For Nadine Coleman, January 14 should have been a day to look forward to.

It was on that day that she was supposed to fly to London for a holiday with her aunt.

That visit to one of the great cities of the world was not to be, though.

Instead, immigration officers detained her at Hosea Kutako International Airport, brought her back to Windhoek and had her locked up in the city's notoriously filthy and grim Wanaheda Police Station cells for a week.

Her crime? According to what Coleman's guardian informed the High Court in an affidavit last week, the arrest and summary detention was because immigration officials had decided that Coleman did not look like a Namibian to them, and thus she had to be an illegal immigrant.

Judge Mavis Gibson appeared to be genuinely dismayed by the claims made against immigration officers in the case that she had to deal with on an urgent basis last Friday afternoon, when Coleman's guardian, Flora Maria Ntagoheka, asked the court to order the child's immediate release from custody.

At that stage, according to Ntagoheka, the child had been kept incommunicado for a week already.

Ntagoheka claimed that the reason that she was given for the refusal to allow her any contact with or access to Coleman was that she would "adversely influence the child and assist her in giving false testimony".

It was only after Ntagoheka had gone to get legal assistance from lawyer Liezel du Plessis of the firm Conradie & Damaseb last Thursday that almost a week's efforts to secure Coleman's release started bearing fruit.

By that stage, Ntagoheka stated, she had already produced documents that should prove Coleman's Namibian citizenship to immigration officials at the Ministry of Home Affairs - but all in vain.

Instead, she was informed by immigration control officers that the child was being detained because she did not look like a Namibian, despite the fact that she is in possession of both a Namibian birth certificate and a Namibian passport, Ntagoheka stated in her affidavit.

She remarked: "I am at a loss as to what a Namibian should look like."

These sorts of claims did not seem to go down at all well with the court last Friday.

As soon as the hearing on Ntagoheka's application got off to a start, Judge Gibson asked Government lawyer Mkhululi Khupe whether Namibia's Immigration Department was aware of the country's Constitution at all or whether Khupe had drawn their attention to it.

After Khupe had told her that, because of the short notice that he had received of the application, he had not had an opportunity to take proper, full instructions from his clients, the Judge told him: "Minor children should not be subjected to custody and detention of that nature at all, in terms of Article 15 (5) of the Constitution."

That part of the Constitution deals with children's rights.

It reads: "No law authorising preventive detention shall permit children under the age of sixteen (16) years to be detained."

Said the Judge during the hearing: "It's very grave and very serious."

She soon added: "This should not happen in Namibia, in terms of this Constitution."

When Ntagoheka's counsel, Christiaan Mouton, got his turn to address the court, the Judge remarked: "It might be this child today, but it could be your child next time. Or anybody's child."

She went on to tell Mouton that lawyers should sometimes consider whether immigration officers personally, rather than Government, should not be held liable to pay the legal costs of court cases that flow from such acts by the officials.

Coleman was released from custody after Judge Gibson ordered that it had to be done immediately.

MINISTRY MUST ANSWER

The Ministry of Home Affairs now has to show to the court on February 28 why the order for the child's release should not be made a final order.

In the meantime, Ntagoheka has to report, with Coleman, to an immigration officer every Friday afternoon at 15h30.

The reason for that is that apparently the immigration authorities - while claiming that she was not legally in Namibia - do not want her to leave the country either.

Khupe indicated to the court that there are allegations that she is in fact Burundian and that she had obtained fraudulent Namibian documents.

But according to Ntagoheka - both in her affidavit and yesterday in a telephone interview with The Namibian - Coleman was born in Windhoek in 1990.

Her mother, Elizabeth Coleman, was a born Namibian.

She died a year ago this week.

By that time, said Ntagoheka yesterday, Nadine Coleman had been living with an aunt in Great Britain for some time, after her father had died.

She however decided to return to Namibia after her mother's death, when Ntagoheka, who in turn is an aunt of the orphaned child's mother, became her guardian.

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