Ovaherero faction wins city property case

The Herero Royal Red Flag Association has won a High Court battle against a rival organisation about the ownership of a Windhoek property where the Ovaherero community’s Commando Hall is situated.

Documentary evidence shows that the Municipality of Windhoek agreed in 2000 to sell erf 6297 in Katutura to the Herero Royal Red Flag Association (HRRFA), and that a sale agreement between the municipality and the association was signed in May 2000, judge Claudia Claasen noted in a judgement delivered in the Windhoek High Court on Tuesday.

The Ovaherero community’s Commando Hall, known as Commando 2, is situated on the property in Windhoek.

Claasen also recorded that a City of Windhoek official instructed a law firm in May 2006 to transfer Erf 6297 to the HRRFA.

However, in a power of attorney in which the City of Windhoek instructed a law firm to carry out the transfer of the property, a line was drawn through the word “Royal” in the buyer’s name, and after that a deed of transfer executed in December 2009 reflected the Herero Red Flag Association (HRFA), and not the HRRFA, as the new owner of the property.

“There was no agreement, no resolution or any sound basis as to why the property was to be transferred to anyone other than the [HRRFA],” Claasen said.

She added that an expression which former DTA of Namibia leader Katuutire Kaura used when he testified in court as a witness for the HRRFA was “spot on”. Kaura told the court the HRFA essentially “hijacked” the transfer of the property.

“There is no doubt as to which entity purchased the said erf,” Claasen stated, adding that this was not the HRFA.

There was no evidence that the HRFA existed as a common law association before it was registered near the end of April 2009, and the only common law association in existence when the Municipality of Windhoek agreed to sell the property was the HRRFA, which was created for the acquisition of the land, Claasen said as well.

In his testimony, Kaura also told the court that a split along political party lines occurred in the Ovaherero community in 2003, when the National Unity Democratic Organisation (Nudo) broke away from the DTA alliance of political parties – the predecessor of the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) – and that this disturbed harmony in the Herero Red Flag Regiment, which created the HRRFA to buy erf 6297.

A valid and real agreement was concluded between the municipality and the HRRFA, but there was no such agreement with the HRFA, and as a result ownership of the property never passed to the HRFA, Claasen said.

She ordered that the title deed for erf 6297 should be rectified to reflect the HRRFA as the owner of the property, and also ordered that the HRFA should vacate the property.

The HRFA was also ordered to pay the HRRFA’s costs in the matter.

Phillip Barnard, instructed by Saima Nambinga, represented the HRRFA.

The HRFA was represented by Mekumbu Tjiteere.