People who rape children will be sent to prison, and they will be sent there for a very, very long time.

This is because when crimes such as rape threaten the fabric of society, the courts must wreak vengeance on those who commit such deeds, and the other purposes of courts' sentences, such as rehabilitation and deterrence, will have to take a back seat.

That was the message from Judge President Petrus Damaseb yesterday, when he dismissed the appeal of a former Okahandja teacher sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment for the rape of two eight-year-old girls.

Judge President Damaseb, with Judge Mavis Gibson agreeing with his verdict, made it clear that, as far as the High Court is concerned, it is now really gloves off in the fight against rapists in Namibia.

Considering the nature of the case that they had before them, such a reaction is quite understandable.

That is because the crimes that former teacher Festus Israel Veundjua Kaanjuka, then 38 years old, was convicted of were exceptionally brutal examples of child rape, even in a country now almost used to such acts of brutality against children.

In addition, Kaanjuka could probably not have chosen a worse timing for the hearing of his appeal against the two consecutive jail terms of twenty years each to which Windhoek Regional Court Magistrate Gert Retief sentenced him on June 16 last year.

Kaanjuka's appeal was heard on Thursday last week, within three weeks after the rape and murder of two small children at Swakopmund and Windhoek were met by public outrage over the seemingly unstoppable wave of violent crime washing over Namibia.

The nature of the evidence in his case also counted heavily against Kaanjuka.

Part of that evidence was a collection of photographs showing the bedroom where the rapes took place.

The scene was shocking in the extreme.

On the bed, on a carpet on the floor, and on a bedside table were pools of blood - testimony to the injuries to her private parts that one of the girls suffered when Kaanjuka raped her.

Kaanjuka had claimed that he was in such a drunken state that he could not remember having raped the two children at Okahandja during the night between October 12 and 13 2002.

This claim was rejected by the Judge President yesterday.

He also dismissed an argument by Kaanjuka's lawyer, Ephraim Kasuto, that since the two offences had been committed so close in time to each other, they should have been treated as one for the purposes of sentencing.

Once again, Judge President Damaseb made it clear that someone who rapes will be made to take full responsibility for his crime, or each of his crimes if he is a multiple rapist.

"These offences were committed against two young girls without much regard for their dignity or human rights," the Judge President stated.

"To treat them now as one person and not as two separate individuals whose interests must be protected in their own right, would run counter to the spirit of the Combating of Rape Act of 2000, which seeks to assert the rights of victims of sexual offences by providing for very severe penalties for those who engage in sexual conduct proscribed by the Act."

The very long term of imprisonment that Kaanjuka received was therefore proper, and did not induce a sense of shock, in the Judge President's opinion.

If anything was shocking, it was the crimes, and the High Court has noticed not just that, but also the public outrage that this sort of crime has engendered.

Judge President Damaseb commented: "Brutality against the vulnerable in our society, especially women and children, has reached a crisis point.

Small children have become the target of men who are unable to control their base sexual desires.

What once may have been unthinkable had now become a quotidian occurrence - a fact which the learned Magistrate, as he did, was entitled to take judicial notice of.

"These crimes against the vulnerable in our society evoke a sense of helplessness in the national character.

The courts are doing their utmost best, through very stiff sentences, to deter men from raping women and small children, but, apparently, without much effect.

Rehabilitation and deterrence should therefore have very little relevance when it comes to considering sentences for these kind of sexual offenders.

"I am aware that laws do not make people moral, but the courts as custodian of our laws must exact vengeance for people's actions, when those threaten the fabric of our society, lest the general populace lose faith in the legal system and resort to means not concordant with our Constitution.

"Those who commit despicable and heinous crimes against women and children, crimes that we have, shamefully, now become accustomed to as a community, should expect harsh sentences from the courts of this land."

Turning to Kaanjuka himself, the Judge President remarked: "What he did is beyond comprehension.

It represents the apogee of brutality by an adult against two vulnerable children.

Long sentences are, in my view, a categorical imperative for those, like the appellant (Kaanjuka), who commit rape against young children."

State advocate Ruth Herunga had opposed Kaanjuka's appeal in last week's hearing.

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