SWAPO - Katjiuongua can have his free day in court

By Staff Reporter

SWAPO, Namibia Today to defend lawsuit
SWAPO Party and its newspaper, Namibia Today will defend a N$400 000 lawsuit slapped on them by former member of the Congress of Democrats, CoD, Moses Katjiuangua. The defamation claim arose from Zoom In published in May last year.

SWAPO Party’s lawyers, Konradie and Damaseb, have already filed the applications with the court to defend the case.

“Katjiuongua can have his free day in court for all we care,” said one SWAPO Party Central Committee member. “He has no case. If he wants to be undressed in public, let him go ahead.

“We can’t be intimidated by Katjiuongua. We know what he has done, before and after independence. His party was one of the internal political parties which had stalled and delayed Namibia’s independence.

“It will be very interesting to see him telling the court that he was neither a ‘puppet nor an opportunist.’ People will just laugh. CoD President, Ben Ulenga, called him an ‘opportunist’ last year but he has never sued him. Why?

In summons handed over to Namibia Today two weeks ago, Katjiuongua claimed that as a result of the publication of Zoom In, he had been damaged as the article was understood by ordinary people to mean that he “could not be taken seriously” by the general public and that he was of “unsound mind and incapable of rational conduct – a stupid person.” Namibia Today never used words “a stupid person.”

He also claimed that the article meant that he “was an opportunist with no steadfast principles and low morals” and that he was a “cheat and dishonourable person who deceives others” and that he “supported apartheid” as a former puppet.

Zoom In was based on his decision to resign from CoD, which he announced himself in the second week of May last year. The article chronicled Katjiuongua’s political career and mentioned some of the political parties he had formed or joined or run down.

It said that the National Patriotic Front, NPF, which saw Katjiuongua serving as its lone Member of the National Assembly, could not survive during the 1994 National Assembly and Presidential elections and Katjiuongua lost his only seat in the House.

Having lost in the 1994 National Assembly and Presidential elections, Katjiuongua went on to form another party, the Democratic Coalition of Namibia, DCN, which he dragged into the 1999 National Assembly and Presidential elections.

DCN did poorly in those elections and Katjiuongua’s political future looked bleak. He later joined CoD from which he resigned last year. In their bitter exchanges with CoD President Ben Ulenga, he accused Katjiuongua of being “opportunistic, running from one party to another.”

Katjiuongua did not take this allegation lying down, hitting back that it was a “blooming lie.” He said he had never deserted SWANU. “I have never deserted or defected from my political origins – SWANU,” he said in a letter to Ulenga. CoD is the first party from which I am resigning.”

Zoom In hammered Katjiuongua on that one. “By implication this means that he (Katjiuongua” was both SWANU and CoD – a political cheat…” read part of Zoom In. Katjiuongua did not take that lightly and it is one of the reasons he is suing SWAPO Party and Namibia Today.

“There is no case here,” said one Windhoek lawyer. “Katjiuongua admitted himself that he never resigned from SWANU. It means that when he joined CoD, he was both SWANU and CoD. How can one belong to two political parties at the same time?”

Before independence, Katjiuongua served in the former South African colonial arrangement in Namibia, the so-called “government of national unity” in which he served as “minister” of housing.