Otjomuise house saga escalates

A WINDHOEK family is in distress after the woman who bought their house at an auction under questionable circumstances allegedly started demolishing the house with sledgehammers.

Men allegedly employed by Rachel Kalipi, who claims to be the new owner, arrived at Ina Hochobes’s house in Otjomuise yesterday and started hitting the walls of the house with sledgehammers, breaking a gaping hole into one of the walls.Last week The Namibian reported that the National Housing Enterprise (NHE) is accused of selling the Otjomuise house while a default judgement it obtained against the owners is being challenged in the High Court.Hochobes, who lives at the house with her husband Simon Hochobeb and their two children, claims that Kalipi’s sidekicks have been harassing the family to force them out of the house.Last week Hochobes told The Namibian that Kalipi sent a number of men to the house to remove some fencing from the property, as well as corrugated iron sheets from the roof, leaving the contents of the house exposed to rain. The family has since replaced the roof sheets. Yesterday, Hochobes said that a group of men had turned up again and started demolishing the house.A legal representative for the Hochobeb family, lay litigant August Maletsky, told The Namibian that Kalipi has ‘literally taken the law into her own hands’ by trying to evict the family without a High Court eviction order.It is believed that Kalipi’s latest move is another attempt to force the Hochobeb family to move out of the house.Simon Hochobeb was unemployed for some time in the past and could not pay the monthly instalments on the property. The NHE won a High Court default judgement against Hochobeb last year, put the property on auction and sold it to Kalipi.However, Maletsky said that shortly after the default judgement was awarded to the NHE, he filed an appeal with the High Court, adding that a ruling is expected in April. Maletsky said the appeal is part of a ‘class action’ lawsuit against the NHE to stop it from the ‘irregular practice of evicting people form their homes left, right and centre’. Maletsky added that because the appeal against the default judgement is still pending, the NHE was not supposed to put the house on auction, let alone sell it.Maletsky said the sale of the property therefore is ‘null and void’.Hochobeb and his wife have in the meantime laid a charge of theft against Kalipi and the men she sent to their house for removing items belonging to them from their property, but Hochobes told The Namibian on Tuesday that the Police have not done anything to address the matter.