Interpreters key in promoting justice
Article 12 of the Namibian constitution contains the provisions for a fair trial, which states that the effectiveness of the Judiciary in Namibia is basically respected and all persons generally have an equal opportunity in court for a fair trial.
As such, according to Metusal Vatura Matundu, court translators are in a way custodians of the Namibian constitution, since the right to a fair trial is guaranteed through the same living document.
“It is, therefore, very important for witnesses in a court of law to express themselves in a language that they feel comfortable with. Failure of which the trial will not be considered fair,” Matundu, also known as Malcolm X, maintained in an exclusive interview with New Era this week.
Matundu has been working as an Otjiherero interpreter in the High Court main division in
Windhoek for the past five and a half years and as part of his job, he says, he provides interpretation services from Otjiherero to English and vice versa.
“I also attend to interpreting needs in the same languages during mediation proceedings. This is on top of handling the translations of court documents from Otjiherero to English and vice versa,” he said.
Matundu has it that every day on the job is rewarding since he gets to broaden his horizon on everything pertaining to the legal fraternity. Being a court interpreter, he adds, further sharpen ones interpersonal and communications skills in light of the diverse individuals and personalities that one gets to encounter.
But like anything else, this rewarding job is not without its share of challenges.
“Sometimes you come across instances where the witnesses become emotional to a point that they talk non-stop, making it difficult for you as an interpreter to relay what they are saying to the court,” Matundu said, adding that these emotional outbursts mostly arises from the witnesses being bombarded with complicated questions by defence lawyers as well as State counsels during cross examinations.
“This puts one in a situation where you have to calm the witness down so that you can get an opportunity to convey what he or she has said and this can take a while,” Matundu revealed.
Another challenge, according to Matundu, stems from the legal jargon that some defence lawyers inadvertently use during court proceedings.
“Some lawyers inadvertently find themselves using heavily loaded legal jargon which myself as an interpreter who has never been to law school at times find difficult to translate. Then I have to remind them that I am just a layman and needs clarity,” he maintained.
Be that as it may, Matundu has seemingly found his niche in the job market, or at least one that will take him to his destiny and as he harbours no plans of leaving the courts any time soon. He maintained that he intends to venture into the legal profession in the near future.
The beginning
The outspoken Matundu was born 50 years ago, at the Old TB Hospital which was the only maternity ward reserved for the black Namibians during the previous dispensation. He further revealed that having been raised in the heat of the apartheid era which he prefers to refer to as the period of “white domination”, in light of the so called “white supremacist Euro/US dominion”, he later adopted the name of Malcolm X.
“I am the third child in a total of 11 children,” he revealed, adding that having been raised in Otjozondjupa region, he attended the Okamatapati Primary School before joining the popular Augustineum High School in Windhoek, where he matriculated in 1991.
The year 1992 saw him enrolling for a Bachelor of Arts degree in Industrial Psychology at a local university but as fate will have it, he was forced to drop out due to circumstances that were out of his control.
“That’s how my hopes for tertiary education were dashed, but in 1994, I joined Telecom Namibia as a customer care agent, a position I held until the year 2000. I left and joined the courts in 2016,” he enthused.