Mbwale guilty

OSHAKATI MERJA IILEKA

THE Oshakati High Court yesterday found foreign witchdoctor Bonifatius Mbwale guilty on seven of the 13 rape charges against him.
During a six-hour judgment, High Court Judge Christie Liebenberg found that the State had proved beyond reasonable doubt on most counts that the Angolan-born witchdoctor had sexual intercourse with his patients under the pretext of it being part of their treatment.
Liebenberg remarked that Mbwale knew sexual intercourse between a traditional healer and his customers is not only morally wrong, but also unlawful.
"I am accordingly satisfied that the accused realised at all relevant times that acts of sexual intercourse committed with the complainants in these counts were unlawful," said Liebenberg.
As Liebenberg read his 90-page judgment to a packed courtroom that included Mbwale's son with whom he was arrested by the Ohangwena police in November 2011 - but who was later released and deported to Angola - Mbwale listened attentively with a blank expression.
The witchdoctor, who denied all 13 charges of rape, claiming that he had consensual sex with his customers, has been behind bars since he was arrested at one of his 'clinics' at Onunho.
Although Mbwale, who has admitted to having HIV/Aids, was squarely blamed by all the complainants who tested HIV positive for infecting them during 'treatment', he was not judged on evidence given in court to that effect.
Liebenberg said the prosecution in the end had conceded that no medical evidence was presented to court supporting the complainants' assertion and, in the absence of reliable evidence to that effect, the court was not entitled to make a finding on their HIV status as the evidence constituted hearsay.
The judgment also exposed the police's incompetence, with Liebenberg remarking that that had the police at Omutaku village acted swiftly when the first rape charge was made against Mbwale in 2009, other women could have been spared.
"The police's seeming inability to trace the accused is indeed an unfortunate state of affairs because all of the remaining charges relate to similar crimes allegedly committed after the first report was made and which, in all probability, could have been prevented had the police acted sooner," said Liebenberg.
For Mbwale, the judgment was a particularly hard pill to swallow because despite the inconsistencies in the testimony of the main State witness, he was found guilty on that count too.
The 25-year-old witness, who Mbwale claimed throughout the trail was his lover, was the first to lay rape charges against Mbwale - setting off a domino effect as numerous other young women came forward with similar allegations.
Mbwale, who saw between 50 and 150 patients a day, operated clinics at Omutaku and Iiputu in the Omusati Region and Onhuno in the Ohangwena Region since he started practising traditional medicine in Namibia in 1985.
Liebenberg also remarked that although Mbwale's lawyer, Pieter Greyling, stated that Mbwale did not possess supernatural powers, the court was not convinced that that this isn't what he wanted the outside world to believe.
"This was a well-known fact among those members of society who flocked to him in great numbers for treatment. […] The perception about the accused not being an ordinary person, but a traditional healer with unconventional healing and supernatural powers, seems to have been widely accepted by those under his treatment," said Liebenberg.
The sentencing date has not yet been announced by Liebenberg.