Colleagues pay tribute to respected judge

THE late High Court Judge Nic Hannah was a principled legal officer who helped lay the foundations on which Namibia’s judicial values are now anchored, Chief Justice Peter Shivute has commented after Hannah’s death.

The Chief Justice made the remarks over the past weekend in a tribute to Hannah, who died at the age of 76 on Thursday last week.

Hannah, who was a High Court judge in Namibia from 1991 until his retirement near the end of 2005, served the judiciary of Namibia with dedication and distinction, Chief Justice Shivute said. He and his post-independence colleagues laid a strong foundation on which Namibia’s judicial values are now anchored, and his commitment to service delivery was evident in the many judgements he authored as well as in his prompt delivery of decisions after hearing cases, the Chief Justice said.

High Court Judge President – and also deputy chief justice – Petrus Damaseb described Hannah as “truly a judge’s judge” on Friday.

He remarked that Hannah was “a towering jurist of sharp intellect and great humanity who was imbued with unmeasurable common sense”. Hannah was a reassuring presence in the High Court, and his colleagues all counted on his knowledge of the law and wise counsel, the Judge President said.

As a principled legal officer, Hannah fostered a culture of identifying and narrowing down issues that had to be determined by a court, rather than spending valuable time on peripheral issues, Chief Justice Shivute also said.

In a statement issued on Friday, the president of the Society of Advocates of Namibia, senior counsel Andrew Corbett, also noted that Hannah had “a fine grasp of the law and an incisive ability to cut through a morass of facts to the core issues for determination by the court”. Hannah set a high standard for lawyers who appeared in cases before him, and he displayed the finest qualities in a judge, which was to be independent, fearless and impartial, Corbett said.

Hannah’s daughter, Jacquie Lohmann, told that her father died of respiratory failure in the Roman Catholic Hospital in Windhoek on Thursday evening.

He would have turned 77 years of age today.

Lohmann said her father had a bad fall at Swakopmund, where he was living, about a month ago. Having sustained a rib fracture and punctured lung in the fall, he was in hospital over the past month and underwent surgery a week before his death, Lohmann said. The surgery appeared to have gone well, but Hannah then had a setback and, after five days in the hospital’s intensive care unit, he succumbed to respiratory failure, she related.

Hannah died a little more than two months after his wife, lawyer Anna-Marie Engelbrecht, died at Swakopmund on 2 October. Engelbrecht, who was also a former acting judge of Namibia’s High Court, died at the age of 60.

Hannah practised law in London from 1966 to 1979, when he was appointed as a judge of the High Court of Botswana. He was appointed as chief justice of Swaziland in 1985, and in 1991 took up a post in the High Court of Namibia. He on occasion also served as an acting judge of appeal of Namibia’s Supreme Court.

Hannah is survived by his daughter, two sons, and two grandsons.