Acting judges appointed for High Court

THREE Windhoek-based legal practitioners make up the latest group of lawyers appointed to serve as judges of Namibia’s High Court in an acting capacity.

For all three of the lawyers – Gerson Narib, Boas Usiku, and Elize Angula – their appointment as acting judge of the High Court marks the first time they have received the nod to take up a temporary post on the bench in Namibia’s second-highest court.

The Judicial Service Commission, which recommends the appointment of judges to the President, announced President Hage Geingob’s naming of Narib, Usiku and Angula as acting judges at the end of last week.

Narib, who is practising law as a member of the Society of Advocates of Namibia, has been serving as an acting judge since the start of July, with his tenure to come to a close at the end of September.

Usiku’s tenure will be from 5 September to 2 December, while Angula’s will be from 20 September to 1 December.

Narib studied law at the University of Namibia and, after working as a public prosecutor for a little over a year, was admitted as a legal practitioner in 2001. He worked at the Legal Assistance Centre and in the office of the government attorney, where he later held a position as deputy government attorney, before he went into private practice as an advocate near the end of 2008.

Usiku studied at the United Nations Institute for Namibia in Zambia before Namibia’s independence, and in 1992 graduated with a bachelor of law degree at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.

After that, he served as a magistrate for the Okahandja district for two years, before he took up a post as legal counsel at the National Council, where he worked for the next 13 years, until late 2007.

Usiku was admitted as a legal practitioner in November 1996, and has been practising law with the firm Shikongo Law Chambers, in which he is a partner, since November 2007.

Having obtained a law degree at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa in 1996, Angula was admitted as a legal practitioner in Namibia in 1998.

She was attached to the law firm Lorentz & Bone and its successor, LorentzAngula Inc; was a partner in the firm AngulaColeman, and has been a director of the firm AngulaCo Incorporated in Windhoek since last year.

Angula is also a past president of the Law Society of Namibia and a former chairperson of the board of directors of the Development Bank of Namibia, and has been a member of the Judicial Service Commission as a nominee of the Law Society of Namibia since 2012.