‘I don’t care’

JEMIMA BEUKES

Anton Lubowski’s widow, Gabrielle, has hit back at threats by President Hage Geingob to sue her for defamation, saying she will not back down from comments made in an open letter to him, adding she has new information relating to her husband’s murder.

When contacted yesterday, Gabrielle said, “I don’t care”, adding she is already working on her second open letter which will be made public.

“They are good at threats; that is all they are good at, threats. I don’t care. Why didn’t he give me the meeting, why is he ignoring me? I just wanted a private meeting so I can say these things to him and tell him what I have stumbled upon,” she said.

In her first letter, publicised this week in Namibian Sun, Gabrielle accused Geingob of refusing to meet with her for nearly 30 years, so he can share what he discussed with her husband on the night he was assassinated.

Gabrielle insisted yesterday that she wants a face-to-face meeting with the president in order to find closure.

Geingob, through his lawyer Sisa Namandje, on Wednesday threatened Gabrielle with a defamation lawsuit if she fails to provide an unconditional apology by 24 June.

Gabrielle, who said she has been requesting for an audience with Geingob since 1990, has accused of betraying her husband.

She wrote a letter to Geingob recently accusing him of smearing her husband’s good name and said his refusal to meet with her is an admission of guilt.

“I still want to tell you that you have taken everything from us, by first betraying Anton and then smearing his name. Life without Anton, who was generous, energetic, hardworking, optimistic, full of life and courageous, has been difficult. His two children suffered the most, as they had to grow up without the presence of this magnificent person, their dad,” Gabrielle wrote.

“Never before, and never after, have I hated someone so much as I hated you. However, this hate only harmed me, not you. You went from an exiled freedom fighter to the first prime minister of an independent Namibia to the third president of Namibia. By God’s grace I have been able to let go of the hate, for my own sake.”

Anton, a 37-year-old anti-apartheid activist, was shot by a group of assailants in front of his house in Sanderburg Street in central Windhoek on 12 September 1989.

He was hit by several shots fired from an AK-47 and died from a bullet wound to the head.

Gabrielle said the president was the last person her husband spoke to.

Geingob hit back on Wednesday through Namandje.

“You gratuitously made allegations to the effect that our client has tacitly accepted ‘admission in relation for the death of the late Anton Lubowski’. You alleged that our client betrayed Anton Lubowski and insinuated that he was the cause of and/or that he had something to do with the death of the late Anton Lubowski.

“We have instructions to record that the allegations in your letter are entirely and palpably false and were seemingly made with an intention to tarnish our client’s good name and stir up public anger against him based on fabricated allegations in your letter,” Namandje wrote.

He added that Gabrielle knew that the letter would depict Geingob as a person not worthy of serving the people of Namibia as president.

“Your allegations are particularly absurd and bear a strange feature in that despite the cold-blooded killing of Anton Lubowski having been a subject of police investigation (which investigation required all, including you, with information [to] assist the police) and a public High Court inquest you are only making such reckless allegations almost thirty years after that,” he said.

Gabrielle said yesterday that “nothing was done to solve Anton’s murder”, adding that the inquest into his killing “was a fraud”.

“Whatever was done was a set up,” she said.

According to her, a lawyer involved in the inquest had told her that the people interviewed and questioned were “the craziest bunch of people” and that they had no idea where they came from.

“I was told that they said a lot of bull.”