WINDHOEK – Police Inspector-General, Sebastian Ndeitunga yesterday read out a statement in the Windhoek High Court in which he explained his Namibian citizenship.
This happened during the trial in which he is suing former Magistrate Peter Ya Peter Kavaongelwa for N$100 000 for defamation of character over allegations that he committed perjury during the disciplinary hearing that led to the magistrate’s dismissal. Allegations surfaced during the trial that Ndeitunga forged his Namibian citizenship and is actually an Angolan citizen. According to Ndeitunga he was born in Angola at a village called Oshihunga in 1962 although he is not sure since he does not have a birth certificate to verify the date.
He said he understood that his mother died in 1968 after which he went to live with his uncle Shatana Hamupunda at Onheleiwa, a village in northern Namibia. He further said that he does not know where his parents were born, but that he knew his father, Ndeitunga Hamatuta used to visit his uncle. According to the police chief, he went to work for a South African family, the Coetzee’s at a farm in the south herding cattle before he left for exile in 1974 where he served in the liberation struggle in Angola up to 1978.
In 1978 he went to Cuba where he received his schooling and eventually attended university. He continued that during that time he had no contact with his father and travelled with a United Nations passport that reflected him as a Namibian citizen. He returned to Namibia in 1989 to participated in the UN monitored elections that led to the independence of Namibia and this is when he heard for the first time that his father and two brothers were abducted and killed by UNITA rebels, he stated.
He further said that he then returned to Cuba to complete his law degree and returned to Namibia in 1993 and since Namibia was independent he was required to obtain a Namibian passport. “I at all times regarded myself as a Namibian having fought in the Namibian liberation struggle and also having been sent by Swapo to study in Cuba,” he stated. According to Ndeitunga he ‘honestly’ believed that both his parents were deceased when he applied for the late registration of his birth and that his parents were Namibian. He further stated that upon his return from England where he was sent for training in 1994 he discovered that his father was still alive and was admitted in the Oshikuku hospital. That is when he made arrangements for his father to be transferred to the Katutura State Hospital, Ndeitunga said.
He added that his father eventually passed away in January 2005 after a long illness. “Because of my family’s circumstances and the fact that my mother died whilst I was very young and I was separated from my father and living with my uncle, in reality I knew very little about my parents,” he said and continued that he accordingly believed what he stated in the application for the late registration of his birth was true at the time he signed the form on August 13, 1993. “I accordingly deny that I lied under oath and further deny the defendant’s (Kavaongelwa) allegations that I am ‘generally a liar’ and ‘a habitual liar who shows no respect for the truth’ he said, and concluded that such statements are reckless and intended to defame him, and as such are made with malicious intent.
By Roland Routh
rrouth@newera.com.na