Courage gives hope amid justice delays in 2008

THE clogged court rolls and habitual delays in finalising cases that have characterised Namibia’s overburdened justice system in recent years continued to exert a strangle hold over the country’s courts over the past year.

While scores of cases made their way through Namibia’s courts and reached finalisation during 2008 – some making the news, but most not – the justice system continued to labour under a staggering workload, with long delays in disposing of cases the frequent and inevitable result. The outlook for 2009 looks little better. Court rolls in the High Court and the country’s two busiest Regional Courts, in Windhoek, are full for the first half of the year and cases are already being set down for trial in the second half of 2009.
The opening of a second seat for the High Court, at Oshakati, this year is set to present that court with a further challenge in getting its ever increasing quantity of work done.
Over the past year, though, the High Court has succeeded in finalising an impressive number of cases – many of which were long-pending criminal matters that had been languishing in the country’s equally overburdened Regional Courts for years without being finalised. In most of the criminal matters that were finalised, severe prison terms were imposed.
The challenges posed by the load of work that Namibia’s courts are expected to do aside, at least two events in the country’s judicial system during 2008 should be cause for hope and faith in Namibia’s standing as a country respecting the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.
The one event was the High Court judgement in which Government’s expropriation of four privately owned farms was set aside in early March because the provisions of the Commercial Land Reform Act were not adhered to in the expropriation process. While this ruling could be seen as a blow to Government’s land reform policy – or rather to the way the policy is being implemented – it also boosts Namibia’s standing as a country that has committed itself to respecting the rule of law, equality before the law, and the independence of the judiciary.
For the same reasons, a decision made by the Prosecutor General in April is of equal importance. By deciding to prosecute seven people, including former Deputy Minister and Swapo Party Youth League Secretary Paulus Kapia and former Swapo National Assembly member Ralph Blaauw, in connection with the alleged theft or embezzlement of a N$30 million investment of the Social Security Commission in early 2005, the Office of the Prosecutor General has demonstrated its independence and given an indication that political affiliations and past occupation of high office would not shield people from being prosecuted if they are suspected of having committed a crime.

Among the notable cases dealt with in 2008:

February 11: An ethnically-charged dispute over Oshiwambo-speaking cattle owners’ use of grazing areas in the western Kavango Region ends in the High Court in defeat for the farmers, with Acting Judge John Manyarara ordering the farmers’ eviction from the communal areas under the control of the Ukwangali Traditional Authority where they have been keeping their cattle for years.
February 25: In the High Court, Acting Judge Christie Liebenberg sentences a former Lüderitz fish processing plant worker, Andreas Negongo David (34), to a 30-year jail term for stabbing a co-worker, Geralda Eugenia Appolus (29), to death on June 24 2004.
February 25: Johannes Amunyela (37), who murdered his girlfriend, Aina Niita Shiimi (26), at Ondangwa on July 22 2005 by stabbing her 23 times with a knife, receives a 30-year prison term.
February 26: A murder termed ‘senseless’ and ‘inexplicable’ leaves 30-year-old Jackson Kamati with a 25-year jail term. Kamati was sentenced by Acting Judge Christie Liebenberg, who convicted him in the High Court on a murder charge stemming from the fatal shooting of a friend of Kamati, Hilma Mekondjo Nangupolo (26), in Windhoek on July 24 2005.
February 29: Unemployed farmworker Hendrik Swarts (35) receives an effective sentence of 40 years’ imprisonment from Acting Judge Christie Liebenberg in the High Court, after he admitted that he strangled and robbed an elderly Leonardville area farm resident, Anna Reed, in her home during the night of September 21 to 22 2006.
March 6: In a ruling by Judge Louis Muller and Acting Judge Annel Silungwe, the High Court declares a decision by the Minister of Lands to expropriate four privately owned farms as invalid.
March 14: A deadly stabbing that ended the life of 20-year-old Happy Mulela Kabajani at Katima Mulilo on April 19 2003 leaves her former boyfriend, Morris Mazila Sibitwani (29), with a 30-year jail term after Acting Judge Annel Silungwe sentences him in the High Court.
April 28: Acting Judge Hosea Angula sentences a Mariental resident, Ashley van Wyk (24), to an effective prison term of 31 years for murdering a 15-year-old boy, Kain Pienaar, near the Hardap Region town and stealing clothing and a pair of shoes from the boy on May 15 2006.
April 29: Ndjaba Luciana Augustus (23), is sent to prison for 20 years after he admits before Acting Judge Hosea Angula that he repeatedly raped and sodomised a 78-year-old woman in the Ondangwa district on November 14 2007.
May 13: Immanuel Uri-Khob (41), who was convicted in the High Court on charges of murder and assault in connection with an incident in which he beat his common-law wife, Annalise Gawanas (38), to death near Okahandja during the night of August 19 to 20 2003, is sentenced by Acting Judge John Manyarara to an effective 27 years’ imprisonment.
May 22: Former security guard Bonifatius Konstantinus (26) is sentenced to a 55-year jail term for murdering and robbing a school teacher, Wilhelmine Amukwaya Tshafa (38), near Oshakati on March 2 2007. With the sentencing in the High Court, Acting Judge John Manyarara tells Konstantinus that the statement in which he had admitted guilt to the crimes was ‘blood-curdling and devoid of any remorse’.
June 2: Former Police officer Dominic Mwilima (45) receives an effective jail term of 20 years at the end of his trial in the High Court. Acting Judge John Manyarara convicted Mwilima on counts of murder and defeating or obstructing the course of justice in connection with an incident in which he shot dead a Zambian alleged dagga dealer, Wengar Mutafela (22), at Katima Mulilo on August 15 2005.
August 25: Double murderer Angeles Mikini (40) is sentenced by Judge Nate Ndauendapo to an effective 70 years and six months in jail for shooting dead his wife, Magdalena Maholland-Mikini (34), and her cousin, John Robert Orlam (41), in Windhoek in May 2007. Mikini’s sentence is, except for life terms of imprisonment, the third longest prison term ever imposed by a Namibian court.
September 19: The murder trial of a Caprivi Region resident, Alfred Simasiku Sezuni (31), ends in the High Court with Judge Louis Muller sentencing him to an effective 32 years’ imprisonment for murdering a farm manager, Jacques Erasmus (41), by shooting him with an AK47 rifle near Katima Mulilo on March 1 2005.
November 10: In the Windhoek Regional Court, Magistrate Dinnah Usiku sentences self-admitted cattle thief Jan Swartbooi (30) to a 30-year jail term for stealing one ox at a farm near Okahandja in October 2007. Having been convicted of stock theft twice before this case, Swartbooi came in the firing line of the extreme sentences that the Stock Theft Amendment Act of 2004 prescribes for repeat stock thieves.
December 1: A full bench of the High Court rules, in a judgement written by Judge Collins Parker, that the 2007 Labour Act’s prohibition of the labour hire system is not unconstitutional. ‘(T)he core nature and character of labour hire partake of some of the aspects of letting and hiring of slaves as chattels under Roman law, and, therefore, cannot have a lawful place in Namibia,’ Judge Parker comments in his judgement.
December 3: The trial of Noordoewer resident Andries van Neel (36), also known as ‘Tough Guy’, ends in the High Court with Judge Nate Ndauendap
o sentencing Van Neel to a 15-year prison term for raping an eight-year-old girl at his home on September 12 2005.