Update on courtcase against Daycare owner Belinda //Ga­roës

In 2013 Belinda //Ga­roës, owner of a daycare center for poor children in a suburb of Okahandja, Namibia, was incarcerated on several criminal charges following an eviction order. Read more about that in "City Councils Vendetta against owner of Day-Care center in Okahandja" and here about my day in court with her.

I somehow lost contact with Belinda after that day until 14th February 2015, when she suddenly turned up again, telling me about the pending trial date on Monday, 16th February. This time she showed me the stack of documents she had received - transcriptions of all previous hearings.
While going through those transcripts I found the one pertaining to the trial date, which was eventually set for 16 February 2015 in a hearing in August 2014. Right up until that time she had not received any disclosure documents. In the August hearing the magistrate ordered that she had a right to those documents and that she should apply to receive them. When i asked her about that, she told me she had followed the order and personally handed in the application, without making a copy of it, however.  Oops, a grave mistake. 

When I asked her for the disclosure documents, she pointed to the documents in my hand, telling me that is what she received on February 13 at the court offices.  Oh poor woman! But how was she to know? So her only option was to once again ask for the disclosure documents at the start of Mondays proceedings.

Well, today during lunchtime Belinda came to report about the proceedings. Apparently the prosecutor, right at the start of the  hearing, told the magistrate that she hadn't yet handed out the disclosure documents to Belinda, but would do so at 16h00. So the trial date was once again postponed to the 4th of June 2015 and Belinda is as happy as can come.

I haven't yet heard if she did in fact receive disclosure today. Will post another update if and when I hear from the lady again. 

Update 17/2/2015: She did not get the disclosure documents yesterday because they now charge for those(illegally as I found out), and she of course had no money to pay for them.







  

Tribalism becomes new excuse to avoid responsibility in Okahandja.

Since 2014 the inhabitants of Okahandja have been trying to call their local councilors to account for their neglect of duty.
In October 2014 the following Notice was handed to the then CEO in a meeting in his office.

NOTICE TO OKAHANDJA MUNICIPALITY

We, the undersigned people, inhabitants of Okahandja, herewith wish and require you, the councillors of Okahandja, to immediately attend to the following social concerns:

1.  Streetlights in almost all suburbs have not been attended to for more than six months now.                 
This endangers everybody in the community who has to use the streets coming home from work or going to work and school in the dark.

2.  Potholes in the streets do not get repaired timely.
These endanger the lives of pedestrians as well as drivers, as drivers try to evade the potholes to prevent damaging their vehicles.

3.  Refuse removal in certain areas is neglected, mostly in those areas where there are many children.                This poses a big health risk to anybody living in those areas.

Neglect of Duties:

Our Constitution clearly requires you to regard yourselves as servants of the people. According to the Local Authorities Act I 11.(5)(e) it is your duty  to promote and create the social well being of the inhabitants. We believe that you are grossly neglecting your duties in a way that may cause harm, endangering the lives of we, the inhabitants of Okahandja. This is a violation of our Constitution and your oath of office.

Measures in case of non compliance

We the people concerned thus have the right to take the necessary measures to protect ourselves from potential harm. Unless we see an immediate improvement of municipal services without increased costs, we will be required to take every lawful action to hold you to account to rectify the situation.
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To date nothing has been done about that, neither was anything done about the very hazardous and life endangering electric connections in certain townships, as exposed here.

So, after various more fruitless meetings with the mayor and some of the councilors, the inhabitants of the town decided to peacefully occupy the premises of the city council to call for the resignation of council, but were forcibly removed by the police. They now camp opposite the municipal offices on a private property, with the permission of the owner of that property.

Now the ball is thrown around once more amid allegations of self-enrichment and tribalism, with no solution in sight. 

City Councils Vendetta against owner of Day-Care center in Okahandja

Okahandja has it's share of street kids, like most towns in Namibia have. A few of them really live all by themselves on rubbish dumps, scavenging whatever food they find there. Most of them, however, have some kind of place they call home, where they can go to sleep. Yet during the day they are left to fend for themselves as their parents, if they still have those, attend to their respective low paid jobs or other activities and cannot look after their kids, never mind pay for any kind of day care. Many of the parents suffer from TB and alcohol abuse.


Yet Okahandja also has one woman who opened her heart to these kids. At her mothers home she started cooking meals for those kids. Since she herself is a single mother of four without means, she lobbied for donors to help with supplies for the food she cooked daily. The group of kids quickly grew to more than 80 and she had to find her own place. She bought 4 stands from city council in 2010 and is in possession of their deed of sale. City council, however, then went and resold those stands to someone else. This case is handled by lawyers at this stage. City then offered her an unserviced stand to pacify her. She paid for that but cannot use it unserviced. Then she was given the right to buy another serviced stand which is zoned as residential, for which she paid N$10000. She put up a crude corrugated iron shelter as kitchen,office and bedroom and went on feeding and caring for the kids until the city council allowed a brick maker (SWAPO supporter) to start his operation on her stand. This endangered the lives of the kids she cared for and made her question the integrity of city councilors when allocating stands. 

Belinda //Ga­roës is an activist for truth and transparency in government. She informs people of their rights and lobbies against irregularities in city council. She started fighting for her rights by moving to an empty stand in an adjacent area, seeing that anybody can settle down wherever he wants these days ( Article 21/1(h)) and many informal settlements thus pop up everywhere around our towns. She promptly got harassed, mishandled, beaten and arrested together with her son for doing this. In the van she found a box with stuff and some matches (which should not have been there), so she put the box on fire to make them open the door so that her son could escape out of the van. Then she was sued for damage to state property and incarcerated in the pretrial facility in Okahandja. She was released five days later, after having paid bail. Her trial date is set for 8 May 2014.

All our news media are run by SWAPO, the ruling party. Of course their reporting is biased and finely tuned to reflect their views. Only at the very end of their story they mention the deeds of transfer in Belinda's possession. No one trying to publish the truth will be accepted, as I have experienced repeatedly now and documented on this blog.    

Fact is that only SWAPO members count for anything in Namibia today. They get jobs, they get houses, their settlements are serviced, their schools and day-care centers are supported. All others fight in vain for their rights as Namibians.

Has the Namibian Constitution been abandoned?

Just 24 short years after Namibia's independence the Constitution seems to have been abandoned. The conditions in the pretrial detention facility in Okahandja are a grim reminder of the dark ages with their dungeons.

The following facts were related to me by four recent inmates.

The cells:
are totally over filled. Half of the inmates have to sleep in the open, roofless section of cells. There is only one working toilet in the cell, which by the way, is totally open and double serves as the only chair available. There is no washbasin and only a hole in the wall next to the toilet serving as shower.  There are no beds, no chairs, nor a table. Each inmate is supplied with 3-5mm thin "mattress" plus one greasy blanket infested with lice, placed on the bare cement floor. Furthermore the cell(average of 28 inmates) is supplied with 2 bars of soap plus 3 rolls of toilet paper once a week. If inmates don't have friends outside to bring them other necessary toiletries, they just have to do without them. Lights stay on day and night. Inspections are done at various times during the night to intimidate inmates even more,

The Food:
Mornings: 5 slices of brown bread with one teaspoon of either jam or peanut butter on one slice, if available,  + half a cup of coffee/tee mix per inmate. 
Lunch: maize porridge(no sugar,no salt) + a cup of instant soup. 
Dinner: same as lunch. 
Special: Wednesday and Sunday: chicken or meat or fish bones+ cup of juice
Depending on officer on duty, inmates may get a fruit on Wednesdays.
Inmates are supplied with a plastic plate and cup, no cutlery, which have to be pushed through the door bars at mealtimes to be filled.
Meal times depend on the whim of the kitchen personnel.

Once you are inside this facility, you are totally cut off from the outside world and treated like a rabid animal, even though the Constitution guarantees that human dignity may not be violated. Depending on the whim of the controlling officer, inmates may or may not see visitors on Sundays for 5 minutes. 
Pretrial periods vary from 2 months to up to four years.  

Above conditions stand in stark contrast to Article 8 of the Constitution of Namibia, which states:

(1)	The dignity of all persons shall be inviolable.
(2)	(a)	In any judicial proceedings or in other proceedings before any organ of the State, and during the enforcement of a penalty, respect for human dignity shall be guaranteed.
	(b)	No persons shall be subject to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

And so one must ask: has the Government of Namibia abandoned the Constitution? Or are our governors just careless in the performance of their duties, employing totally incompetent people in positions of authority? 







 

Is the Namibian Police incompetent or biased?

Details of the case:
On Tuesday 15 April 2014 somebody stole the pet parrot of Sakkie, my helper, out of it's cage in Sakkies house in Nau-Aib, Okahandja. After talking to his neighbors Sakkie found out who had stolen the parrot. So on Wednesday morning he went to the Okahandja police station to open a case of theft against the thief, who is employed in the Namibian army in a nearby camp. He was told to come back in two hours.
Coming to work late, he told me about his predicament, attended to his job and was back at the police station two hours later, only to find out that nothing had happened in the meantime. He did not turn up for work on Thursday, as the police had told him to wait there, since they had no car available to drive to the army camp. 

When he turned up for work on Friday, a public Holiday, I found out that no case had been opened and still nothing had been done to apprehend the thief. So I decided to accompany him to the police in order to get more details about why nothing had been done yet.

Five officers where behind the counter. All of them began to verbally attack Sakkie, telling him he hadn't made a case, only a report and he hadn't waited there as told and hadn't informed them when he left to get some lunch. I said we were here to now open a case, not report. Upon that we were again told to wait. 
After waiting for about 20 minutes, the traffic cop with the car came in to tell me I should drive ahead, he would catch up with me along the road as he was driving very fast. I did as I was told, waiting somewhere along the road again for half an hour, as the car wasn't coming as expected. Eventually they sped past me hooting and I followed them to the army camp.

On arrival at the camp, the traffic cop and police officer walked to the barracks accompanied by an army officer, then returned to tell us the guy wasn't there since it was a Public Holiday. Another army officer came up to us to get the story, then walked to their hospital, where the guy was supposed to work, but he wasn't there either. 

The police officer told the army officer that we were going to open a case and then he would just have to take the guy into custody. We came here to give the guy a chance to state his side and give back the stolen bird. The army officer then took our telephone numbers and said he would come back to us.

We then returned home, while the police and traffic cop drove off in a different direction. Right up to today, Sunday 20 April 2014, the case is wrapped in silence.

Analysis:
1. A theft was reported, but no criminal docket was opened.

2. The plaintiff was not informed of procedures to be followed.
3. The plaintiff was put on hold for 2 days.
   
This is a clear case of not taking complaints seriously, thereby promoting criminality in Namibia. 

4. Plaintiff is openly portrayed as the guilty partner in this case for not  having followed instructions from police to wait.

This is a clear indication of a guilty conscience for not following proper procedures in a criminal case.

5. Without any official docket a trip of 30km was undertaken on public cost.
6. This trip was undertaken on a Public Holiday, meaning double pay.

This is a clear case of misuse of public funds. 

7. The time delay gave the alleged criminal ample opportunity to get rid of any evidence.

This is a clear case of complicity with suspect and bias toward other officials.  

8. This case still has not been officially docketed. 

Conclusion:
The Namibian police in Okahandja are not only incompetent but also abetting criminality in the country by their flat refusal to record complaints properly. 

This is further mentioned by LAC as reported by Refworld.


Update 6 May: According to Sakkie, the alleged thief in the meantime paid him the price of the bird plus an additional amount for Sakkies emotional hurt, after Sakkie had put his case before the military police at Ozona.