Court showdown looms for Shikongo and Amushelelo

Namibian Police inspector-general Joseph Shikongo and politician-cum-activist Michael Amushelelo could be headed for a legal showdown over claims that the latter defamed the police boss over a December 2022 road crash in northern Namibia, which Shikongo was involved in and that left three people dead.

Shikongo may be coming to the conclusion that the legal route is the only option left to stop Amushelelo from his unending daily social media attacks.

As for Amushelelo, meeting Shikongo’s legal demands that he remove all posts from his social media accounts that are allegedly "wrongful and injurious" to Shikongo or face a N$1 million lawsuit is not an option.

"Tell Shikongo to go to prison; I will not delete anything," Amushelelo quipped when approached by Namibian Sun over the weekend to ask if he would comply with Shikongo’s demands.

Letter of demand ignored

Shikongo, through his lawyer Nambili Mhata, wrote to Amushelelo on Friday, claiming Amushelelo, on 9 February 2023, while utilising his Tik Tok account, which has 40.1 thousand followers, "unlawfully" posted a video on a social media network that is followed and available locally and worldwide.

Amushelelo has been given until tomorrow, 14 February, to remove the alleged defamatory material.

Instead, Amushelelo posted more content related to Shikongo on his social media accounts over the weekend.

He claimed on Facebook that they had informants who warned that Shikongo would try to silence him for advocating for his arrest.

Questions asked

Amushelelo is demanding that Shikongo be arrested after he was involved in an accident that occurred at Iindangungu village on the Ondangwa-Oshikango main road on 30 December.

His private vehicle – a white Toyota Hilux double cab – collided head-on with a white Hyundai hatchback.

Shikongo is the sole survivor of the accident, while all three occupants of the Hyundai, Frans Pombili Ndengu (27), Sofia Natangwe Ananias (22) and Stefanus Hafeni Shahafifange Lukas (22) died on the spot.

"Please inform Shikongo that I will never delete anything about him from my social media. If he wants me to stop, he should hand himself over to the police to be arrested. Please tell him there's no need to wait until Valentine’s Day; he won’t get any flowers from me," Amushelelo wrote.

Shikongo, he added, should not waste his time; he can already approach the court based on his letter of demand.

Theories shared

Amushelelo claimed in a video that he had been reliably informed that Ananias was in Shikongo's car, not the Hyundai as previously reported.

"This explains why Joseph Shikongo’s vehicle was immediately removed from the scene, and what had happened is that the police, with the assistance of, and on the instructions of, their commander, which is Joseph Shikongo, took the body of Sophia Natangwe Ananias and placed it in the vehicle of the other two deceased young men."

Amushelelo demanded that all the police officers who were involved in "covering up the accident scene" should all be immediately arrested.

Shikongo's lawyer, Mhata, said Amushelelo’s claims are not only false, but their insinuations, suggestions, and innuendos concerning his client are, in their ordinary meaning, wrongfully malicious and designed, in contempt of his client, to infringe upon his reputation, dignity, his person, self-worth and good name.

He said Amushelelo is insinuating that Shikongo tampered with the investigation or gave instructions to interfere with the investigations at the scene of the car accident he was involved in.

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