Nguvauva claims slander

DEPUTY Fisheries and Marine Resources Minister Kilus Nguvauva is set to hear in the High Court in Windhoek tomorrow whether he has overcome a first hurdle in his bid to get N$100 000 out of an Omaheke Region resident whom he accuses of defamation.

Nguvauva is suing Maleagi Ndisiro, a traditional leader living at Okombepera in the Aminuis constituency, for N$100 000 over remarks that he claims Ndisiro made on the Otjiherero radio service of the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation on October 13 and 15 2007.A trial on Nguvauva’s claim against Ndisiro started in the High Court before Acting Judge Nixon Marcus this week.With Nguvauva’s case having been closed after the Deputy Minister had testified on Tuesday, Ndisiro’s lawyer, Patrick Kauta, yesterday asked Acting Judge Marcus to dismiss the claim without requiring Ndisiro to first present evidence in his defence to the court.Acting Judge Marcus indicated that he will give his judgement on Kauta’s application tomorrow.Nguvauva claims that Ndisiro defamed him and injured his reputation through remarks that he made, and which were broadcast on the NBC’s Otjiherero radio service, at a Flag Hoisting Ceremony at Okombepera near Aminuis in mid-October 2007.The ceremony was meant to mark unity between the Red Flag and the Green Flag communities – that is, between the Ovaherero and Ovambanderu communities – of that area.Nguvauva claims that during an interview with the NBC, Ndisiro alleged that he received a lawyer’s letter that had been sent by Nguvauva and in which he was told that the Green Flag was not allowed to participate in the ceremony.Nguvauva claimed that Ndisiro stated that Nguvauva, who is a son of the late Ovambanderu Paramount Chief Munjuku Nguvauva II, ‘has had a personal agenda in the Ovambanderu community since time immemorial’.Nguvauva is also claiming that Ndisiro said the letter had been written on Nguvauva’s instructions and was part of scare tactics being employed by Nguvauva.Nguvauva told the court this week that the letter was not written on his instructions and that he also did not instruct the Deputy Sheriff of the High Court at Gobabis to deliver the letter to Ndisiro, as the latter had allegedly claimed.According to an English translation of the transcript of the radio interview with Ndisiro, he in fact made a comment that Nguvauva had sent the letter, and that Nguvauva ‘has a big issue in our matters’.In a plea filed with the court in response to Nguvauva’s claim, Ndisiro’s lawyer denied that the comments made by Ndisiro were wrongful and defamatory.The contents of Ndisiro’s comments were in essence true and in the public interest, and also were in fair comment in the circumstances, it was pleaded.If the court should find that the comments were defamatory of Nguvauva, Ndisiro’s right to have made the comments was also protected under the Constitution’s guarantee of the right to freedom of speech, and in the circumstances Ndisiro was justified in making to comments, his lawyer further pleaded.Kauta argued yesterday that Nguvauva’s summary of the remarks made by Ndisiro, on which his claim against Ndisiro is based, is contradicted by the transcript of the radio interview. In any event, there is nothing defamatory in the comments made by Ndisiro, Kauta argued.He said what a reasonable radio listener would have understood from the comments was that a commemoration had been organised and that despite an attempt to stop it, it would continue, Kauta said.Nguvauva’s lawyer, Patience Kangueehi-Kanalelo, disagreed. She argued that the claim that Nguvauva had given instructions to a lawyer to try to stop the event from taking place created the impression that the son of the Ovambanderu Chief was against the festivities to mark unity between the Green Flag and the Red Flag.As a Deputy Minister, a Regional Councillor and a leading figure in the Ovambanderu community, Nguvauva is viewed as someone who is supposed to encourage peace and support unity, so when it is claimed that he tried to stop an event of which unity was the theme, it would be understood that he was in fact also against the unity, she argued.The statement that Nguvauva ‘has a big issue in our matters’ would have been understood to mean that Nguvauva was against those matters, she also argued. The reasonable listener would have understood that if Nguvauva tried to stop the event, it meant he was against the unity that was supposed to be celebrated – and that is defamatory, she argued.werner@namibian.com.na