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Local Official Marooned in NamibiaFeb 09, 2009 (Mmegi/The Reporter/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) -- A Botswana employee of the Windhoek based parliamentary regional organisation says she has written letters to the Speaker of the National Assemlbly, Patrick Balopi, then chairman of the SADC-PF, to intervene in the bitter bickering that pit the SADC-PF head of secretariat against her, resulting in the woman's dismissal. Balopi yesterday refused to discuss the issue. "I am no longer the chairman of the SADC Parliamentary Forum. I would leave that to the current chairman, who is in Swaziland. I do not want to seem to be undermining him," Balopi said in a phone interview yesterday. Bookie Kethusegile-Juru, headed to Namibia in 2005 to take up a lucrative job at the SADC Parliamentary Forum as the second in command. Now she finds herself fighting legal battles against the same organisation. She has filed a case in the Namibian courts against her boss for unfair dismissal. Kethusegile-Juru has been languishing in Windhoek since August 2008 without a job. She has been waiting for the court case against her boss. She says she cannot look for another job until she is done with the matter.Since she was appointed deputy secretary general at the SADC Parliamentary Forum, Kethusegile-Juru says she met strong opposition from her Zambian boss, Kasuka Mutukwa, who eventually fired her from the position of deputy secretary general in August last year for allegedly "expressing disparaging views concerning the SADC Parliamentary Forum, its management and operations, and which communications have been prejudicial to both the interests and image of the organisation". Kethusegile is quoted in the Namibian and New Era, as saying she was not given an opportunity to defend herself and that the dismissal letter "does not show what I communicated, and there is no evidence to substantiate the claim". "Mutukwa dismissed me with immediate effect. There was no hearing. I was never warned. I was just presented with the dismissal letter," she told the New Era. She further told that newspaper that Mutukwa instructed one of his subordinates at the SADC-PF headquarters to immediately change the locks on the door of her office. To this day her personal belongings remain locked inside her former office. She was also kicked out of the organisation's home. "The head of finance and administration, who was charged with the responsibility to do this, among other instructions, immediately tendered his resignation as he could not be identified with such injustice and breach of rules and procedures". Kethusegile-Juru says it was only after two years of hassles that the SADC parliamentary Forum Committee directed that the anomaly be corrected. That is when she was also put on a grade2 salary scale. Kethusegile-Juru says her boss all this time was lobbying various SADC officials in the committee not to recognise her and make her his no.2. "My confirmation was signed by members of the committee after two years because it was a hassle. The executive secretary wanted to confirm me for a different position as director of PLC," she said yesterday in a telephone interview from Namibia.The Motswana woman says at some point she had to write a report to the executive committee urging them not to close down the PLC department. "The boss had taken the decision to close my department without consulting with me, so I had to plead with the executive committee not to close down the centre. I said it would not be right, and also told them that I was not consulted as the director of PLC", she explained. But that was the letter that earned her summary dismissal from her Zambian boss, who was not pleased that she divulged certain information to the executive committee. Kethusegile-Juru says she is worried that the court case she filed in Namibia is taking long while Mutukwa's days as the head of the SADC PF secretariat are also drawing to an end. The Zambian's contract ends in May this year, and is already up for grabs after it was advertised this week. "I can only imagine that Mutukwa wants his term of office to come to an end and run away. His lawyers have written that they do not want the Court hearing to come before the end of April. That is because they know that after the end of April, Mutukwa will be nowhere to be seen", said a worried Kethusegile-Juru. She says initially Mutukwa's lawyers said they wanted the case to go to the Windhoek-based SADC Tribunal, since their client had diplomatic immunity, but we wrote to the SADC Tribunal, and they advised that they do not have any problem with such a case being heard by a Namibian district court," she says. The case has been postponed on several occasions as Mutukwa's lawyers said they were not ready. Kethusegile-Juru was appointed Assistant Secretary General of the SADC-PF in 2005. She holds an MA degree in Mass Communications from the University of Leicester, UK. She previously served as Technical Advisor on Gender at the SADC Secretariat in Gaborone and as Head of Programme of Women in Development Southern Africa Awareness at the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre. Kethusegile-Juru has authored several publications on women, human rights and democracy. |