African Activist Archive

This movie about the struggle for independence from South Africa's illegal occupation was shown widely in the U.S., especially in Lutheran churches and community. The film covers police brutality in Namibia, the role of the South African military and includes interviews with people who were tortured. The movie discusses the League of Nations, jail, young people, the SWAPO (South West Africa People's Organization), church presses, identity cards, an occupying force, road blocks, freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, the Security Police, refugees, internal exile, so-called homelands, apartheid, diamonds, uranium, copper, minerals, homelands, mines, the white minority, the South African army, women, children, bayoneting, work under contract, Ovamboland, a puppet government, the DTA (Democratic Turnhalle Alliance), the New Testament story of oppression and liberation, freedom of speech, the printing press of the Lutheran Ovambo-Kavango Church, mass murders, white South Africans, the Dutch Reformed Church, Afrikaner, the International Court of Justice (ICJ, World Court), non-aligned nations, acts of violence against the South African occupying army, economic sanctions, Western nations, Dutch oil exports to South Africa, profits, human rights, rich people, the consequence of investment, racism, divestment, and divesting church funds. It includes interview with Namibian and U.S. Lutheran church leaders who were playing an important role in the independence struggle. People interviewed include Lutheran Pastor Zephania Kameeta; Aaron Mushimba, lead defendant in the Swakopmund Terrorism Act trial; The Rev. Theo Kotze, a South African Methodist minister who was a leader of the Christian Institute in South Africa before he went into exile in the U.K., where he was living when this film was made; Albertus Maasdorp, General Secretary of the Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN); Netherlands Parliament member Henk Couprie; Ralston Deffenbaugh, an American lawyer who had been in Namibia to observe political trials on behalf of the Lutheran World Federation; Dr. Edward May of Lutheran World Ministries; Bishop Colin Winter of the Anglican Diocese of Damaraland in Namibia, who was expelled from Namibia and living in the U.K.; The Rev. David Vikner of the Lutheran Church in America (LCA); and The Rev. Kenneth Senft, who was the director for the Division for Mission in North America of the Lutheran Church in America. The movie covers South African activities in Angola including the massacre of civilians at Kassinga. [Note: The name in the movie, Ralie Deffenbaugh is Ralston Deffenbaugh. Sources include www.parlement.com.] This movie was provided by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Archives

African Activist Archive

A Cry for Freedom

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