Independence of the judiciary in Namibia: A shattered dream
When exactly it fell off the pedestal, I do not know, but like Humpty Dumpty (and I am not referring to anyone’s physique), it is broken. What I can tell you is that I experienced it myself.
Days shy of seven months – that’s how long I was in prison awaiting a sham trial. Of those months, just over one month and 15 days, I was kept in isolation. Not because I had transgressed any law or rule under the Correctional Services Act, but because someone was trying to teach me a lesson! To break me!
Ironically, two judges, [Philanda] Christiaan and [Naomi] Shivute (the wife of the Chief Justice [Peter Shivute] at whose house I had demonstrated), found that there was sufficient grounds to keep me detained - as it turns out - for nothing!
You see it in the movies, but one never really applied one’s mind to it when prisoners say “I’m in here for nothing, man”, or “it’s just some crooked police officer and judge trying to settle scores”. We would all just sigh “yeah, right”.
Look no further! I now know that it is true, and being in there, experiencing the treatment the judiciary is giving those Fishrot fellows - I am starting to doubt the stories of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and the prosecutor-general (PG).
No ethics
For starters, there’s just no ethics! Really! How can Olivia Martha Imalwa prosecute the very man who took her out of Oshakati to become the PG today? Is she trying to prove her ‘independence’ by denying him bail all these years - while conferring with her United Nations Institute of Namibia (UNIN) and [University of] Warwick schoolmate [Judge President Petrus] Damaseb regularly on their case to ensure that all applications before the court have failed?
(Please deny that you two met – the testimony of Nigel van Wyk is a good place to start... it was not refuted.)
Secondly, let’s look at the career trajectory of those who have handled this case: Duard Kesslau was a regional court magistrate when he refused Mr [Bernhardt] Esau and Fitty [Tamson Hatuikulipi] bail - he’s now a High Court judge; [David] Munsu was the same when he denied Fitty bail - now a full-time judge; Orben Sibeya was an acting judge (he handled Imalwa’s son’s rape case) when he granted the PG a Prevention of Organised Crime Act (POCA) restraint after “having read the application” of some 6 925 pages in 15 minutes – he is now a full-time judge.
Let’s look at the quickest judge to act in the Supreme Court! Esi Schimming-Chase wrote a judgment that was overshadowed by [Thomas] Masuku’s dissenting judgment, but yet she’s at the Supreme Court where the likes of judges [Marlene] Tomassi, Masuku, [Nate] Ndauendapo, [Harold] Geier, etc - albeit more senior - have never acted in the Supreme Court.
Thirdly, jobs for pals: If not the entirety of the Warwick class that ever went into the magistracy, it’s a great proportion of the UNIN graduating class on the benches and in the law offices.
Let’s list them: Chief Justice, Deputy Chief Justice, PG, Naomi Shivute (who did not recuse herself from my failed bail application), Johanna Sailonga (whom Damaseb sent to deny Nigel bail), Diina Uusiku, Boas Uusiku, the old Judge [Collins] Parker – their lecturer.
But all of this pales in comparison to how one Jakobus Muller gets appointed by President [Hage] Geingob (Damaseb’s cousin) year in and year out, at the Judge President’s suggestion. (Check out Article 82(3) of the Namibian Constitution.)
Can one be permanently a temporary or acting appointee? Can one be an acting judge for 10 years non-stop? Fact check it. He was 65 when he first became an acting judge. He’s still an acting judge at 75 – way above 70, which is what's in the constitution. My Portuguese speaking in-laws would say acqui Namibia! (Here is Namibia!)
Strange judgment
But there’s more. Was Muller not a consultant at Conradie and Damaseb? Was Boas Uusiku not at Shikongo Law Chambers where the same Muller’s wife was? Yet in a matter in which James Hatuikulipi cites Muller and Damaseb as parties, Boas Uusiku gladly ascends the bench and delivers a strange judgment!
Apparently, an unopposed matter should have been brought ex parte! Oh, and someone on a briefing watch gets into the judgment - like, really!
(A briefing watch is where a lawyer sits in court to observe and advise a client, but the client is not a party to the case.)
I am not the only one who finds disturbing issues with this judiciary. Read Afrobarometer. Ask Eben de Klerk! Ask the lawyers! But these ‘Lords of Law’ feel otherwise. At every word, expect a full-page verbiage exposing their insecurity, egotistic self-regard and presumptuousness!
They got it wrong with gay marriages! It would seem they thought that Namibia approves of white men grooming black boys from behind their spectacles.
They got it wrong in my case! They got it wrong in the life bail application of [Sacky] Shanghala who said the ACC had no power under section 83 of POCA. I know they were wrong because Parliament in July rushed to amend that very section and add the ACC into it. But those guys are still in prison.
Broken system
No, people – this thing is broken! Kaput!
If James was wrong about Muller’s age, why remove him?
Some of us do not come from affluence. We come from the streets of Tura. In those neck of woods, we know a con when we see one! Fishrot sounds like a con. Don’t say I did not tell you! This judiciary: The con show.
It is broken! Even if you glue it back together, eventually, we’ve seen the cracks! We will always see the cracks!
And you journalists, you seem to have turned a blind eye. No, you have taken a side. Do it at your own peril. Hage will soon go and you never know, goodbye State House briefings.
As you lie possum in prone to what you call Fishrot today, tomorrow it is you! After all, did they not imprison activists on Independence Day?
Grant them bail
Why are the courts denying bail to accused persons who pose no danger to society, while they give bail to individuals accused of robbery, murder and other serious crimes?
Grant Walter Mostert bail, grant the Fishrot accused bail, give them a fair trial! Then only we can see if this broken and shattered dream can be put back together!
Perhaps then [Ismail] Mahomed who had written the Donald Acheson (Acheson was the person accused of assassinating Anton Theodor Eberhard August Lubowski, an anti-apartheid activist) judgment will not be disturbed in his eternal slumber.
As Martin Luther King Jr once said, "our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”. The judiciary is the last refuge for our people and once we allow it to be poisoned, we will all be in trouble.
Our silence on this matter means we are aiding and abetting a corrupt system.
** Namibia Economic Freedom Fighters commissar Saddam Amushelelo is a social activist.
Days shy of seven months – that’s how long I was in prison awaiting a sham trial. Of those months, just over one month and 15 days, I was kept in isolation. Not because I had transgressed any law or rule under the Correctional Services Act, but because someone was trying to teach me a lesson! To break me!
Ironically, two judges, [Philanda] Christiaan and [Naomi] Shivute (the wife of the Chief Justice [Peter Shivute] at whose house I had demonstrated), found that there was sufficient grounds to keep me detained - as it turns out - for nothing!
You see it in the movies, but one never really applied one’s mind to it when prisoners say “I’m in here for nothing, man”, or “it’s just some crooked police officer and judge trying to settle scores”. We would all just sigh “yeah, right”.
Look no further! I now know that it is true, and being in there, experiencing the treatment the judiciary is giving those Fishrot fellows - I am starting to doubt the stories of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and the prosecutor-general (PG).
No ethics
For starters, there’s just no ethics! Really! How can Olivia Martha Imalwa prosecute the very man who took her out of Oshakati to become the PG today? Is she trying to prove her ‘independence’ by denying him bail all these years - while conferring with her United Nations Institute of Namibia (UNIN) and [University of] Warwick schoolmate [Judge President Petrus] Damaseb regularly on their case to ensure that all applications before the court have failed?
(Please deny that you two met – the testimony of Nigel van Wyk is a good place to start... it was not refuted.)
Secondly, let’s look at the career trajectory of those who have handled this case: Duard Kesslau was a regional court magistrate when he refused Mr [Bernhardt] Esau and Fitty [Tamson Hatuikulipi] bail - he’s now a High Court judge; [David] Munsu was the same when he denied Fitty bail - now a full-time judge; Orben Sibeya was an acting judge (he handled Imalwa’s son’s rape case) when he granted the PG a Prevention of Organised Crime Act (POCA) restraint after “having read the application” of some 6 925 pages in 15 minutes – he is now a full-time judge.
Let’s look at the quickest judge to act in the Supreme Court! Esi Schimming-Chase wrote a judgment that was overshadowed by [Thomas] Masuku’s dissenting judgment, but yet she’s at the Supreme Court where the likes of judges [Marlene] Tomassi, Masuku, [Nate] Ndauendapo, [Harold] Geier, etc - albeit more senior - have never acted in the Supreme Court.
Thirdly, jobs for pals: If not the entirety of the Warwick class that ever went into the magistracy, it’s a great proportion of the UNIN graduating class on the benches and in the law offices.
Let’s list them: Chief Justice, Deputy Chief Justice, PG, Naomi Shivute (who did not recuse herself from my failed bail application), Johanna Sailonga (whom Damaseb sent to deny Nigel bail), Diina Uusiku, Boas Uusiku, the old Judge [Collins] Parker – their lecturer.
But all of this pales in comparison to how one Jakobus Muller gets appointed by President [Hage] Geingob (Damaseb’s cousin) year in and year out, at the Judge President’s suggestion. (Check out Article 82(3) of the Namibian Constitution.)
Can one be permanently a temporary or acting appointee? Can one be an acting judge for 10 years non-stop? Fact check it. He was 65 when he first became an acting judge. He’s still an acting judge at 75 – way above 70, which is what's in the constitution. My Portuguese speaking in-laws would say acqui Namibia! (Here is Namibia!)
Strange judgment
But there’s more. Was Muller not a consultant at Conradie and Damaseb? Was Boas Uusiku not at Shikongo Law Chambers where the same Muller’s wife was? Yet in a matter in which James Hatuikulipi cites Muller and Damaseb as parties, Boas Uusiku gladly ascends the bench and delivers a strange judgment!
Apparently, an unopposed matter should have been brought ex parte! Oh, and someone on a briefing watch gets into the judgment - like, really!
(A briefing watch is where a lawyer sits in court to observe and advise a client, but the client is not a party to the case.)
I am not the only one who finds disturbing issues with this judiciary. Read Afrobarometer. Ask Eben de Klerk! Ask the lawyers! But these ‘Lords of Law’ feel otherwise. At every word, expect a full-page verbiage exposing their insecurity, egotistic self-regard and presumptuousness!
They got it wrong with gay marriages! It would seem they thought that Namibia approves of white men grooming black boys from behind their spectacles.
They got it wrong in my case! They got it wrong in the life bail application of [Sacky] Shanghala who said the ACC had no power under section 83 of POCA. I know they were wrong because Parliament in July rushed to amend that very section and add the ACC into it. But those guys are still in prison.
Broken system
No, people – this thing is broken! Kaput!
If James was wrong about Muller’s age, why remove him?
Some of us do not come from affluence. We come from the streets of Tura. In those neck of woods, we know a con when we see one! Fishrot sounds like a con. Don’t say I did not tell you! This judiciary: The con show.
It is broken! Even if you glue it back together, eventually, we’ve seen the cracks! We will always see the cracks!
And you journalists, you seem to have turned a blind eye. No, you have taken a side. Do it at your own peril. Hage will soon go and you never know, goodbye State House briefings.
As you lie possum in prone to what you call Fishrot today, tomorrow it is you! After all, did they not imprison activists on Independence Day?
Grant them bail
Why are the courts denying bail to accused persons who pose no danger to society, while they give bail to individuals accused of robbery, murder and other serious crimes?
Grant Walter Mostert bail, grant the Fishrot accused bail, give them a fair trial! Then only we can see if this broken and shattered dream can be put back together!
Perhaps then [Ismail] Mahomed who had written the Donald Acheson (Acheson was the person accused of assassinating Anton Theodor Eberhard August Lubowski, an anti-apartheid activist) judgment will not be disturbed in his eternal slumber.
As Martin Luther King Jr once said, "our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”. The judiciary is the last refuge for our people and once we allow it to be poisoned, we will all be in trouble.
Our silence on this matter means we are aiding and abetting a corrupt system.
** Namibia Economic Freedom Fighters commissar Saddam Amushelelo is a social activist.
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