During the war itself, his SWAPO acquired a reputation for harsh treatment of dissent. In 1976, the organization’s head of information, Andreas Shipanga, was arrested and accused of siding with militant young Namibians who regarded the Nujoma leadership as uninspired and hidebound. The crisis led to vicious purges of the party’s ranks, with hundreds of young would-be freedom fighters detained in camps in Angola and Zambia and reportedly beaten, tortured and even killed, facing often unfounded charges of spying for South Africa.
The abuses were not limited to the insurgents. A South African-sponsored police unit called Koevoet — Afrikaans for crowbar — hunted down SWAPO guerrillas, displaying the bodies on the mudguards of their armored trucks like hunting trophies.
No single event encapsulated the opposing perceptions of Namibia’s war as much as a bloody South African airborne incursion at Cassinga, 160 miles north of the Namibian border in Angola, on May 4, 1978. The episode, which left around 600 dead, is now commemorated as a national holiday, Cassinga Day.
South Africa said that its forces struck a military command, control and training center for insurgents, and successfully engaged Cuban forces stationed nearby. SWAPO said the South Africans attacked a refugee transit camp, supporting its assertion with grisly photographs of a mass grave. By most accounts, Mr. Nujoma won the battle of perceptions, gaining him broad international sympathy.
As early as the 1970s, SWAPO had won the recognition of the United Nations as the “sole and authentic representative” of Namibia’s people, buttressing its claim to legitimacy. Crisscrossing the globe as a spokesman for his cause, Mr. Nujoma secured backing from such disparate sources as the Soviet Union, which supplied weapons and training, and Nordic countries, in particular Sweden, which provided humanitarian assistance.
