SWAPO - Katjiuongua sues SWAPO, Namibia Today, - Wants N$400 000 in 'damages'

By Staff Reporter

Former member of the Congress of Democrats, CoD, Moses Katjiuongua, has sued SWAPO Party and its newspaper, Namibia Today, demanding N$400,000 in defamation claim arising from Zoom In published in May last year.

In summons handed over to Namibia Today on Wednesday, Katjiuongua claimed 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.

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.

Having failed to attract people at its meetings, Katjiuongua took to the street, talking to whoever he meets but few listened to him. During that campaign, Katjiuongua approached the people he knew and those he did not, telling the “what DCN will do once elected to power.” 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?” 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.

NPF, Katjiuongua’s political party was one of the internal parties which benefitted from the N$100 million “slush funds” which the former apartheid colonial regime gave to those small parties in a move designed to deprive SWAPO of its victory in the 1989 UN supervised elections.

SWAPO ended up winning the elections, but the “slush funds” saga came to haunt those small parties as they were grilled by SWAPO Members of Parliament who challenged them to reveal more and tell the nation as to which party got what from the “slush funds.” The case will be defended.