A State prosecutor is dead…. She was killed in cold blood by a bunch of criminals who saw her as an obstacle to their gluttony.
State prosecutor Justine Shiweda paid the ultimate price of daring to do her job, which comes with an oath to uphold the constitution and to conduct herself with honesty and integrity at all times. Now her family is left without a daughter, sister and a helper. Her children, orphaned and left to the mercy of cruel Namibia, where those without money or political connections stand no chance at survival or prosperity. The criminal justice system, left with one less soldier.
President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, accorded Shiweda an official funeral, and it looked like a hero’s sending off. With political functionaries, law enforcement and the broader legal and judicial fraternity.
The mood was sombre, while some, especially State functionaries, couldn’t help but shed tears.
However, The Issue has a few questions to the State actors, politicians and all Namibians… why are we sad?
Were those leaders sobbing on Saturday crying genuine or crocodile tears?
Did we gather because we realised that our system is broken and manned by unpatriotic and greedy people or is it because we just realised that the monster we created is capable of killing one of our own?
If the tears were real, would Shiweda be the last law enforcement or judicial official to lose their life or dignity at the hands of criminals? Will this be our never again moment and take swift and decisive action?
If not, then Shiweda’s death will be symbolic of the day Namibia slid into a gangster state, where the country’s sovereignty is outsourced to criminals and their proxies in government.
We say this because Namibia has become a dishonest society where right and wrong is determined by the size of one’s wallet and how much access they have to the political decision makers.
A society where selective outrage is practiced and wrongdoing is rationalised away based on someone’s money or political connections. A society where accountability is removed from government vocabulary.
Before Shiweda’s brutal attack late last year, everyone in Namibia knew that crime had shot through the roof. We have been debating the reasons behind it.
Yes it’s true, a lack of opportunity, poverty and the continued apartheid manufactured inequality, all play a role in the high crime rate. But no one ever talks about how the country’s political leadership and the law enforcement community have been complicit or actively participating in fueling crime.
Events leading to Justine Shiweda’s killing are riddled with the involvement of police officers, who corruptly assisted Abner ‘Kapilili’ Mateus and his gang, which include medical doctor Fillemon ‘Fly’ Nakanduungile in the execution of their multimillion dollar crime syndicate. Mateus for that matter is a former police officer and has allegedly been the master conductor of this crime family from within police custody.
A quick rudimentary online search will show that between January 2025 and February 2026 a minimum of 20 police officials have been arrested for being involved in some form of crime or criminal behaviour.
Shiweda’s death has exposed that claims of police officers being on the take, being in the employ or moonlighting for criminals and or private businesspeople are a reality and not a conspiracy theory any more. Then there is the matter of two active cases where police and military officials have been criminally charged for allegedly stealing guns from police and military armouries. These guns found themselves in the hands of violent criminal gangs in South Africa. Yet government decision makers remain in denial about the crisis facing the country’s law enforcement.
The last time law enforcement, at least publicly, took serious steps to deal with alleged police criminality was over a decade ago and it was with the drug law enforcement unit. In 2014 the head of the unit’s Windhoek operation chief inspector Freddie Basson was arrested on allegations that he stole drugs being kept as exhibits in the evidence vault. The charges were later dropped, but not before he implicated his boss Deputy Commissioner Hermias van Zyl, who was the national head of the unit. A year later, the drug law enforcement unit was disbanded, leaving only Van Zyl and a handful of officers. The aim was to deal with what the police top brass and the prosecutor general’s office believed was widespread police corruption and criminality within the unit. By 2016 Van Zyl himself was facing serious allegations of taking drugs out of an evidence vault and giving them to a drug dealer to sell on the streets, without following test buying and selling protocols. He also faced allegations of having questionable relationships with drug dealers, informants and for employing family members as informants. Van Zyl opted to take early retirement before the police and prosecutor general led investigations into his conduct could be completed.
One wonders what the role of the police internal investigations directorate, which is responsible for probing police wrongdoing, is.
But police don’t operate in a vacuum, they operate in an ecosystem that consists of prosecutors, magistrates, judges and lawyers. If the police fruit in this basket is rotten, how long before it spoils the rest of the basket?
Whispers and accusations of prosecutors and magistrates being on the take have already been making rounds for the past three years. That some prosecutors are working in tandem with criminals to undermine police investigations in some cases.
These remain unproven conjectures, but Shiweda’s death surely does provide probable cause for a wide ranging investigation into the country’s law enforcement offices.
Shiweda’s death comes at a time when our neighbours South Africa are busy with a judicial commission of inquiry and a parliamentary commission of inquiry simultaneously looking into allegations of criminality, political interference and corruption in the criminal justice system of that country. At the same time, there is also a commission set up to determine whether one of that country’s top prosecutors is fit to hold office.
As a country this is our opportunity to follow South Africa’s lead and ensure that we arrest the situation before many more police officers, prosecutors and whistleblowers are killed.
Parliament, the Ombudsman, the Judicial Service Commission and President Nandi-Ndaitwah, you all have an opportunity to do the right thing, otherwise Shiweda will not be the last but the first of many to be killed simply for doing their job, which then potentially erodes the sanctity of the legal profession, and law enforcement.
Some of us will view your inaction to mean Saturday’s tears as merely a performance with no remorse.
