Namibia’s Minister of Agriculture has been dismissed after being accused of raping a 16-year-old girl five years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mac-Albert Hengari was arrested on Saturday, suspected of attempting to bribe the victim, now 21, to withdraw her complaint, according to police authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 59-year-old Hengari, who denies any involvement, appeared in court on Monday where his request for bail was denied. The scandal marks the first major challenge for Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, Namibia’s first female president, who took office just a month ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a statement, the presidency announced Hengari\u2019s dismissal without specifying the reasons but confirmed that he was also expelled from the National Assembly. Hengari, who served as a member of Parliament representing the ruling Swapo party, is under investigation for multiple charges, including kidnapping, rape, and assault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During Monday\u2019s hearing at a magistrate’s court in Windhoek, he was additionally charged with obstruction of justice. He and his co-accused will remain in custody until their next court appearance on June 3, with bail denied due to the risk of flight and witness tampering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The opposition party, Independent Patriots for Change (IPC), reacted by condemning what it called a \u201cserious failure of leadership\u201d and stressed that the case highlighted \u201cthe emptiness of government rhetoric on combating gender-based violence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Namibia’s Minister of Agriculture has been dismissed after being accused of raping a 16-year-old girl five years ago. Mac-Albert Hengari was arrested on Saturday, suspected of attempting to bribe the victim, now 21, to withdraw her complaint, according to police authorities. The 59-year-old Hengari, who denies any involvement, appeared in court on Monday where his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":527983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_trash_the_other_posts":false,"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"pays":[142],"personnalite":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-527982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-policy-news-benews","8":"pays-namibia"},"acf":{"type_de_publication":"opinion","nom_de_linstitution":"","description_de_linstitution":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527982"},{"taxonomy":"pays","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pays?post=527982"},{"taxonomy":"personnalite","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/personnalite?post=527982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}