High Court appoints Zimbabwean and Botswanan judges as Esi Schimming-Chase makes Supreme Court history

Three judges from Zimbabwe and Botswana have been appointed as judges of Namibia’s High Court.

The Office of the Judiciary announced yesterday that a former judge of the High Court of Botswana, Gabriel Komboni, has been appointed as a judge of Namibia’s High Court on a contract for two years and five months.

A retired judge of the High Court of Zimbabwe, David Mangota, and a former judge of Zimbabwe’s High Court, James Devittie, have also been appointed as acting judges of Namibia’s High Court for three years, the Office of the Judiciary said.

The appointment of Komboni, Mangota and Devittie are with effect from the start of March.

Also yesterday, former High Court judge Esi Schimming-Chase was sworn in as an appeal judge of the Supreme Court.

Schimming-Chase is the first woman to be permanently appointed as a judge of Namibia’s Supreme Court.

She served as a judge of the High Court since April 2021, was an acting judge of the High Court in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2020, and has been an acting judge of appeal of the Supreme Court over the past three years.

Chief justice Peter Shivute, who administered the oath of office to Schimming-Chase, said Namibia’s first post-independence years were marked by low representation of women in the country’s judiciary.

“Over time, and through deliberate effort, gender representation within the Namibian judiciary has improved significantly. This is most evident in the lower courts and in the High Court,” he said.

Women judges currently constitute the majority of the High Court bench, Shivute added, before saying: “A judiciary must, in time, come to reflect the spectrum of the people it serves and progress in this regard is both necessary and, as our own experience demonstrates, achievable.”

Shivute said at the opening of the judiciary’s legal year for 2026 on 5 February that a shortage of judicial officers “has reached a critical point” in Namibia.

The chief justice said two long-serving appeal judges of the Supreme Court, Sylvester Mainga and Elton Hoff, retired last August and at the end of January this year, respectively.

“The shortage at the High Court is particularly dire in the civil stream,” Shivute said, adding that the workload of judges handling civil cases in the High Court increased by nearly 60% from 2024 to 2025.

“Judges of the High Court, in both the criminal stream and the civil stream, together with the court staff who support them, are operating under immense and sustained pressure – pressure that underscores the urgent institutional need for adequate judicial appointments and corresponding support if the administration of justice is to remain timely, effective and resilient,” he said.

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