WINDHOEK – The trial of the two women accused of selling minor girls for sex, and which was held in camera since the start, was moved to January next year.
This was ostensibly done to allow the State to call an expert witness from South Africa to testify in the Windhoek High Court before Judge President Petrus Damaseb.
The accused are Johanna Lukas and Gwen Nelwembe, a Zambian citizen, and they face various charges of trafficking in persons, rape, soliciting or enticing a minor to the commission of a sexual or an indecent or immoral act and rape on diverse occasions. Lukas faces 11 counts and Nelwembe 2 counts.
The State alleges that Lukas and Nelwembe offered the minor girls up for sale to a Swakopmund resident, Marthinus Martin Pretorius, during April, May and June 2012 for sex under coercive circumstances being that the girls because of their ages were exceptionally vulnerable.
Pretorius, who is a South African citizen, was at the time of the incidents employed at one of the Uranium mines at the coast.
He managed to evade arrest and is believed to have fled to his native South Africa.
New Era reported extensively about Lukas because of her impregnation in custody after she casually whipped out her breast and fed her then one-month old baby during her first pre-trial appearance before the Judge President.
At the time the Judge President asked her about the baby and she informed him that she was pregnant before she was arrested, but her family denied this and claimed that she got pregnant while in custody.
Various efforts by New Era to get to the bottom of this proved futile as the woman refused to name the father.
Rumours were abound at the time that she was impregnated by a police officer that was guarding prisoners at the Narraville Police Station, but Lukas denied it and blamed her pregnancy on an unnamed inmate.
An investigation was launched and it apparently revealed that the inmate managed to have intercourse with Lukas through a hole in the cell.
Investigations by New Era revealed that the “hole” was the size of a golf ball and the women’s cells were separated from the men’s cells by an empty cell in between.
By Roland Routh