‘Reparations’ For Caprivi Detainees
FREEDOM is the most precious commodity in life. Without it life is worthless. Especially for people, it is on these basic freedoms that everything else is built. Doom fills the void when freedom is taken away with no glimmer of hope of regaining it.
Thus, many of us cannot imagine what the 43 men who were released this week from the Caprivi high treason trial have been going through from between nine to nearly 14 years of detention after Judge Elton Hoff basically declared they had no case to answer to at all.
They may be free now, but their ordeal is far from over. It is bad enough being wrongly accused, convicted and sentenced based on cooked-up or circumstantial evidence. But how disorienting it must be to go 13 and a half years without any conclusion as these men came to hear in an instant Judge Elton Hoff declare them not guilty and free to go home?
Having lived in custody that long, many may have resigned themselves to never emerging from jail again. Their elation at being found innocent and given back their freedom might yet, and very soon, be replaced by hate, bitterness and despair. They might even view their freedom as meaningless because their lives have been destroyed by the State. Whatever love they had for Namibia might have disappeared. Therein lies the rub.
It is logical that several of the released men are already thinking about suing the government for wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution. But even if they were to succeed in getting millions of dollars in compensation it will not change the fact that they were robbed of freedom needlessly long. Some may have harboured thoughts of having an independent Caprivi (which is not a crime) and thus could rationalise how they ended up in custody. But there may be others among them who did not even know, let alone support, the idea of Caprivi seceding from Namibia, which according to our Constitution is a unitary state.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with advocating that any part of Namibia should secede to become an independent country. This much was confirmed by one of the lead prosecutors in the case, Taswald July. He said on March 15 2004: “Constitutional changes, however radical and far-reaching, may be lawfully sought by legitimate and constitutional means only. When the methods used become unlawful and unconstitutional, individuals using them commit high treason.
“The accused are not on trial because of their political beliefs or affiliations, but because of the criminal actions that they waged against the Namibian government and its people on the 2nd of August [1999] in the Caprivi Region. The Namibian people are a peace-loving nation who cherish the freedoms that we as Namibians enjoy and never again should any Namibian have to resort to violence to settle national differences. They could and should be solved through dialogue and persuasion as provided for in the Constitution of Namibia.”
July correctly emphasised that none of the about 120 accused were on trial for their political aspirations. So we may yet see more acquittals from the 65 remaining accused who the judge felt had a case to answer to.
There is enough blame to apportion to the police, military, prosecution, the defence and the judiciary for the unacceptably long duration of the trial. The justice system has just been found wanting due to cases taking long to conclude. Improvements need to be made to avoid delays in cases as seems to be common these days, as ‘justice delayed’ is truly ‘justice denied’.
It should not be forgotten that the system affects real lives and genuine freedoms, which our recent apartheid history will remind us of. The process many of the Caprivi high treason suspects have gone through should never happen to anyone again.
Alongside the changes made to the system, the state must put arrogance aside and make those who are found not guilty to feel they are part of Namibia. That may amount to starting some reparation programme aimed at the restitution of the freedom of those citizens who got caught up in the web of some of their countrymen’s criminal actions. The reparations must include something from the ‘nationhood and pride’ campaign that the government has set up to instil a sense of ‘Namibianness’. After all, the absence of feeling a part of Namibia is the reason people want Caprivi to be an independent state.
Let our independent Namibia embrace the idea of reparations if we want to mould a state that everyone can be proud to live in.