By Norm Dixon
JOHANNESBURG — A Namibian court has found that the 1989 assassination of SWAPO activist Anton Lubowski was the work of a South African Defence Force death squad. The verdict confirms the suspicions of many South Africans and comes just a month after an Eastern Cape court found that the SADF ordered the murder of activist Matthew Goniwe and three colleagues in 1985.
Inquest court Judge Harold Levy said on June 25 that the SADF's innocuously named Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) arranged the hit on the leading member of the Namibian liberation movement. Lubowski had just been appointed deputy director of SWAPO's election campaign. Lubowski was murdered outside his home in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, in September 1989, shot nine times at close range with an AK-47.
Levy said the hit had been made by CCB operative Donald Acheson and named nine accomplices, who included CCB managing director Joe Verster. A senior Namibian police officer, Willem Terrblanche, was named an accessory for not reporting information received before and after the killing.
Acheson was arrested soon after the murder but was released eight months later after prosecutor-general Hans Heyman decided there was insufficient evidence to charge him. Judge Levy described Heyman's action as "the height of incompetence" considering "the strong prima facie evidence".
Widely described in the media as an "Irish mercenary" nicknamed "the cleaner" and clearly an unstable and seedy character, Acheson was recruited to the CCB by agent and convicted murderer Ferdi Barnard after being arrested for shoplifting. Barnard is suspected of murdering ANC activist David Webster in May 1989.
The South African government later attempted to blame Lubowski's murder on SWAPO when then defence minister Magnus Malan suggested in parliament that Lubowski was an SADF spy. The Namibian court found these claims groundless.
The Namibian government is likely to ask the South African government to extradite the nine CCB members to stand trial for murder. South African justice minister Dullah Omar has met Lubowski's family and indicated Pretoria will treat such a request favourably.
The latest finding comes just a month after Eastern Cape judge Neville Zietsman found that Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkhonto and Sielo Mhlauli were murdered by "members of the security forces" in June 1985.
The deaths followed a military signal from the SADF commander in the Eastern Cape, Brigadier Joffel van der Westhuizen, to the State Security Council proposing that Goniwe be "permanently removed from society". The SSC was composed of senior security officers and government leaders, including then president P.W. Botha, and government ministers F.W. de Klerk and Pik Botha.
Incredibly, despite Zietsman's findings that the security forces killed the activists and that the signal proposed murder, he could find no "direct link" between the recommendation and the brutal killing of Goniwe and his comrades 20 days later. He said he "was unable to find prima facie that an offence has been committed by any specific person".
Lawyers for Human Rights, deputy minister for environment Bantu Holomisa and the family of Matthew Goniwe called for van der Westhuizen and other security officers to be charged with murder. On June 17 Eastern Cape attorney-general Les Roberts announced that nobody would be prosecuted for murders because "the available evidence is not strong enough for a reasonable chance of a successful prosecution against any individual or individuals".
Clearly, there are many rather smelly skeletons waiting to be discovered in the cupboards of the former apartheid rulers and their security forces. The decision by Dullah Omar to establish what has been dubbed a "Truth Commission" to deal with the crimes against human rights committed during the apartheid era has been questioned by deputy president F.W. de Klerk and opposed by police commissioner Johann van der Merwe as a threat to "national reconciliation".
The commission, whose terms of reference will be announced in August, is likely to offer indemnity on the condition that perpetrators disclose fully their crimes in support of apartheid. Omar has said, however, that the assassins of SACP leader Chris Hani and the AWB thugs responsible for the terrible pre-election bombings that cost 21 lives would not be eligible for amnesty.