Sentence was finally passed on 15 July against RUBEN ITENGULA, MICHAEL SHIKONGO, LAZARUS GUITEB and BENJAMIN UULENGA, four SWAPO members who first appeared before the Windhoek Supreme Court in February 1977. All were found guilty of charges under the Terrorism Act by Mr. Justice J. J. Strydom. SWAPO supporters dressed in the traditional colours of green, blue and red packed the public gallery of the Windhoek Supreme Court, and greeted the four men with black power salutes as they were brought up from the cells. A detachment of at least 15 armed police stood by.
Justice Strydom, passing sentence, overruled a plea by the state prosecutor that the death penalty should be imposed on all four accused without exception. Ruben Itengula, found guilty of infiltrating into northern Namibia with a submachinegun and rocket launcher, and of canvassing support for SWAPO, was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. He had been involved in battles with South African troops in which his companion and five other SWAPO members had been killed. Michael Shikongo, a farm worker in the Otjiwarongo district of Ovamboland and described as an active SWAPO supporter, was found guilty of assisting Itengula and his guerilla companion by providing food and acting as a messenger to Lazarus Guiteb. Shikongo was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment. Lazarus Carl Guiteb (35), the secretary of the Otjiwarongo SWAPO branch and an active organiser, who also told the court that he was related to Shikongo and a good friend of his, was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment for assisting guerillas. The court was told that he had led a South African patrol into an ambush, in which the fire by guerillas had been "so severe... that it cut the grass as if a lawnmower was used". Benjamin Chrispus Uulenga, who had been tried separately and found guilty on 10 May, but appeared with the other three for sentence, was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. He was convicted of entering Namibia armed with an AK-47 and two rocket launchers. after training in the Soviet Union, and of conspiring to overthrow the existing order.
Sentencing the men, Justice Strydom said that the Supreme Court did not foresee that SWAPO would ever succeed "with its methods", and therefore a protracted prison term "could sway the convicted men to a new approach". SWAPO, he said, was tolerated by the authorities and was not an illegal organisation. As a result "it required circumspection from him to sentence the convicted men".
Much of the final stage of the trial of Itengula, Shikongo and Guiteb, which resumed on 4 July after a break of more than a month, was taken up by cross-examination of Lazarus Guiteb on SWAPO's aims and methods, and his own involvement in the armed liberation struggle. He told the court that he had been a SWAPO member since 1966, and had become chairman and secretary of the Otjiwarongo branch in 1973. SWAPO, he said, was a political organisation which opposed discrimination and believed that a change could be brought about through talks and discussions and negotiations. "The present order must go", he told the court, "and in the new order there must be equal rights for all. That is what I want!"
The state's case rested heavily on SWAPO's alleged commitment to violence and its intention to create "chaos" in Namibia through armed struggle. Mr. P.A. Ferreira, described as an "expert" on SWAPO and presumably the same as Captain Petrus Albertus Ferreira, a state witness at the trial of Aaron Muchimba and Hendrik Shikongo in 1976, was one of those brought forward to testify to SWAPO's "Marxist" aims.
