Haufiku is embroiled in a dispute with his cousin Josua Kaukungwa, the son of Set Kaukungwa, over a piece of land at Ohalushu in the Ohangwena region.Set Kaukungwa was the brother of struggle veteran Simon Hafeni 'Mzee' Kaukungwa, a founding member of Swapo.Set Kaukungwa died in October 2006, while Mzee Kaukungwa died in 2014.Their deaths resulted in a dispute between Haufiku and Kaukungwa.Kaukungwa says he inherited the land from his father, while Haufiku insists his uncle Set appointed him as the heir of the land, and as headman of Ohalushu village in 2001.Haufiku says his uncle gave him the house and village, and he therefore constructed a house on the premises.Kaukungwa then dragged Haufiku to the High Court over what he believed was a case of illegal occupation.In his affidavit Kaukungwa says a family meeting after the death of his father concluded that he should inherit his father's land, which is why he immediately took control of it and fenced it off.In 2008, he said the Ohangwena Communal Land Board issued him with a letter confirming this inheritance.Haufiku, however, opposed the land board's decision to grant Kaukungwa customary land rights.The Windhoek High Court judge ruled in Kaukungwa's favour and ordered that the house erected by Haufiku be demolished within 30 days of the court order.The High Court also ordered the Ohangwena Communal Land Board to stop interfering in Kaukungwa's possession and occupation of the land.“The first respondent [Haufiku] is compelled to remove all and any of his structures erected on the premises,” High Court judge Thomas Masuku ordered.NAMANDJE'S WARNINGHaufiku appeared to dispute the court order.He was backed by the minister of agriculture, water and land reform, Calle Schlettwein, who asked inspector general Sebastian Ndeitunga to stop any plans to remove the structures on the disputed land.“This matter is still under review and consideration. Therefore, demolishing any structure at this point should be halted,” Schlettwein stated.Kaukungwa approached his lawyer, Sisa Namandje, and wrote a letter to Schlettwein.“We advise that the minister . . . has no power to impede the execution of a court order,” Namandje said in his letter.“We therefore hereby kindly ask the minister to desist from further taking any action aimed at frustrating legal and judicial processes. This will have serious ramifications,” he said.Schlettwein did not respond to a text message sent to him yesterday.The house was demolished in September 2021 – two years after the court order – but the fight between Kaukungwa and Haufiku continued.This time around, Haufiku is accused of lobbying fellow traditional leaders to sway the land in his favour.As headman of Ohalushu village, Haufiku is guaranteed a seat on the OTA council.The chairperson of the OTA, Elias Waandja, notified Kaukungwa in a letter dated 23 February that the land he has fenced off had not been given to him in compliance with the Communal Land Reform Act of 2002.He said “the customary land rights certificate in your possession is therefore nullified by this letter”.This decision appears to undermine the High Court order made in August 2018.Kaukungwa last week told The Namibian the OTA is incorrectly nullifying his and his brother's customary land rights certificates.He said the cancellation of this is irregular and should be set aside.“It was not up to the OTA to take a decision to cancel my customary land rights and for the Ohangwena Land Board to seek to ratify a cancellation,” he said in his letter.Kaukungwa said Haufiku was evicted from the same customary land because he occupied it unlawfully. He accused Haufiku of using the police and other state institutions to fight the land dispute with him.Kaukungwa said the OTA cancelled his customary land rights because they wanted to give the land to Haufiku.Haufiku said the cancellation has nothing to do with him.“Did that letter in any way state that they want to take the land from him and give it to me?” he asked.He said the process Kaukungwa took to obtain the land was not in compliance with the law.“The land board and the OTA have discovered that those applications did not follow what the act requires, and whoever issued those certificates needs to answer questions as they were fraudulently obtained,” he said.Haufiku claimed the High Court judgement was based on misleading information from Kaukungwa.He also denied that he used the police and state institutions to fight his cousin.“The police were investigating the fraud case. If I was using the police I could have told them to arrest him for pointing a gun at me when he fought me,” Haufiku said.Contacted for comment, Waandja said the decision to nullify the customary land right certificate of the two brothers is not related to the land dispute between them and Haufiku.The administrator of the OTA, Fritz Nghishiililwa, says the traditional authority did not undermine the court by revoking the customary land rights certificates.Nghiishiliwa, who is also the secretary of the Oukwanyama queen, Martha Mwadinomho, says he is not aware of what happened in court.
