Maria David
THE Olufuko Cultural Festival will continue to be an important living heritage and form part of many Namibian’s cultural identity which is required to be preserved for future generations.
The Olufuko initiation ceremony was demonized as “a pagan practice” and was gradually relegated to obscurity, but in 2012 it was re-introduced in its modern form.
NamRights, through its executive director Phil yaNangoloh, approached the High Court weeks before the hosting of this year’s Olufuko Festival in August.
Acting judge Collins Parker, dismissed NamRights’ legal challenge against the Olufuko initiation ceremony, and directed the organization to pay the legal costs of its opponents in the case in the Windhoek High Court recently.
The dismissal of NamRights’ application against the government, the Ombalantu and Ombadja Traditional Authorities, former President Sam Nujoma and 15 other respondents was based on a finding by acting judge Parker that the organization did not have the required legal standing to ask the court to declare the Olufuko initiation ceremony as unconstitutional and a violation of human rights.
The judge noted that NamRights admitted that the organisation itself has not suffered any violation of its rights or the taking away of its legal entitlements. “It has come to court to ventilate the rights of some nameless, phantom girl children who are not over the age of 18,” acting judge Parker stated.
However, yaNangoloh said that their case was to challenge the constitutionality of government participation because the ceremony serves to transform girls into women for the purposes of interest in all matters of marriage, sexual intercourse and child birth.
“We argue such participation is unconstitutional and unlawful and that the court must make an order stopping such participation,” yaNangoloh said.
Acting judge Parker, stated that the girls at the centre of the Olufuko ceremony that NamRights considers a violation of human rights are minors, and that the organisation “has not placed an iota of evidence before the court to explain the nature of the relationship (NamRights) has with the parents or guardians of the girls and why these parents or guardians are unable to approach the court themselves for relief.”
YaNangoloh noted that the judge’s claim that they went to court on behalf of the girls being transformed into adulthood at Outapi is not true.
Traditionally, Olufuko initiation rites include girls as young as 12, but the Outapi Town council’s website elevates the minimum age to 15, describing Olufuko as “a female initiation, under which girls between the age of 15 and 20 have to go through in order to become mature and marriageable women.
