Windhoek
The Oshakati High Court on Friday ordered its Registrar’s office not to accept any matter filed by a Zimbabwean national, who has filed 13 different notices over a job he lost and, in the process, prolonged his stay in Namibia.
The Registrar’s office may only accept any matter from Tambaoga Shirichena with the authority of the Judge President, the court ruled. The court also ordered the department of immigration to investigate Shirichena’s residential status and act in accordance with the requirements of the Immigration Act.
The Zimbabwean came to Namibia as a result of a bilateral agreement between the two countries on a technical assistance scheme and was working for the Namibia Training Authority (NTA), together with others from his country.
He was supposed to be in the country for two years only, but upon the expiry of his contract allegedly refused to leave, while his colleagues honoured the terms and conditions of their contracts and left Namibia.
Shirichena’s refusal to leave led to numerous court applications, including one in which he claimed certain amounts of money from his previous employer and challenged his dismissal from Valombola Vocational Training Centre in Ongwediva.
Having lost this legal suit – the first application – he appealed to the Labour Commissioner and it was on that basis that he held the view that he was allowed to remain in the country in order to prosecute his appeal to finality.
Shirichena had been allowed to remain in the country for the purposes of attending the hearing of his appeal before the Labour Commissioner, but later lost that appeal.
He, however, remained in the country and started filing endless applications against various people and the NTA, which had attempted to remove him from its premises, where he was previously employed.
“These various applications were found to be vexatious and frivolous, which was tantamount to an abuse of court process,” Justice Cheda of the Oshakati High Court said.
“He was not entitled to remain in the country as he pleased, as his contract with the institution had expired and he had lost his appeal, which was his reason for remaining in Namibia,” the judge said.
“It seems to me that my judgment of the 17 July 2014 opened floodgates for Shirichena to sue his real, or imagined adversaries. Litigation has been coming in thick and fast. All the three honourable judges in this jurisdiction have dealt with Shirichena, as well as some members of staff.”
“In my view, the applicant’s litigation history is cause for concern. It is clear that after my judgment of the 17th July 2014, he found his way back into the country and that arrival led to a plethora of applications against people and/or organisations. A perusal of some of these applications [shows they] are confused and confusing and bring into question his bona fides,” the judge reasoned.
All the applicant’s matters are to be transferred to the court’s main division in Windhoek, the court heard.
Last year Shirichena filed a lawsuit of N$2 billion against the National Training Authority (NTA), saying he suffered gross abuse at the hands of his former employer and the large tab is his assessment of what his ‘suffering’ was worth, according to a report in the Windhoek Observer.
He had worked as a vocational education trainer at NTA’s Valombola Vocational Training Centre.