Muyongo speaks from the past in treason trial

LIKE a ghost from the past, the exiled leader of the separatist movement in the former Caprivi region, Mishake Muyongo, was given a chance to state his case in the main Caprivi high treason trial in the Windhoek High Court yesterday.

Muyongo was at the centre of attention when the trial resumed three weeks after Judge Elton Hoff convicted 30 men of high treason, nine counts of murder and 90 charges of attempted murder in connection with a violent attempt to overthrow the Namibian government in the then Caprivi region in 1998 and 1999.

Nearly 17 years since he left Namibia at the head of a group of nearly 100 armed men who crossed the border into Botswana near the end of October 1998, and 16 years after members of an armed secessionist organisation created under his leadership had attacked government-linked targets at Katima Mulilo, Muyongo made an appearance in the mammoth trial that flowed from his attempt to separate the Zambezi region from Namibia through the use of force.

His appearance was in the form of a recording of an interview that a television journalist conducted with him a couple of days after the secessionists’ deadly attacks at Katima Mulilo on 2 August 1999. At that time, Muyongo – a former senior Swapo leader, ex-president of the DTA, unsuccessful candidate in Namibia’s presidential election in 1994, and leading opposition member of the National Assembly for more than eight years after Namibia’s independence in 1990 – was living in exile in Denmark, where he had been given asylum after he had left Namibia near the end of October 1998.

An attentive audience watched the interview with Muyongo when it was shown in court. Only twice, when Muyongo dismissed people denying the existence of a deal between himself and Namibia’s founding President, Sam Nujoma, about the former Caprivi region’s right to self-determination after Namibia’s independence as having “chicken brains”, did the recording draw some laughter from the convicted men and others in court.

In the interview, Muyongo said he felt with the attacks on 2 August 1999 a beginning had been made to try and put across a point that Caprivians had been making for some time. A point of no return had been reached, he said.

Stating that the former DTA member party led by him, the United Democratic Party (UDP), had formed a military wing, the Caprivi Liberation Army, Muyongo said they had been prepared for a peaceful resolution of “the problem with the Caprivi” until then, but if that issue could not be resolved peacefully they believed they had to use other methods – “and that is what is happening now”.

“[I]t is the beginning of the struggle,” he said.

“At least, the struggle in the sense that we are using physical force, yes.”

He went on to state: “I want the Caprivi to be an independent entity on its own, deciding their own future on their own without any coercion from anybody. […] We have never been Namibians. We are now being made to be Namibians by force.”

He also told his interviewer: “I am not a secessionist and I will never be one. Caprivi has never been part of Namibia. Anybody who is saying that one is ignorant.”

Muyongo was also questioned about claims by him that he and Nujoma signed an agreement in 1964 that their respective parties, the Caprivi African National Union (Canu) and Swapo, would cooperate in the struggle for the liberation of Namibia, and that with the independence of Namibia the people of the Caprivi region would have the choice to decide whether they wanted the region to be part of the new independent country or not.

His answer was that if the people he signed the agreement with had forgotten about it, or chose to forget it, that was very unfortunate. “And I will not blame them for that. I might blame God for having given them chicken brains,” he said.

Deputy prosecutor general Taswald July also handed a printout from a website run in the UDP’s name to Judge Hoff. A message posted under Muyongo’s name on 2 August this year indicates that his belief in the separation of the current Zambezi region from Namibia has endured over the past 16 years.

Towards the end of the message Muyongo, now 75 years old, stated: “Know that Swapo’s occupation of the Caprivi Strip shall soon come to an end; it is just a matter of time. Nonetheless, we shall never waver in our quest for freedom.

“We are our own liberators, the struggle continues and thus Caprivians should never lose hope because there is light at the end of the tunnel.”

The pre-sentencing phase of the trial is due to continue today.