Amupanda ‘ridiculed’ deputy minister with online photo

A photo which Affirmative Repositioning leader Job Amupanda placed on social media in July 2021 ridiculed deputy minister of finance and public enterprises Maureen Hinda.

Amupanda also added to the injury he had caused Hinda by making comments on social media after she instituted a defamation claim against him, acting judge Collins Parker found in a judgement delivered in the Windhoek High Court yesterday.

Parker said the photo posted on Facebook by Amupanda and a remark he made on social media in January 2022, after the media reported that Hinda was suing him for N$1 million, were defamatory and ordered Amupanda to pay Hinda N$100 000.

Parker also ordered that Amupanda should pay Hinda’s legal costs in the lawsuit she filed against him and should pay interest at an annual rate of 20% on the N$100 000 awarded to Hinda, until that amount has been paid in full.

Amupanda yesterday said he would first have to consult his lawyers before deciding whether he would appeal against the judge’s decision.

Although Amupanda at the end of Parker’s judgement ended up on the losing side in the case Hinda filed against him, the judge also found that some of Amupanda’s remarks about which Hinda complained were not defamatory.

Hinda claimed that Amupanda placed a photograph of a young woman wearing sunglasses and making a sign with her fingers on his Facebook page in July 2021, with the remark: “Deputy Minister of Finance Maureen Hinda during the Liberation Struggle. Maureen was so WizWiz. It’s like she won’t think twice about taking a knife out!” [sic]

According to Amupanda, though, that remark actually started with the words “It looks like deputy minister of finance Maureen Hinda” before the rest of the words followed.

Hinda claimed Amupanda intended to convey that the woman in the photograph was an image of her in her youth, she “was a street girl ready to fight at a moment’s notice”, she “fits the alleged stereotype in that she being Damara would not hesitate to stab anyone”, she “has no integrity and that she is a violent person capable of causing anyone bodily harm” and that she “is an uncouth woman that was of loose moral values during the liberation struggle”.

The defamatory meaning Hinda alleged was present in Amupanda’s remark was “far-fetched”, Parker found.

He said as he saw it, the caption that Amupanda placed with the photo “has only one reasonable meaning which is harmless and so the court will not torture into it a defamatory meaning which may be possible, but which can be reached only by inventing facts which are not disclosed and are in fact non-existent”.

The picture, however, was not a true photographic representation of Hinda by any stretch of the imagination and Amupanda knew that, Parker said, before finding that Amupanda published the photo to ridicule Hinda.

He also found that no public interest was served and no public benefit derived from the publication of the picture.

Hinda also claimed that Amupanda made more defamatory remarks about her during January 2022, when he hinted in social media postings that her lawsuit against him was a consequence of his “Rejecting the Sugar from the Mommy” [sic] and that “testicles of people from Nehale is not for sale” [sic].

Those remarks, Hinda claimed, were meant to further damage her reputation and were understood by members of the public to mean that she “is a cougar and has a penchant for younger men”, is vindictive and was suing him because he had allegedly rejected advances from her.

Most of the defamatory meaning that Hinda wanted to be drawn from those remarks of Amupanda was also far-fetched, Parker said.

However, a remark by Amupanda that she was angry and vindictive because he had rejected unwanted amorous advances from her when he was still a member of Swapo was not backed by any sufficient or satisfactory evidence and was defamatory, Parker found.

Lawyer Doris Hans-Kaumbi represented Hinda.

Amupanda was represented by Kadhila Amoomo.