President Hage Geingob of Namibia, who spearheaded his nation’s long struggle to free itself from South Africa’s apartheid regime, passed away on Sunday.
Hage Geingob, the president of Namibia, died at the age of 82 while undergoing care at the Lady Pohamba Hospital in the nation’s capital, Windhoek. Last month, Mr. Geingob disclosed to the world the news of his cancer diagnosis.
Geingob passed away early on Sunday with his wife and children by his side. Vice President Nangolo Mbumba since being sworn-in as his successor. He will serve in the role until elections due later in November this year.
Namibia, a former German colony that gained independence from South Africa in 1990. Analyst says, the South African nation is one of the safest countries in Africa and its democracy is one of the continent’s most stable, having held several peaceful multi-party elections since its independence. It enjoys particularly good relations with South Africa, and, in fact, the South African rand is legal tender in Namibia.
The Struggle
Hage Gottfried Geingob was born in the Otjiwarongo village in northern Namibia in 1941. He obtained his early education at Otavi and joined the Augustineum College. He was kicked out of the Augustineum in 1960 for taking part in a protest march against the inadequate state of education. But in 1961, he was readmitted and completed the teacher-training program. He then started working as a teacher at the Tsumeb Primary School in Central Namibia, but he ultimately made the decision that he could not pursue his own higher education in Namibia. He also objected to being made to teach using the Bantu Education System (Bantu Education Act, 1953) as a teacher.
Consequently, at the conclusion of the academic year, he quit his work in order to pursue education and instruction that would enable him to alter the system. To get out of the system, he hitched a ride in Botswana with three of his coworkers. He was supposed to go from Botswana to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on an African National Congress (ANC) -chartered aircraft, but South Africans detonated the aircraft. Nevertheless, the bomb that was planted on the aircraft detonated before it could take off. Following this, the “underground railway” was further tightened by the apartheid government. Geingob remained in Botswana as a result, where he worked as the Assistant South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) Representative from 1963 to 1964.
Meanwhile, in his early years he took up activism against South Africa’s apartheid regime, which at the time ruled over Namibia, and in 1964 he was appointed representative for the SWAPO liberation movement at the United Nations. Mr Geingob lived in exile for 27 years, spending time in Botswana, the United State (US) and the United Kingdom (UK), where he studied for a PhD in politics.
During his stay in the US, Hage Geingob remained a vocal advocate for Namibia’s independence, representing the local liberation movement, SWAPO, now the ruling party, at the United Nations and across the Americas. In the early 1970s, he started a career working for the UN on governance issues.
Apartheid was declared a crime at the United Nations International Convention of 1973, while a meeting of the Geneva Convention in 1977 designated apartheid as a war crime. By 1989, South Africa’s grip on Namibia became untenable. The border war was draining the country’s resources and the Red threat dissipated with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Hage Geingob came back to Namibia in 1989, a year before the country gained independence. He was Namibia’s first prime minister after independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990, when SWAPO won the first vote. Hage Geingob served from 1990 to 2002 under former president Sam Nujoma’s administration.
While Namibia’s transition from white minority to democratic rule went relatively smooth, there were open wounds that were never addressed. Allegations of human rights abuses by apartheid authorities, South Africa’s occupying forces and within SWAPO’s camps were simply swept under the carpet.
In 2007, Hage Geingob became vice president of the governing
SWAPO, which he had joined as an agitator for independence when Namibia was still known as South West Africa. Observers say, SWAPO’s political domination has slowed Namibia’s democratic growth. SWAPO has remained in power in Namibia unchallenged since independence.
The country is technically an upper middle-income country but one with huge disparities in wealth. In 2020, Namibia was ranked as the second most unequal nation in the world by the World Bank, with a Gini coefficient of 0.591. Similarly, Geingob lamented that Namibia’s wealth still remained concentrated in the hands of its white minority.
He said: “Distribution is an issue, but how do we do it?” Geingob said in a virtual session at an event organised by international organisation Horasis. “We have a racial issue here, a historical racial divide. Now you say we must grab from the whites and give it to the Blacks, it’s not going to work.”
His remarks followed the government’s decision to scrap a law that would have required white-owned companies to give a 25% ownership to Black Namibians, citing it as unworkable.
In an address to United Nations General Assembly, he said, ” With 26 of the 52 United Nations peacekeeping operations and special political missions deployed in Africa, Namibia recognized the institutional partnership between the Security Council and the African Union. Calling for Africa to be viewed as an equal partner, he urged other nations to better embrace multilateralism. Africa should be included at “the highest decision-making level” within the United Nations, he said, pointing out that a more inclusive Security Council would restore faith in the Organization.
“Namibia stood with the international consensus that Israel’s occupation of Palestine must end, reiterating its position that statehood and independence were “the national, inalienable and legal rights” of the Palestinian people. He also expressed his country’s “unequivocal support” for the people of Western Sahara and their right to self-determination. Namibia called for the implementation of Security Council and General Assembly resolutions and for holding the referendum in that territory. He also voiced support for the lifting of all sanctions against Cuba.”
Most recently, he took a stand by supporting South Africa’s complaint against Israel under the Genocide Convention and by condemning Namibia’s former colonial ruler Germany for rejecting the case, report stated. However, the Herero genocide between 1904 and 1907 by German colonial forces has never been fully dealt with. Whereas Berlin offered a formal apology, it has ruled out reparations. The German community in Namibia benefited from colonial land seizures and the subsequent apartheid regime.
Read Also:Africa’s Emerging New Leadership Paradigm
Namibia and Pan Africanism
Speaking about Namibia, Pan-Africanism, newfound oil, skillsets, and legacy, President Geingob with a journalist in 2022. He said: “Firstly, Namibia is a child of Pan Africanism; a child of international solidarity, midwived by United Nations. So, we have that flavour of Pan-Africanism and also accommodate the international community. And therefore, since people knew that during the struggle, when we were a struggling country; many people supported Namibia within the African Continent and we thank Africans for that. And therefore, people were eager in this country to maximize the unique features like the desert and other tourist sites that we have. And of course, tourists were coming during the apartheid era, but only white people as they were doing their own things. The country opened up after independence. And do remember that the United Nations was here in full force and also deployed a lot of Africans from all over the Continent. Namibia as a country opened up and once it did, tourists began visiting Namibia. That was how tourism in the country expanded. And we have the unique features that we are exposing, highlighting, and showcasing. We have the game parks which are well maintained. We have deserts which have their own unique attractions and we are maintaining them properly too.”
“Great. I am Pan-African, so I would tell you. We had great African founding fathers, extra ordinary personalities, who told us to wake up and fight and regain dignity. People like the Nkrumahs, The Azikiwes. Those founding people who told and taught us we are oppressed; you are suffering; get up! Someone needed to wake us up. The likes of Kwame Nkrumah, Seke Toare, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda and I would go forward and say Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela to name but a few. They were all founding fathers and the first wave of African leaders, extra-ordinary personalities and big guys. And therefore, they were respected as liberators and so on.”
Be First to Comment