A DARK chapter in Namibia’s history was revisited as the hearing of a defamation claim against the Swapo Party and its secretary general, Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana, continued for a second day in the High Court in Windhoek yesterday.
In the spotlight for most of the day’s proceedings before Acting Judge Kobus Miller was the pre-Independence police unit known as ‘Koevoet’.’Koevoet was created as a killing squad. To fight ‘terrorists’ at all costs and by all means,’ acclaimed photographer John Liebenberg, giving evidence as a witness for the plaintiff in the case, testified yesterday afternoon.’Koevoet to me was a Police hit squad unit,’ Liebenberg said.It was a Police unit which was a law unto itself, and which remains hated and the source of deep hurt among many of Namibia’s people, he said.To be called a member of Koevoet, especially if that is not the truth, could in his opinion put someone’s safety in jeopardy, Liebenberg said.Liebenberg, who as a photographer recorded part of the history of Namibia’s liberation war during the latter half of the 1980s, was testifying in a defamation case in which freelance journalist John Grobler is suing the Swapo Party and Iivula-Ithana for a total of N$300 000.Grobler is claiming that a statement published on the Swapo Party website on September 3 2009 contained false and defamatory comments about him.These comments included a reference to him as ‘a Koevoet soldier (ekakunya) who, along with his fellow brutal apartheid henchmen committed untold atrocities to the Namibian people’.Ratcheting up the attack on Grobler even more, it was further stated: ‘Simply put, his hands are soaked in the blood of the Namibian people.’Liebenberg testified that he has known Grobler as a former colleague since 1992. ‘I was very shocked and annoyed at the defamatory statements made in the article,’ was his comment about his reaction to the statement placed on the website.Grobler told the court on Monday that, although he was a conscripted soldier in the South West African Territory Force (SWATF) in 1988 and early 1989, he was never a member of the then SWA Police’s counter-insurgency unit, known as ‘Koevoet’, that he has never killed anybody, and that he never saw combat as a conscript.’War is obscene. People die in war. I am opposed to war,’ he added yesterday.Swapo and Iivula-Ithana are defending the defamation action against them.They are denying that the remarks on the website conveyed that Grobler ‘committed untold atrocities against the Namibian people’, and are claiming that the statements were ‘essentially the truth’ and the publication of it was in the public interest. They are also relying on their constitutional right to freedom of speech as protection with regard to the comments made on the website.The executive director of the human rights organisation NamRights, Phil ya Nangoloh, also testified as a witness for the plaintiff yesterday.Ye Nangoloh told the court that as a former member of the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia he gained knowledge of Koevoet’s methods and track record.Koevoet was not part of the SWATF, Ya Nangoloh stressed. He said it was a police unit which also performed military functions, with its primary aim being the tracking down and extraction of Plan fighters among the local population in northern Namibia.In the process of doing that, Ya Nangoloh said, Koevoet committed gross human rights violations.Koevoet was ‘brutal, merciless, and killed indiscriminately’, Ya Nangoloh said.The term ‘ekakunya’ is ‘highly defamatory’, he also told the court, saying that it refers to a person of low morals who is like a scavenger and a man-eater, and who is brutal and unacceptable in society.’As far as I’m concerned the allegations are highly defamatory. They can endanger anybody’s life,’ was Ya Nangoloh’s overall comment about the article on the Swapo website.Legal counsel Gerson Narib, who is representing Swapo and Iivula-Ithana, told Ya Nangoloh under cross-examination that he is a biased witness, as he has also sued Swapo for defamation in a case that is still pending.Ya Nangoloh disputed the statement that he was biased. He said he testified only about what he knew about Koevoet, and that this testimony would have been the same regardless of his own pending case against the party.The hearing is due to continue today, after Grobler’s counsel, Hannchen Schneider, closed his case yesterday.
