< aan cal WORLD By KERRY McCUAIG Herman Toivo Ja Toivo emerged from 18 years in an apartheid prison determined to lead the war against the colon- izers of his homeland. General Secretary of the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) the internationally recognized representative of the Namibian people, he was in Toronto last week to attend an international conference of Black lawyers against apartheid. Namibia is the only country in Africa still under colonial rule. It shares another distinc- tion, along with South Africa, as the only country where a white minority rules over a vastly larger Black population. Namibia hasn’t shared the western media spotlight with South Africa, although a sus- tained liberation struggle has been raging there for the past 19 years. The news blackout can be attributed to Namibia’s occupier. South Africa allows no foreign journalists into the country and any reports filed from Pretoria are heavily cen- sored. Leader spent 1 8 | years on Robbin Island ” Toivo, a founding member of SWAPO, greeted on his release. truth. South Africa has more than 100,000 soldiers in Namibia who are looked upon by the people as their enemies, where SWAPO’s fighters are viewed as redeemers’’. Founded in 1960, SWAPO South Africa pretends to be there at the. invitation of the Namibian people. This is not the truth. Her soldiers are looked upon as enemies, where SWAPO fighters are viewed as redeemers. “South Africa is occupying our country illegally and doesn’t want the world to know what is taking place there. She pretends to be there at the invitation of the Nam- ibian people. This is not the didn’t take up military action until 1966 when all efforts at peaceful withdrawal had been exhausted. The United Nations declared South Africa’s occupation of Namibia illegal — in that year and that position was ratified by International Court of Justice in The Hague in 1971. Namibians have been fight- ing for independence for over 100 years. The first racist struc- tures were implimented in the last century under German rule that lasted until 1915. Follow- ing WWI, South Africa was given a Mandate by the League of Nations to administer Namibia ‘‘in the best interests of the indigenous population’’. Instead it moved to entrench and extend the existing racist, exploitative conditions. Today, some 5,000 white farmers occupy over 80 per cent of the viable land, while “‘flagrant SWAPO strikes at heart of apartheid - First of two-part interview with the general-secretary of the South West Africa People’s Organization valuable mineral resources are in the hands of South-Africa, U.S. and British multi- nationals. As in South Africa, mineworkers are housed in single-sex hostels, while their wives and children are left be- hind in barren ‘‘homelands’’. The regime has annexed Namibia’s only deep water port, Walvis Bay and uses the country as a captive dumping ground for its manufactured products. But Pretoria is paying a heavy price to enforce its rule. Occupation carries with it an annual bill of $2-billion, and SWAPO’s People’s Liberation Army (PLAN) is striking deep into the heart of apartheid’s forces, Toivo says. It was while in the service of PLAN that Toivo was cap- tured. His conviction, along with 36 others, was denounced by the United Nations as a violation’ of Namibia’s international status. Seventeen of his eighteen years on the notorious Robbin Island were spent in segrega- tion, the remaining year in sol- itary confinement. “*There are only white war- ders on Robbin Island and they are well schooled in apartheid philosophy. Their aim in most cases is to” humiliate and pre- voke the prisoners” a re- calls. It was reacting to this pro- vocation that landed him in solitary, but not before being beatened by eight turncheon weilding guards. Solitary is no reading material, no bedding and reduced food rations. He was the only Namibian to be part of the small section which included ANC leader, Nelson Mandela, isolated by his jailers as a “‘ringleader’’. Now 66, Toivo is asked how it feels to be free. ‘‘Free?’’ he replies. ‘‘I’m merely out of prison.’ Next week: Namibia Today = a BENJAMIN MOLOISE Maythlome! toa martyr of apartheid Despite international appeals, including from the United Na- 120,000 Black families live off Alex la Guma, writer and internationalist dies at 60 Alex la Guma, one of the outstanding leaders of the South African liberation movement and a member of the Central Commit- tee of the South African Commu- nist Party prior to its dissolution in 1950, died October 11 at the age of 60. Asa young man Alex joined the Communist Party and was a member of the Cape Town district of the Party at the time it was banned. He maintained his politi- cal activity in the succeeding years, taking a foremost part in the preparations for the historic Congress of the people. . On Dec. 5, 1956 he was one of 156 arrested throughout the coun- try for their involvement in the production of the Freedom Char- ter and brought to trial on charges of treason. In 1960 Alex was again jailed, one of 2,000 political prisoners rounded up and imprisoned for 5 months without charges after the Sharpeville massacre. ANC leader Nelson Mandela cal- led for the staging of a three-day ‘solitary confinement: When — strike in May, 1961, in protest against the inauguration of a re- public following South Africa’s expulsion from the Common- wealth, Alex la Guma, as one of the leaders supporting the strike, was again arrested and detained without trial. i In 1962 he was served with a Ministerial Order confining him to his home 24 hours per day. In 1963 both Alex and hiw wife, Blanche, were detained under the 90-day, no trial law and held in He was again detained in 1966. Repres- sion had become so severe that Alex and Blanche were forced to leave South Africa that year with their two children. Alex la Guma began writing early in his career and served his apprenticeship on the liberation movement newspaper, New Age. ‘He had several short stories pub- lished before he produced his first novel — A Walk in the Night, in 1962. This was soon followed by And a Three-Fold Cord; In the Fog of the Season’s End: The 8 ¢ PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 30, 1985 Stone Country, and, Time of the Butcher Bird. He also edited Apartheid: A Collection of Writings of South African Racism by South Afri- cans, and, after extensive travel _in the Soviet Union, The Soviet Journey, published in 1978. He was busy on a new work at the time of his death. Internationalist and freedom fighter, writer and comrade, Alex la Guma had extensive inter- national contacts and was loved and respected whenever he went, not least by his own people who will deeply feel his loss. At the time of his death he had been secretary of the Afro-Asian writers’ organization for several years and, in 1969 was awarded the Lotus Prize for Literature. Earlier this year he received the Order of Friendship of the People of the USSR. Alex la Guma was also the cur- rent Chief Representative of the African National Congress . (South Africa) to Cuba, a post he had held for the past seven years. only 6 per cent. Contrary to international law, Namibia's) tions’ Security Council and the leaders of the Commonwealth Conference, the racist apartheid regime executed South African poet, Benjamin Moloise, 28, Oct. 18 on framed-up charges in the killing of a security policeman in 1982. Moloise had been on death row for the past two years. New evidence offered by the African National Congress to prove Moloise’s innocence was rejected, as were defence coun- cil’s charges of irregularities in his conviction and trial. Moloise leaves his mother, wife and his daughter, Maria, aged four years. In a statement condemning Moloise’s execution, the African National Congress called it *‘judicial murder despite appeals for clemency from the majority of humankind.”’ “This brutal response,’’ the ANC said, ‘confirms once again that racist regime is nothing less than a regime of terror which speaks only with the gun, the sjambok and the hangman’s rope. “The cold-blooded, permeditated murder of this young patriot in Pretoria’s death cell adds another crime against humanity to the daily killings of our men, women and children in the Black ghettos. / “Benjamin Moloise dedicated his life to political objectives which the whole world accepts as basic to human dignity and liberty. For this so-called crime his was taken to the gallows. ‘To our hero whose young life was destroyed by his white hangmen, we say: ‘‘Hamba Kahle’’ (Go Well). “Your martyrdom will not be in vain. It will i inspire us all — your people, our people — to even greater efforts to free our country from its racist tyranny. “To the nations of the world whose appeals to save Benjamin Moloise from the gallows, we Say that it has become more’ im- perative than ever to impose meaningful and effective sanctions against the apartheid monster. “To our people, we say that the murder of Benjamin Moloise ~ must become the signal for ever greater blows against the enemy in every corner of our land. Those who led him to his death must feel our anger and be deafened by the cry of ‘ Mayihlome’ (We | Shall Not Forget!) “The murder must not go unpunished. Our struggle continues. Victory is certain.’