Zaaruka gets nod to expand Oshana mall

THE High Court at Oshakati on Friday ordered Lukas Johannes to pay the legal costs of Ben Zaaruka of Stantoll Properties, which is constructing the second phase of the Oshana mall at Ongwediva.

The court also ordered Johannes, his family and anyone else who plans to do so to refrain from interfering with the development of the mall.

Zaaruka’s lawyer, Wilmarie Horn from W Horn Attorneys at Oshakati, said the legal costs amount to some N$7 000.

However, the court at the same time rejected Zaaruka’s demand for Johannes’s family to be evicted from Erf 6315 for the expansion of the mall as it said the family did not occupy the erf.

Zaaruka in March this year approached the court to have the family evicted from the erf, and to prevent them from obstructing the construction of the mall’s second phase, as they allegedly attempted to do previously.

Johannes has denied that his family interfered in the construction, but argued that the property in question is a portion of his ancestral land.

He alleged that the Ongwediva Town Council is yet to compensate him to surrender the land to it, while Zaaruka, on his part, argued that in 2010, he bought that portion of land from the council for N$1,3 million, and has the title deeds to prove it.

It became town land after the proclamation of Ongwediva as a town in 1992.

The town council has also, in the meantime, admitted that negotiations on how Johannes is to be compensated are ongoing.

High Court judges from Windhoek, Hosea Angula and Shafimana Ueitele, presided over the case, while the Affirmative Repositioning movement assigned Henry Shimutwikeni to defend Johannes.

– Nampa