Background
Herman Toivo ya Toivo was born on August 22, 1924, at Omungundu in the north, son of a catechist at the Finnish Mission at Odanga.
Herman Toivo ya Toivo was born on August 22, 1924, at Omungundu in the north, son of a catechist at the Finnish Mission at Odanga.
Educated at St Mary’s Mission School, run by Anglicans. After teacher’s training he returned to St Mary’s to be a schoolmaster and continued his studies under a Finnish missionary.
In 1942 he enlisted in the South African army and served until 1945 in South-West Africa and South Africa as a guard at military installations. On demobilisation he went to Cape Town where he took a job and continued his studies in his spare time. He joined the Modem Youth Society, a multi-racial organisation which supported national liberation movements. In 1958 he was arrested and deported to northern Ovamboland to live in restriction. His offence was nationalist “agitation" and smuggling out a taperecorded protest to the United Nations in New York.
On September 9, 1966, he was arrested and flown to Pretoria. He was harshly interrogated at South African Police headquarters at Compol and then kept in solitary confinement as “Accused No. 24” until the trial began on August 7, 1967. He was charged under the Terrorism Act gazetted on June 21, 1967, and made retroactive to June 27, 1962, the date when the Sabotage Bill the General Law (Amendment). Act came into force in South Africa. He was accused of receiving training in guerrilla warfare and of acts of “terrorism with the intent to overthrow the present government in South West Africa and replace it with a SWAPO government”.
His statement to the court accusing South Africa of abusing the “sacred trust” of the mandate said: “It is not really a question of whether South Africa treats us well or badly but that South-West Africa is our country and we wish to be our masters.” He answered those who pointed to Com¬munist language in SWAPO documents by emphasising that another form of language was much more evident: “Many documents finish with an appeal to the Almighty to guide us in our struggle for freedom."
Although by nature a man who believed that “violence is a sin against God and my fellow men” he argued: "Is it surprising that in such times my countrymen have taken up arms? Violence is truly fearsome. But who would not defend his property and himself against a robber? And we believe that South Africa has robbed us of our country.” After that compassionate address Toivo, a father of four children, was sentenced on February 9, 1968, to 20 years’ imprisonment with eight others from South-West Africa.
Studious by nature, he as a teacher accepted the role of spokesman for his less well-educated friends at the trial. His deep religious convictions made him oppose all violence until he recognised that he could not “remain a spectator in the struggle of my people for freedom".