TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 2

Subsection 17

Aksie Kontra 435

137 There is also evidence that these funds were used to mobilise the white right wing, which formed an organisation called Aksie Kontra 435. One of its members, Mr Horst Klenz, applied for amnesty [AM0316/96] for his involvement, with two others, (Mr Leonard Veneendal and Mr Darryl Stopforth) in a grenade attack on an UNTAG regional office at Outjo in northern South West Africa during which a security guard was killed. Arrested soon afterwards, the three escaped back to South Africa when the police van in which they were travelling was ambushed by two white men (known to the Commission only by the pseudonyms of ‘Archer’ and ‘Barker’) who killed one of the police escorts¹¹ .

138 All five were arrested in South Africa and held incommunicado under section 29 of the Terrorism Act. No charges were ever laid and they were all eventually released. During their detention the five were never interviewed by South West African authorities.

CCB covert operations

139 Another dimension involved the deployment of CCB members to South West Africa. Testimony in regard to the CCB operation was given to the Commission by the CCB’s intelligence head, Colonel Christoffel Nel. He told the Commission:

Prior to the election in Namibia all the regions [of the CCB] were told to do something there. No matter where you worked. And this was a recipe for disaster. Because people who used to work in Europe now had all of a sudden to do covert work in Namibia. Where it normally takes about five years to get a covert system set up, these guys had to do this overnight. And it was not surprising when a kitbag full of limpet mines was found in northern Namibia with a Special Forces’ golf membership card in it. It was not surprising to see [people] roaming the blocks around Anton Lubowski’s house and still the confusion today about who shot him. Because it could have been anybody from any of these other regions. I was in region one [Botswana] and region four [Angola, Zambia and Tanzania] primarily, we were doing a job in northern Namibia. We had no interest, we had no knowledge of the area but we had to do it. Because we were told double up your production and you will get a production bonus.’ (Section 29 hearing, 18 May 1998.)

140 There is evidence in the Commission’s possession that the task of attacking the UNTAG facility was assigned to a senior CCB member. Captain Pieter Botes. whose area of CCB responsibility was Swaziland and Mozambique. He was assigned five operatives for the mission. As noted above, five detainees were held in South Africa in connection with the UNTAG case.

The killing of Anton Lubowski

141 On 12 September 1989, Advocate Anton Lubowski was shot dead outside his home in Windhoek. At the time, he was the secretary general of SWAPO and the highest-ranking white person in the organisation. One human rights violation submission and two amnesty applications were made to the Commission on this case. The human rights violation submission was made by Ms Molly Lubowski, the deceased’s mother. She appealed to the Commission to identify her son’s killers and to clear him of allegations that he was a South African MI agent.

142 Considerable attention was given to this case, including a trip to Namibia and meetings with the judicial authorities there. A vast amount of documentation was supplied to the Commission by various parties.

143 Neither of the amnesty applications – by Mr Derrick Nielsen [AM 4792/97] and Mr Horst Klenz [AM0316/96] – provided any evidence of substance. Nielsen originally applied for amnesty for the murders of both Lubowski and David Webster but supplied no details. Later he sent letters to the Commission. In one of these, dated 4 December 1996, he alleges that he supplied an AK-47 to Mr Ferdie Barnard for “a hit” and that three days later Barnard “bragged that they had got rid of a kafferboetie”. He said that the name Lubowski was mentioned. The Commission paid several visits to Pollsmoor prison where Nielsen was serving a sentence for a traffic offence in 1997, but he refused to discuss his application and divulged no further details. His main interest seemed to be to bargain information for a speedy release. Given these facts and the developments pertaining to the Webster murder, the Commission is of the view that little credence can be given to this application.

144 Horst Klenz’s application contained only some hearsay information to the effect that SWAPO had killed Lubowski but contained no corroborating evidence.

145 In an amnesty application [AM1909/96] not directly related to this murder, Mr Kevin Trytsman, an associate of Ferdi Barnard, claimed that Barnard had told him that the CCB had committed the murder. This is also the view of Christoffel Nel as expressed in the quote cited earlier. Elsewhere in his hearing, Nel described the Lubowski murder, along with the killings of Ms Dulcie September and Mr David Webster, as one of the CCB’s “successes”.

146 This was also the conclusion of Judge J Levy of the Namibian Supreme Court, who conducted a lengthy inquest into the case. In a 144-page judgement, Levy named Irish mercenary Donald Acheson as the assassin and, as accomplices, CCB members Joe Verster, Staal Burger, Abraham ‘Slang’ van Zyl, Calla Botha, Leon ‘Chappies’ Maree, Johan Niemoller jr, Captain Wouter Basson (aka Christo Britz), Ferdi Barnard, and Charles Wildschudt (formerly Neelse).

THE COMMISSION BELIEVES THERE ARE NO GROUNDS TO CONTRADICT JUDGE LEVY’S GENERAL FINDING PERTAINING TO THE INVOLVEMENT OF THE CCB AND ITS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CONSPIRACY THAT LED TO THIS KILLING.