nangolo, Naemi Namboga and Rauna Nambinga. The trial lasted six months, with proceedings running from 08H00 to 17H00 each day.

'Namboga and Nangolo were found not guilty, even though we did the same thing,' she states. Mushimba and Shikongo were sentenced to death by hanging. Nghihondjwa-Haipinge was sentenced to five years in prison, while Nambinga was sentenced to seven years. The women were then taken to Pretoria prison and the men to Robben Island in South Africa.

Nghihondjwa-Haipinge recalls that the journey to Pretoria was traumatic. 'When they flew us to Pretoria we were chained together, standing,' she recalls. 'It was a very uncomfortable situation because we also had South African soldiers pointing guns at us, checking for any wrong move.' Because they had been labelled terrorists, their captors believed they were capable of jumping out of the plane.

In Pretoria, Nghihondjwa-Haipinge was placed in solitary confinement and forced into hard labour. Her daily food consisted of unsifted cooked maize meal. 'It was terrible. They did not care about dietary requirements or a balanced diet.' After three years, they were retried and found innocent. Those who had initially been sentenced to death were now sentenced to life imprisonment, while those who were sentenced to life were sentenced to 20 years.

When Nghihondjwa-Haipinge and the others were released, they were told to take trains back to Windhoek. 'They basically threw us into the deep end. We did not even know where we were.' When they arrived in Upington, they found a group of Swapo members waiting for them and travelled home together. Cammy Ndaitwah, who was one of the Swapo members to welcome Nghihondjwa-Haipinge and her fellow prisoners to Namibia, told Nampa that while the day was emotional, the group was met with joy and excitement at the railway station in Windhoek.

Ndaitwah, who is a sister to First Gentleman and retired Army General Epafras Denga Ndaitwah, says they were with other comrades like the late Marco Hausiku. 'A Swapo convoy paraded through the streets of Windhoek, and we prepared lunch for them. A day later, the two women left for the north, while Mushimba and Shikongo left the country via Botswana,' Ndaitwah narrates. Nghihondjwa-Haipinge returned to her father's house. Her husband then came to fetch her, and together they built their home in Ongha.