Trial: Defense Witnesses
All of the thirteen defense witnesses testified to the particulars of either the Elifas murder at Thomas Nangombe’s bottle store or, for the accused who took the stand, the particulars of their own activities, but in no case about SWAPO.
Most of the defense witnesses offered what they knew concerning the whereabouts of Hendrik Shikongo and his truck at the time of the murder. A storekeeper, for instance, detailed the sequence of events after he drove into the parking lot at Nangombe’s shop on the night of the killing. He had seen Shikongo leave and walk to his truck which was parked near the store (not near the pumps as the prosecution witnesses had said) and drive away; he, the shop owner, had had a drink with Chief Elifas and several others; and after he returned to his own car, he heard three shots and saw a person run between two buildings carrying a gun. Although he neither saw Elifas leave nor noticed who was running with the gun, he did hear the shots and see the flashes—all after Shikongo had left. Such information was apparently of little interest to Lt. Dippenaar who had interrogated the shopkeeper but had not taken a statement from him.29Dr. Thomas Ihuhua, a local medical doctor, testified that Elizabeth (the Queen) Namunjebo had on the day of the murder requested that he give two friends rides to the bottle store. After he said he could not, she asked permission to borrow his car. He told her his wife needed it. Several days later, after the murder, she had asked him to forget her request.30
Shikongo and the three accused nurses, Rauna Nambinga, Naimi Nombowa, and Anna Nghihondjwa, took the stand to testify on their own behalf. Shikongo spent four days in the witness box chronicling his movements of the day before, the day of, and the day after the Elifas assassination, emphasizing the details about the two strangers Elizabeth Namunjebo had asked him to transport to the bottle store.
While he was getting a haircut and having several little girls wash his truck, he received a message to phone Elizabeth. When he returned the call she asked him to come by her store in order to help some visitors with a ride and told him that she could not give him the whole message over the telephone. He met the two strangers who were with his friend, Nicodemus Mauhi, at Elizabeth Namunjebo’s store. The two strangers had not given their names, although Shikongo introduced himself to them. Elizabeth told him that they had come to speak with the chief and that they were in a hurry. Shikongo drove Nicodemus Mauhi and the two to the bottle store, parking his truck near the stoop. Since the chief’s car was there, they went inside. Shikongo got into a brief but heated argument with the owner, Thomas Nangombe, over an incident of the previous day when, as Nangombe saw it, Shikongo had spun his wheels and thrown dust at Chief Elifas. Nangombe kicked Shikongo out, telling him not to return. While he was waiting for Mauhi and the other two, he went to a repair shop to have his turn signals fixed and then returned to pick up his three riders. Since he could not enter the bottle shop, Shikongo stopped his truck and waited along the road. While waiting he heard gun shots, became frightened, and drove off to Elizabeth’s. He told her that there had been some shooting, and that he then went to a café where he saw some friends. While there someone came in at 10 P.M. with the news that the chief had been killed. From the cafe Shikongo went to see his girlfriend, Helena Hauwanga, who returned with him to his home where they spent the night together.31In the morning Shikongo returned to Elizabeth Namunjebo’s to inquire after his riders whom he had left behind when he heard the shots.
Shikongo: When I got there and knocked on her door she answered me quickly. She opened the door and called me into the sitting room. I greeted her and she greeted me. She said to me that she had just heard that the chief was dead.
I did not ask her where she had heard that, I told her that I had also heard about that. I asked her if Nicodemus and his two friends had come. She answered and said that she had not seen them and that they were not with her. She just said, “We will just see what happens.” We didn’t talk much longer. I told her I was going back home.Cooper: Did you do so?
Shikongo: Yes
Cooper: Elizabeth testified in this court and said that on the Saturday night, when you were at her house you said to her, “We killed the chief.” What do you say about that testimony?
Shikongo: I did not say that and those words are not the truth.32
Shikongo’s cross-examination at the hands of Jansen was, needless to say, severe. Although his story remained basically unaltered, Jansen raised minor inconsistencies with those of prior witnesses, which Shikongo insisted on maintaining. The items were not important in themselves, but they served to cast doubt on the reliability of both Shikongo and the defense witnesses whom he persisted in contradicting.
Jansen turned to Shikongo’s SWAPO membership and the aims of SWAPO. Shikongo had joined in 1965, but he said that although he was a member he did not know everything about what SWAPO did. What he did know was that all the people of Namibia wanted freedom and that SWAPO was and is the organization which stood in favor of getting freedom.
Jansen: SWAPO wants freedom. What kind of freedom does SWAPO want?
Shikongo: Freedom so that we in this country may live in peace.
Jansen: Yes? We would now be living in peace were it not for SWAPO, but go on. Peace, is that now the only goal of SWAPO, you want to have peace?
Shikongo: To me, as I see it, there’s not anyone who is free.
Jansen: Do you mean by that that besides peace you also want to have freedom?
Shikongo: That is correct.
Jansen: Now I want to hear from you what type of freedom you want to have.
Shikongo: The freedom we want to have is that people in the country must be free and each one must look upon another as their brothers.
Jansen: Brothers. What do you mean by brothers?
Shikongo: The brotherhood which I speak of is that each one must look upon the other one as a person. It must not be “what is this one and what is that one?” but that you look upon each other as a person.
Jansen: And how will you attain that freedom?
Shikongo: In the peaceableness which comes from the United Nations.…
Jansen: How will the freedom from the United Nations come?
Shikongo: I don’t know how it will come from the United Nations, but I reckon it will be given peacefully.
Jansen: If the South African government does not want to meet the demands of the United Nations, how will it happen then?
Shikongo: That I am not able to say
Jansen: Has SWAPO not thought about that?
Shikongo: Your Honor I am not all of SWAPO. I am just a member of SWAPO. What has been spoken of and decided, I do not know what it is.33
Jansen’s cross-examination intensified when he turned his question to the events surrounding the Elifas assassination. Jansen submitted and of course Shikongo denied that he and, among others, Aaron Mushimba, Axel Johannes, Usko Nambinga, and Nicodemus Mauhi, had planned either to kidnap Chief Elifas and take him to Zambia or to shoot him. Moreover, that they were working in coordination with another SWAPO team which was planning to kidnap or kill others. Jansen contended that an attempt had been made against Chief Elifas on Friday, August 15, when Shikongo’s truck kicked up sand at the chief, but it had failed. On Saturday, as Jansen’s thesis had it, Shikongo tried to ascertain where Elifas would be that evening. When a different SWAPO team had failed to find their victim and had arrived at the bottle shop, “then and there it was decided that the forces would be put together and Elifas would be shot dead.”
Shikongo: I do not know of all that stuff.
Jansen: I submit also that then you and your Ford pickup and Victor Nkandi with the blue Landrover—Exhibit 1 before the Court—waited behind the shop complex of Thomas Phillipus.
Shikongo: That is not so.
Jansen: And that Nicodemus and the four men ran past your vehicle and climbed in the Landrover and were taken in it to Odibo.
Shikongo: I do not know. If it was so, I do not know; I did not see a Landrover as it is here now described.
Jansen: Lastly, I just want to submit you had constant knowledge that evening Chief Minister Elifas would either be kidnapped or killed.
Shikongo: That is not so.34
Unfortunately for the state’s case, these words had come from Advocate Jansen, not from his witnesses.
Judge Strydom was disturbed that Shikongo did not go directly to the police to report the shots he had heard. It seemed, the judge observed, that any innocent person under the circumstances would have gone to the police at the first opportunity. Shikongo answered that while he had not gone to the police, he had stayed at his house, thinking that if the police wanted him they would find him there.
The three accused nurses, Rauna Nambinga, Naimi Nombowa, and Anna Nghihondjwa, took the stand as defense witnesses. Although each admitted that she was a SWAPO member, it was obvious that none of the nurses could have had anything to do with the Elifas murder. They had heard SWAPO organizers, including Rauna’s brother, Usko, speak; they had contributed money (R10, or $11.50) and such items as soap, and they had visited refugees across the border in Angola. But they maintained that their contributions and their visits to the refugees were because of the pity they felt for the refugees, not because of any wish to overthrow the government or aid terrorists.35