The killing of Elifas

Title: The killing of Elifas
Subtitle: The Enigma surrounding the Murder of Chief Filemon Elifas
Author: Gavin Cooper
Publisher: Gavin Cooper
Reach Publisher's Services
Wandsbeck, South Africa 2022
ISBN 9780620850667 / ISBN 978-0-62-085066-7
Softcover, 17 x 24 cm, 512 pages with colour photography

About: The killing of Elifas

In the early evening of Saturday, 16 August 1975, the tranquillity of Ovamboland was shattered by automatic gunfire. Ending as suddenly as it started, the occupants of a nondescript liquor store at Onamugundu emerged from the building to find the Chief Minister of the region, Filemon Elifas, on the veranda in a pool of blood, dying from two gunshot wounds from a PPSH-41 submachine gun. The South African government immediately blamed SWAPO for the murder. The Security Police initiated a dragnet across South West Africa, detaining hundreds of people, holding them under inhumane conditions and torturing them for days on end. As a result, thousands of people fled the territory into exile. The murder would also be used as a reason to escalate the Border War with the South African Defence Force attacking Angola to deprive PLAN of bases near the Ovambo border. What followed was a sequence of events that would influence South West Africa/Namibia’s history for decades to come. Only after international pressure on the SA government were six members of SWAPO eventually charged under the Terrorist Act to face the death penalty for their remote involvement in the killing. The lengthy trial, in which many of the State’s witnesses testified that the Security Police had tortured them, would see “unprecedented” gross irregularities by a biased judge whose verdict resulted in an international furore that further alienated the apartheid government of South Africa.

Content: The killing of Elifas

A Brief Chronology of Namibian History
A Brief Chronology of the Swakopmund Trial
Abbreviations
Preface
Political Trials and the Martyr Jopie Fourie
The 1970s and National Service
Blood River and The Rise of Balthazar Johannes "BJ"Vorster
The Terrorism Act and the 1967 Pretoria Terrorist Trial
The Border and Ovamboland: Sector 10
The Cruel Colonial History of South-West Africa
The Herero and Nama Genocide
South Africa Takes Control, and Resistance Begins
PLAN - The Commencement of the Armed Struggle
SWAPO in Exile: Spies, Suspicion, Fear and Death
South Africa's Defiance
SWAPO Against Itself
Chief Filemon Shuumbwa Elifas: Injustice With the Epokolo
The Divisive Turnhalle Conference
The Death of Elifas: A Grim Portent
Detention Without Trial and Jimmy Kruger
The Trial Begins
The Trial of the SWAPO Six
The prosecution begins
The region, PLAN and Operation Savannah
Ballistics and a shopkeeper
Witnesses to the shooting
Festus Shaanika and the elusive Nicodemus
Revelations of torture
A witness called Ice Cream
The ordeal of Eva Maundingi
A character reminiscent of the French Revolution
The defiance of Victor Nkandi and Axel Johannes
A turned terrorist
Willem Schoon and the Kalahari Pilot
The testimony of Gert Dippenaar
In pursuit of an inspection in loco
SWAPO on trial
Foreign observers
The trial of SWAPO continues
The quest to recall prosecution witnesses
The start of the defence
Accused No. 3 takes the stand
The cross-examination of Accused No. 3 continues
The Three Nurses of Engela Hospital
The Defence rests and repeated applications
Closing arguments of the State and Defence
Judgment day
Witnesses in aggravation
Final arguments
Outcry to the judgment
19. The Leaking of Evidence
20. A Riddle Wrapped Inside a Mystery Inside an Enigma
Appendix A: Lieutenant Colonel Willem Schoon
Appendix B: Elizabeth "Queen" Namundjebo relates her
political journey
Acknowledgements
Bibliography and Primary Sources 431
A. Books 431
B. Academic papers and similar sources
C. Newspapers and electronic news media
D. Online references
Index
Endnotes