‘I fear for my life’

Isaaks is a chief human resources officer at the Keetmanshoop municipality and claims her supervisor, the strategic executive for human resources, Elvis Mukaya, assaulted her in January last year. Mukaya, who wrote a report on the incident, claims he was the one who was thrown with a pack of papers as he was leaving her office. Isaaks, on the other hand, says the two of them had a difference of opinion about an employee's social security application when Mukaya lost his temper. “My supervisor picked up all the paperwork, threw it across the table, banged the table and walked out. “I was shocked, I picked up the papers and threw them into the corridor, because I'm not his dog. Then I wanted to close my door,” Isaaks says. In her attempt to close the door Mukaya started pushing back from outside, she claims. “In the altercation, the door hit me across my left eye and cheek, my breast and shoulder, and I fell and hit my elbow on the bookshelf in my office,” she says. Isaaks says she opened a case of common assault at the local police station. Mukaya was arrested and has appeared in the Keetmanshoop Magistrate's Court. His case was postponed to 3 May, and he was granted bail of N$1 000. Isaaks says she will not have peace until her superiors attend to her grievance. “We are supposed to have policies and guidelines to give guidance to such matters. But they do not exist at the municipality. “I wrote a report on the incident and handed it to the former mayor. But there has been no internal investigation spearheaded by the chief executive officer (CEO), because they are friends,” she says. Mukaya, however, says he wrote a report on the incident as requested by the town's CEO, Desmond Basson. He claims Isaaks lost her temper and hit him with the pack of papers on his back as he was leaving her office. “The crux of the matter is that Ms Isaaks feels why should a person from the Zambezi region be the strategic executive for human resources at Keetmanshoop,” Mukaya says. Isaaks rubbishes these claims, saying a culture of violence and cronyism is rife at the municipality.She claims Basson protects those in his inner circle.“In December a junior chased his supervisor with a knife in the corridors. A 59-year old woman's leg was kicked by another colleague in full view of councillors and senior staff. Nothing was done about it,” she says. Basson acknowledges the incidents. “Mr Mukaya dealt with it. It was reported to me, and the employee who was chasing his superior resigned subsequently. The incident of the elderly woman I heard about, but it was never reported to me,” he says.About the incident between Isaaks and Mukaya, Basson says Isaaks did not follow the correct procedures. “ . . . because she did that, we have to wait for the courts to pronounce themselves. If the courts find him guilty, we will institute internal procedures,” Basson says. He denies that the municipality has no policies guiding it.

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