AFTER READING THE allegations involving so-called fugitive lawyer Marén de Klerk, authorised by the Supreme Court to testify via video link in the National Fishing Corporation of Namibia (Fishcor) and Sea Flower Pelagic matter, my blood boiled.
That anger was sharpened by the memory of Sacky Shanghala lecturing young Namibians at the Swapo Youth League Youth Day celebrations with astonishing arrogance.
The allegations now reveal that the former minister of justice allegedly told those involved that they “could all stand to make a lot of money.” If true, this is not a lapse in judgement. It is a declaration of corruption. A justice minister speaking the language of profiteering signals the complete moral collapse of public office.
The hypocrisy is obscene. To preach values to the youth while allegedly commercialising national resources is an insult to the nation. This is how institutions rot from the top down, wrapped in speeches about integrity.
The Fishrot scandal is not just about money. It is about betrayal.
Six Years On: Power Protected, Justice Deferred
Six years after Fishrot exploded into public view, one truth can no longer be avoided: this case is no longer only about corruption. It is about power, how it shields itself, how institutions hesitate when confronted by the powerful and how the poor are asked to wait indefinitely for justice that may never come.
The courts insist they are merely “following procedure”. Political leaders claim restraint in the name of separation of powers. Corporate actors hide behind distance, jurisdictions and legal formality.
But for the victims, former fisheries workers and their families, these explanations ring hollow.
Procedure does not feed a child.
Delay does not restore dignity.
Silence does not heal hunger.
The Human Cost the Court Rarely Sees
In Namibia’s coastal towns, Fishrot is not a headline or a legal brief. It is empty kitchens, lost homes and broken futures.
Six years on, findings from the Institute for Public Policy Research confirm what victims have lived every day:
Nearly nine out of 10 former fisheries workers remain unemployed.
Almost all face food insecurity, with more than half experiencing hunger daily.
Families have lost assets accumulated over decades – houses, vehicles, savings – while surviving on a N$4 000 monthly relief payment.
These workers were the foundation of a functioning industry and stable communities. Their labour generated wealth that was siphoned away through corruption, while they were left to absorb the shock alone.
Justice Delayed Is Not Neutral It Is a Choice
Every delay in the Fishrot trial is described in neutral language: motions, appeals, procedural questions. But neutrality here is an illusion.
When a trial scheduled for August 2025 is halted by a last-minute legal manoeuvre challenging all prior pre-trial rulings, the law is not merely being tested. It is being weaponised. When such long-shot applications succeed in freezing proceedings, the system sends a clear message: complexity favours those who can afford it.
Let us be honest about what has happened:
Delays have been engineered.
They originate from the defence, not prosecutorial incompetence.
Each interruption stretches suffering further into the future.
The judiciary must confront a hard question: at what point does tolerance for obstruction become complicity in harm?
Courts do not operate in a vacuum. Every postponement carries human consequences. When proceedings are allowed to stall indefinitely, judges are not standing above the crisis, they are standing inside it.
Who orchestrated this suffering?
Fishrot did not happen by chance. It was written carefully and deliberately by identifiable actors:
Namibian officials who traded public trust for personal enrichment.
Corporate executives who saw Namibia as a resource to be extracted and discarded.
Financial institutions and jurisdictions that offered secrecy, legitimacy and silence in exchange for profit.
Shell companies were not accounting errors. They were tools. Transfer pricing was not a misunderstanding. It was a strategy.
Tax treaty abuse was not clever planning. It was theft.
Every dollar routed through Cyprus, Mauritius, Dubai, the Marshall Islands or European banks was money that did not reach workers, communities or public services.
The architects of this scheme knew exactly what they were doing. They understood that weakening Fishcor would weaken social protection. They knew stripping revenue from the state would deepen poverty. They proceeded anyway.
Power Without Accountability Is the Real Scandal
Six years later, victims are still being asked to wait patiently while those implicated deploy delay as defence.
Why is it easier to move money across five jurisdictions than to begin a criminal trial?
Why are procedural rights treated as sacred, while the rights to food, work and dignity remain negotiable?
Why has there been no meaningful pressure on corporate actors, particularly Samherji, to acknowledge wrongdoing and repair harm instead of hiding behind the slow grind of courts they do not even face directly?
Justice that arrives after lives have been dismantled is not justice.
Restoration Is Not Charity It Is Obligation
Victims are not asking for sympathy, they are demanding responsibility.
Calls for a public apology, compensation and the creation of an independent foundation to manage restitution are minimal. They reflect a simple moral truth: those who benefited must repair what they destroyed.
Accountability must move beyond the courtroom. It must reach boardrooms, banks and governments that enabled this architecture of extraction.
Six years on, the Fishrot case confronts Namibia and the global system with a final, uncomfortable question: will power ever be made to answer to those it has harmed, or will victims remain permanent spectators in a justice system that moves only when the powerful allow it?
Until that question is answered with action, not delay, the true verdict of Fishrot is already clear.
And it is being lived every single day by those who have waited five years too long.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of our employers or this newspaper but are solely our personal views as citizens and Pan-Africanists.
– Paul Shipale writes in his personal capacity.
– Additional input by Folito Gaspar
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