Werner Menges
24 April 2008
Windhoek — PERHAPS it was hunger that drove Michael Olugodhi to take four dried fish from his grandmother's house on November 6 2004 - but that will never be known for sure.
Olugodhi is not around to tell what made him do it.
At the age of ten, he died at Omaalala, a village in the Oshakati district, on November 7 2004.
What is known about his last moments, though, is that extreme pain, shock and fear accompanied him to his death.
He was beaten to death.
Yesterday, Olugodhi's grandmother, Kaarina Josef, who is aged around 64, and a neighbour, Gideon David (24), went on trial in the High Court in Windhoek on a charge that they had murdered Olugodhi.
Both pleaded not guilty.
In plea explanations that their defence lawyers gave to Acting Judge John Manyarara, each of them accused the other of having carried out the beating that ended Olugodhi's life six weeks before what would have been his 11th birthday.
Olugodhi had been living with his grandmother since his birth, Acting Judge Manyarara heard on the first day of the trial.
On November 6 2004, the prosecution is alleging in the indictment against Josef and David, Josef returned home from a place where she had gone to drink a beer and found that some fish that she had left in the house were no longer there.
She suspected that her grandson had stolen them, it is alleged.
Josef asked a neighbour who was with her at her house to send David, who is the neighbour's son, to her house the following morning, it is charged.
David duly went to Josef's house on the morning of November 7 2004, and he and Josef then tied Olugodhi to a tree and proceeded to assault him with sticks, it is alleged.
When these sticks broke, they got hold of more sticks and continued with the assault, the prosecution is charging.
Finally, after the beating, the boy could not walk any more, so David took him and laid him down in a shady spot in Josef's homestead, it is alleged.
That was where Olugodhi died.
Josef is admitting that her grandson died on the date as alleged, and that he died from injuries sustained in an assault carried out by David, Josef's defence counsel, Marlene Dammert, told Acting Judge Manyarara when she revealed Josef's plea explanation to the court.
According to David, though, it was Josef who assaulted the boy, David's lawyer, Zagrys Grobler, told the court.
David only arrived on the scene after the assault, Grobler said.
Medical doctor Yury Vasin examined Olugodhi two days after his death.
The boy's body was covered in abrasions and bruises, Dr Vasin testified yesterday.
He said he counted more than 70 such marks on the front of the body.
On the child's back and sides, Dr Vasin counted more than 70 of these injuries as well.
These were signs of "extensive use of blunt force all over the body", Dr Vasin said.
He concluded that Olugodhi died of acute heart failure due to battery with a blunt object.
Olugodhi must have experienced massive pain, and then shock and fear, as the assault on him progressed, Dr Vasin said.
"Excessive force" would have had to be used to cause the kind of injuries that killed the boy, he said.
Testifying in her own defence, Josef flatly denied having even laid a finger on her grandson on the day of the deadly assault.
She insisted that she did not summon David to her house, but that it must have been his mother who had decided to send him there with an order that he should discipline Olugodhi for having helped himself to the fish.
Then again, she added, she could not say with certainty that this was the case.
She said David first wanted to beat the boy with a stick that he had taken from the fence around her house, but she then took a panga and went to cut off smaller branches from a tree for him to use.
She supplied him with only three of these, she said.
David and the boy got involved in a fight with each other, and she shouted at them to stop that, she said.
After that fight had been broken up, the three of them had coffee together, Josef said.
After that, David again chased after the boy and started beating him when he caught up with him, she claimed.
She later found the boy lying at the side of her homestead, and helped him to get inside, where he lay down in the shade, and later died, she said.
"I did not beat the deceased.
I did not touch him," Josef insisted during her testimony.
At the same time, though, when David arrived at her doorstep uninvited, supposedly to discipline her grandson through a beating, she conceded: "I did nothing."
The trial continues today, with State advocate Sandra Miller set to continue cross-examining Josef.
Both suspects are free on bail.
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