30-year jail term over Outjo farm murder

A FORMER farm worker convicted of having robbed and murdered his employer in the Outjo area two and a half years ago has been sentenced to an effective prison term of 30 years.

Acting judge Orben Sibeya sentenced Johannes Katanga (32) in the Windhoek High Court to 30 years’ imprisonment on a charge of murder and a concurrent jail term of 10 years on a count of robbery with aggravating circumstances yesterday.

Katanga was found guilty on the two charges a month ago, following a trial in which he denied guilt on both counts.

Acting judge Sibeya concluded in his judgement last month that the evidence heard during Katanga’s trial proved that he attacked and fatally injured the farmer Karl-Heinz Kossmann at the farm Aasvoëlkrans in the Outjo district on 25 September 2017, and that he also robbed Kossmann during the same incident.

Kossmann (70) died after he had been taken to a hospital at Outjo following the attack.

Katanga was arrested on the same day, after a revolver and a pistol belonging to Kossmann and his wife and a cellphone of Kossmann had been found in his possession when he was searched at a police roadblock between Khorixas and Outjo.

Kossmann had been shot in the right thigh, had a severe head injury, and several of his ribs and also his sternum had been fractured when he was attacked by Katanga.

Before he was transported to the hospital where he died, Kossmann told a neighbour who had been summoned to his house that he had been attacked suddenly from behind.

At the scene of the attack, broken pieces of a wooden fencing pole were found, and bloody drag marks were observed leading from outside to the inside of the house, which was in disarray and had been ransacked.

Katanga claimed during his trial that Kossmann was accidentally shot when the two of them were involved in a scuffle after Kossmann had scolded him about the size of logs of wood that he had been cutting on Kossmann’s instructions.

However, acting judge Sibeya concluded that Katanga’s version, which emerged only when he testified in his own defence and had not been put to the state’s witnesses earlier during the trial, was “highly improbable”.

“The murder was premeditated, calculated and gruesomely perpetrated,” the judge commented during the sentencing yesterday.

He remarked that farmers contribute substantially to Namibia’s economy, providing employment and improving the lives of their employees and their families. However, he added, that farmers are also falling victim to violent robberies at an alarming rate, with precious lives lost in the process.

He also noted that, after Katanga had been found guilty, he told the court he felt bad that his employer died – but still denied having caused Kossmann’s death.

The judge further recounted that Kossmann’s wife, Gesa Kossmann, said in a sworn statement provided to the court that the killing of her husband had left her traumatised. She added that she would try to forgive Katanga – but wished that he should never set foot out of prison again.

The fact that Katanga was a first-time offender had to be weighed against the calculated and gruesome nature of the murder, acting judge Sibeya said. He also considered that Katanga had been in a position of trust as an employee, and that he bit the hand that fed him, the judge said.

Katanga was kept in custody since his arrest.

Defence lawyer Kenneth Siambango represented him during his trial. State advocate Tangeni Iitula prosecuted.

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