Judges appointed for Oshakati High Court

THE latest appointment of Acting Judges in the High Court is breaking new ground with a senior official in the Office of the Government Attorney becoming the first State lawyer to take up a position on the High Court bench.

While three currently serving Acting Judges have been reappointed to serve on the High Court bench, the latest appointment of Judges by the President will also see two former Acting Judges return to the bench and two lawyers working in Government move to the court on an acting basis.The two State-employed lawyers who have been appointed as Acting Judges are Deputy Government Attorney Nixon Marcus and the Deputy Chief of Lower Courts in the Ministry of Justice, Naomi Shivute. Marcus has been appointed as an Acting Judge until May 15, with Shivute’s term on the bench scheduled to run until February next year.It is understood that Shivute and Otjiwarongo-based Regional Court Magistrate Christie Liebenberg, whose appointment as an Acting Judge was also announced by the Judicial Service Commission on Monday, are set to do duty at the new High Court at Oshakati, where the hearing of criminal trials is scheduled to start this month.Like Shivute, Liebenberg was appointed as an Acting Judge until February next year.The President also reappointed two veteran Judges of the High Court, Acting Judges John Manyarara and Annel Silungwe, for further terms on the bench from the start of April to the end of November this year, it was announced.Acting Judge Johan Swanepoel, a long-standing member of the Society of Advocates of Namibia who has been serving on the bench in an acting capacity from mid-September last year, was also reappointed at the High Court until the end of November.Another appointment as an Acting Judge of the High Court is that of lawyer Hosea Angula, who is one of the directors of the law firm Lorentz-Angula Inc. He has been appointed as an Acting Judge until May 15.It was further announced that retired High Court Judge Simpson Mtambanengwe has been appointed as an Acting Judge of Appeal of the Supreme Court from January 1 to the end of December this year.With his appointment, Marcus (35) is the first lawyer from the Office of the Government Attorney to be tapped to serve as an Acting Judge. He is also the first former so-called GDR kid – Namibian children who grew up in exile in the former German Democratic Republic before Namibia’s Independence – to be appointed to this position.Marcus has been attached to the Office of the Government Attorney since 2000, which was when he was admitted as a legal practitioner. He graduated at the University of Cape Town with BA and LLB degrees.Having gone into exile with his mother in 1977, he spent about two years living in refugee camps in Angola before being taken to the former East Germany, where he lived from 1979 to 1990.Shivute (45) was also in exile before Namibia’s Independence. She studied at the United Nations Institute for Namibia in Zambia from 1981 to 1986 – her husband, Chief Justice Peter Shivute, was also a student at UNIN at the time – before she served as a Magistrate in Zambia from 1987 to 1989.Shivute was appointed as a Magistrate in Namibia in 1990, working first at Outjo and becoming, in 1992, the first Magistrate to be based at the then new Oshakati Magistrate’s Court. She was the Divisional Magistrate for Oshakati from 1998 to 2002, when she became the Acting Regional Court Magistrate for Rundu and Katima Mulilo until 2006.She has been working as the Deputy Chief: Lower Courts in the Ministry of Justice since 2006, while also studying with the University of South Africa (Unisa), from where she obtained an LL.B. degree last year.Shivute has been a member of the Law Reform and Development Commission since 2004.

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