Assassination of Chief Elifas

Chief Filemon Elifas, a hereditary chief in Namibia, was assassinated on a Saturday night in August 1975, just as he stepped out the door of a drinking establishment into the darkness.

Whether one person or more were involved in the assassination of Chief Elifas is a matter of dispute. But because Chief Elifas was a favorite of the South African government neither the police nor supporters of the South African rule in Namibia were hindered by the absence of information about the killing. The Windhoek Advertiser, a major newspaper in the capital city, carried a banner headline: “Chief Elifas Assassinated,” and charged that “there is little doubt that he was the victim of a political murder, perpetrated by his many enemies who have regarded him through the years as a puppet of the South African government.”¹ The South African government had even less doubt that it was a political crime, for it immediately acted to rout the leadership of the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), Namibia’s most influential political party. SWAPO was militantly pro-independence and set against any solution for Namibia imposed by South Africa. Both the press and the government were certain they knew the motive for the murder of Chief Elifas and that it was the result of a SWAPO plot, no matter who the killer happened to be.

Together with the African nationalist organizations in South Africa, SWAPO saw the ethnic isolation of apartheid as a form of racist domination and sought to prevent South Africa’s bantustan policy of separate tribal “homelands” from spreading into Namibia with an independence settlement. Unlike the American Indian Movement (AIM), which desires greater ethnic autonomy, even to the point of creating a separate Lakota nation-state, SWAPO wanted less ethnic identity.

Before its independence in 1990, Namibia was the only territory in the world for which the United Nations had direct responsibility, yet there were no UN personnel in the country. Formerly a colony known as German South West Africa, Namibia was conquered by South African forces in World War I. Following that war, South Africa retained control under a League of Nations mandate which permitted the territory (then called South West Africa) to be ruled as an integral part of South Africa. After World War II, South Africa applied to the UN to annex the territory, but the request was rejected. South Africa continued to rule Namibia (as the rest of the world called it) as if it were a province, subjecting the country to the apartheid system and to South African law in spite of the mandate’s having been revoked by the General Assembly in 1966 and of the fact that the continued presence of South Africa in Namibia was ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice in 1971. Beginning in 1977, South Africa recognized the right of Namibia to independence but opposed free elections overseen by the UN.

Soon after the Elifas murder, vigilantes forcibly broke into the homes of SWAPO leaders. Instead of taking action against the vigilantes, the government put the victims in detention. Over the next two and a half months, fifty-four persons were known to have been detained in a wave of arrests by the police, but estimates by reliable sources put the actual total detentions as high as 200.² The detainees were held incommunicado and the incidents were not reported publicly.

Nine months after Chief Elifas was assassinated, a court sentenced two SWAPO members, Aaron Mushimba, twenty-nine, and Hendrik Shikongo, twenty-eight, to death by hanging. Two nurses who had contributed money to SWAPO, Rauna Nambinga, twenty-eight, and Anna Nghihondjwa, twenty-three, went to prison for seven and five years respectively. This SWAPO trial from mid-February to mid-May 1976, was billed in the press as the Elifas murder trial. Yet the murderer was not present. Although the prosecution introduced thirty-two witnesses, most of whom presented details of the assassination, at the end of the trial the police had little better idea of who the assassin was than when they had arrived on the scene and found the body. None of the four sentenced in May was accused of pulling the trigger. None of them was accused of belonging to a conspiracy which plotted Chief Elifas’s death. Except for Hendrik Shikongo, none of the four was accused of having anything to do with the murder of Chief Elifas. Shikongo was charged and convicted of providing the mysterious assassin(s) with a ride to the scene of the murder, but the state’s case, purporting to show that he knew his passengers intended to harm the chief, is murky. The trial of the four SWAPO members and the assassination of Chief Elifas remain two unrelated events. What matters and makes all the difference is that each of the defendants was a member of SWAPO and was charged under South Africa’s Terrorism Act.

For anyone who lies awake at night thinking of how orderly life would be under a police state, the South African Terrorism Act is a dream come true. The police have enough discretion under the Act that they can charge anyone who does anything “with intent to endanger the maintenance of law and order” as a “terrorist”. Given police provocation, which needs to be little more than mild irritation, terrorist suspects can be detained indefinitely, held incommunicado for interrogation, and dragged through a terrorist trial which carries a maximum sentence of death.³ The detention itself is, naturally, punishment.

Once the police-and-vigilante dragnet had put behind bars those SWAPO members they thought were troublemakers, and had satisfied themselves—for there is no one else they must satisfy—that they detained a group of terrorists, the police could begin the task of sorting the detainees into state witnesses and accused. More than likely any of the detained, or nearly anyone picked at random off the street, could serve as the accused. In order to convict anyone of terrorism, the state must prove that he or she “with intent to endanger the maintenance of law and order…takes any steps to undergo…encourages or procures any other person to undergo any training which could be of use to any person intending to endanger the maintenance of law and order, and who fails to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did not undergo…or encourage…such training.” Further, the burden of proof is shifted to the accused to demonstrate that he or she “did not intend…to commit any act likely to have any of the above results.” Even if a person is charged with hampering any person “from assisting in the maintenance of law and order” or with encouraging “the achievement of any political aim” which will “embarrass the administration of the affairs of the State,” the accused has the burden of proof.⁵

With the possibilities contained within the wording of the Terrorism Act any assiduous police interrogator would have his imagination set ablaze.

Suppose we take as an illustration that most common of all murders, a man who kills his wife’s lover. The state would first prove that the accused did dispatch the paramour and that would be murder in some degree but not terrorism. All the state must do to accomplish a terrorist conviction is prove that the murder was likely to produce one of the various forbidden results. By the magic of the Terrorism Act a domestic murder could be converted into terrorism. The Act is used selectively, but the fact is that many activities which could not be considered crimes are, under its aegis, terrorist acts. A priest theoretically commits “terrorism,” although no other crime, when he exhorts his flock to follow the ways of the Lord, because that might result in encouraging social change in cooperation with an international institution, the Roman Catholic Church. A political cartoonist might satirize the government, causing it embarrassment, and thereby be guilty of “terrorism.”

What prevents overly diligent policemen from filling the jails with detained “terrorists” and every restless prosecutor from demonstrating his continual vigilance to his superiors and to the press, is that the Terrorism Act cannot be instituted unless authorized by the Attorney General.⁶ Ordinary crimes, daily life, and courtroom regularities are thus not usually undermined by the application of the Terrorism Act, but when the minister of justice and the attorney general determine that someone or some group stand in disfavor with the government, they can send down thunderbolts of vengeance by invoking the Terrorism Act.

Parallel to the Terrorism Act and even broader in scope is Proclamation R.17, which applied only to Ovamboland in northernmost Namibia, the largest of the areas the South African government designated to become a “homeland.” This regulation provided that whenever the commissioner or any member of the police “is satisfied that any person” has committed an offense under its provisions or “has reason to suspect that any person has or has the intention to commit such an offense,” he may arrest without a warrant, may question, or may detain that person until the commissioner or policeman “is satisfied that the said person has answered fully and truthfully all questions put to him which have any bearing upon the said offense or intended offense.” As for seeing a lawyer, R.17 decrees that no person so arrested or detained, “without the consent of the Minister or person acting under his authority,” shall “be allowed to consult with a legal advisor in connection with any matter relating to the arrest and detention.”⁷ Unlike the Terrorism Act, the decision to detain someone is not limited to high-ranking police officers. Under R. 17 the lowliest policeman, who in Ovamboland are often poorly trained tribal police, could arrest anyone without warrant and detain that person until the policeman “is satisfied” that the detainee has answered all questions fully. Again, as with the Terrorism Act, there is no possibility of any objective test of bona fides of the arrest, but it is completely within the discretion of the policeman or his superiors. Some of the 1975 detainees were held under the Terrorism Act, some under R.17, but it is unknown which persons were held under which law. But it made little difference because the conditions of detention were the same and the authority under which the person was being held was only a function of the frame of mind of the policeman, if indeed he thought of it at all.

The wave of detentions following the assassination of Chief Elifas netted, among others, the principal of a Lutheran seminary in Namibia, a seminary instructor, and six Lutheran pastors, none of whom could have been involved in the Elifas murder. They had been, however, outspoken against apartheid. “We can only conclude,” wrote the general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, Carl H. Mau, Jr., in an open letter to Prime Minister B. J. Vorster, “that the South African government is engaging in a systematic attack upon the Christian churches in Namibia of a kind that is intolerable and an offense to the world community of Lutheran churches.”⁸