A Country Of The Rich And The Elite

SANNA Dukeleni lost her house in Aimablaagte, Mariental, in early 2004 because she was unable to pay a butchery bill of N$168. She was 45 years old at the time, taking care of five children of her own.

The debt had allegedly grown to over N$3 000, including penalties and collection fees by the time the law firm Garbers and Associates got a default judgement from the courts.Garbers sold it on auction for N$1 800 to one the law firm’s employees, Melanie Bamberger, who soon sold it on for N$25 000 after she had tried to sell it back to Dukeleni for N$20 000. Dukeleni was on the streets for months and now lives with one of her children, the prized property she once owned only a sad and distant memory.Dukeleni’s case is not an isolated one. In 2009, The Namibian reported that Alleta /Goagoses of Gobabis lost her house worth N$280 000, which was sold to a former messenger of the court for N$15 000, what Standard Bank claimed she owed after her failure to pay a N$1 000 bank loan.This week, Ombudsman John Walters took the steps that Namibian lawmakers and courts should have taken over the past two decades – to make it difficult for banks and other lenders to take away people’s homes to cover puny debts.Walters has challenged a default judgement in the High Court against John Orlam of Windhoek, who is facing the loss of a house valued at N$390 000 to pay a debt of N$48 000 owed to his former employer.’To be left homeless is not dignified,’ argues the Ombudsman in his court challenge. ‘To not be able to pay a debt in a one-off payment, and to lose one’s home because of this economic reality, is discriminatory on grounds of economic status.’The Ombudsman hits the nail on the head about dignity and people’s rights. In a Namibia where unemployment is rife and the economic conditions are harsh towards the majority of the people, rights to basic human needs such as shelter should be promoted and safeguarded.Even in hardcore capitalist nations of the West, the ones we love to denigrate as not caring about the needy and their poor, they have laws that make it difficult to seize the roof over people’s heads and throw them onto the streets.In some capitalist countries, for example, banks cannot simply get a default judgement against a family that has failed to pay the mortgage’s monthly instalment for several months and evict them with the help of the messenger of the court. The process is a little more cumbersome.Nor do those capitalist nations allow lenders to auction/sell a house for less than the value of the property and then still go after the debtor for the remainder of the amount, as is often the case in Namibia. The argument here is that banks are in the lending business and can therefore not be let off the hook by giving loans larger than the value of the property the borrower buys. This is aimed at limiting mortgage abuses and to discourage lenders from loading all the risks onto the borrower. After all, lending is a risk-based business. It makes no sense for the lender not to shoulder part of that risk.The way things work in Namibia there is massive abuse. The majority of our people are illiterate about the manner of loans and repossessions. They ignore summonses, for instance, because the courts are a foreign and distant institution to them. Apart from this, the cost of approaching the courts is prohibitive.Then there are people who ‘know the system’ and thus game it to get the property of the ignorant and vulnerable. Many lawyers, property dealers and bank employees are known to collude by tracking people who are unable to pay their debts. And once the inevitable happens, they rush to attach property and purchase such through friends and family (an insider trading of sorts).Instead of making ‘black economic empowerment’ and ‘ownership of national resources’ as the priorities in a ‘new struggle’, lawmakers and law reform agents ought to set measures to protect the most vulnerable in society. The laws must make it difficult for anyone to take away immovable property from another. Some of these dubious deals must be reversed and the culprits must be punished.Shelter is one of the top three basic needs for any person to prosper. As the Ombudsman says: ‘The children’s right’s to be cared for by their parents fall by the wayside’ when their home is taken away.Unless strict measures are taken to safeguard the vulnerable, Namibia will continue to belong to the rich and elite only. This cannot be right or just.

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