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Namibia: Young Man Gets 20 Years for Rape of 77-Year-Old
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The Namibian (Windhoek)
30 April 2008
Posted to the web 30 April 2008
Werner Menges
Windhoek
THE moral fibre of Namibian society is unravelling, an Acting Judge of the High Court warned yesterday when he handed a 20-year prison term to a young man who confessed raping a 77-year-old woman near Ondangwa in November last year.
Copious quantities of cheap red wine were to blame for his crime, Luciana Ndjaba Augustus indicated to Acting Judge Hosea Angula on Monday as he testified in the run-up to his sentencing.
"This thing, I did it because of alcohol. Therefore I'm asking the court to give me a short period of imprisonment," Augustus (23) told the court.
Augustus did not get what he wished for.
He was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment yesterday.
On Monday, he repeatedly told Acting Judge Angula that he wanted to apologise to the court and also to his victim.
"This thing," as Augustus referred to it, was the brutal and shocking rape of a 77-year-old woman at Olukolo, a village near Ondangwa, on the evening of November 13 last year.
The woman - a widowed mother of seven children - was on her way to her daughter's home to seek a safe shelter for the night after her son had threatened to beat her.
While on her way, she encountered Augustus, who attacked her and violated her sexually.
He raped her and also sodomised her, Augustus admitted when he pleaded guilty to one count of rape on Thursday last week.
While testifying in mitigation of sentence on Monday, Augustus said he drank "a lot of punya-punya" - referring to a popular and cheap brand of dry red wine - on the evening before the crime.
He said he and a friend had also been drinking some traditional brew during the day, and he ended up finishing off some 10 bottles of the wine with other people during the evening, Augustus said.
This drinking was the only explanation he offered for the sickening crime that he confessed he committed later that night.
"I did it, but I did it because I was drunk. It was not my intention," the apologetic Augustus said.
He told Acting Judge Angula that he attended school up to Grade 8, when he could not afford to continue his education.
He is unmarried, and was unemployed at the time of the rape.
Since then, he has been kept in Police custody.
Augustus related that after raping the complainant, he went home to sleep.
The next morning the Police came for him.
They had followed his tracks from the scene of the crime, he said.
He knew the complainant by sight, as they lived in the same area, Augustus said.
The complainant was injured in the incident, and spent about two and a half weeks in hospital, Acting Judge Angula noted.
She told the court last week that she was taking solace in reading the Bible.
Her experience at the hands of Augustus has left her emotionally devastated, though, and she cried while she was on the witness stand, Acting Judge Angula recalled.
He was inclined to accept that Augustus has genuine remorse about what he did, and that alcohol had played a big role in the crime, Acting Judge Angula also indicated.
He said he could not imagine that a young man like Augustus would have been sexually attracted to an elderly lady like the complainant, had it not been for the effect of the alcohol that Augustus had consumed.
"The liquor must have triggered his 'primitive and bestial urge of lust'," Acting Judge Angula said.
He added that it goes beyond any understanding that a 23-year-old man who was in his right mind could conceive the thought of raping a 77-year-old woman when they are divided by a generation gap of more than five decades.
A case like this showed that something was seriously wrong in Namibian society, Acting Judge Angula hinted.
He stated: "The moral fibre of our society is disintegrating at an alarming rate if a 77-year-old lady is no longer safe to move around by herself without being attacked and raped."
He told Augustus that rape is a vile and abhorrent crime, which is especially repulsive when it is committed against a vulnerable person such as a child or an elderly person.
Augustus deserved a long custodial sentence, he said.
Augustus was represented by Werner Janse van Rensburg, on instructions from the Directorate of Legal Aid.
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Ruben Shileka represented the State.
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