Namibia: HIV and pre-employment testing

In May 2000, the Namibian Labour Court ruled that the Namibian Defense Force (NDF) is not entitled to exclude people from recruitment on the grounds of their HIV status. Acting Judge Harold Levy had ruled that excluding a person from employment purely on the basis of being HIV positive was unfair labor practice and constituted discrimination. However, this will not be the end of the matter. Defense Minister Erkki Nghimtina said that an appeal would be lodged against the judgement in the interest of ensuring that Namibia had a healthy and strong military. AIDS Law Unit Lawyer, Michaela Figueira, lauded the judgement as a brilliant breakthrough, which put Namibia law on HIV/AIDS in the forefront of legal developments in the field internationally. "We will appeal", Nghimtina commented, when approached at the National Assembly. The judgement, he added, was tantamount to allowing for the recruitment into the NDF of blind and crippled people. Nghimtina said he still stood by statements he had made in the National Assembly 2 weeks before, when the Minister told fellow Parliamentarians that the NDF could not recruit HIV positive people because they were ill, and the country could not be defended by ill persons. "We need a strong (defense) force--a healthy force", he said. "We have to have physically strong, healthy people, who can carry out hard tasks. This, we cannot compromise". Commenting on the unanimous testimony from both sides in the Labor Court case, that an HIV positive status, did not necessarily mean that a person was in any way physically unfit for military duty. Nghimtina answered that the NDF needed to recruit members for the long term. People with HIV, he added, could be employed elsewhere, but not in the NDF.