Namibia’s President Hage Geingob, 82, Dies After Cancer Diagnosis
Johannesburg,
Namibia’s 82-year-old President Hage Geingob passed away in a hospital on Sunday, according to an announcement from the presidency. His death comes a few weeks after being diagnosed with cancer.
Geingob had led the sparsely populated and predominantly dry nation in southern Africa since 2015, the same year he declared his successful battle against prostate cancer.
Vice President Nangolo Mbumba assumes leadership in Namibia, a country rich in mining resources such as diamonds and lithium, a key component in electric car batteries. He will hold this position until the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for the end of the year.
A social media post from the presidency on platform X did not provide details about the cause of death. However, in the previous month, the presidency had announced that the individual had traveled to the United States for an innovative two-day cancer treatment, following a diagnosis from a routine medical examination.
Geingob, born in 1941, held a significant political role even before Namibia gained independence from the white minority-led South Africa in 1990.
He led the committee responsible for formulating Namibia’s constitution and subsequently assumed the role of the country’s inaugural prime minister upon its independence on March 21. He held this position until 2002.
In 2007, Geingob assumed the role of vice president within the ruling South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo). He had initially joined the party as an advocate for independence when Namibia was referred to as South West Africa.
Since gaining independence, Swapo has held onto control in Namibia without facing any significant opposition. Despite being classified as an upper-middle-income country, the former German colony exhibits substantial inequalities in wealth.
“There were no textbooks to prepare us for accomplishing the task of development and shared prosperity after independence,” he said in a speech to mark the day in 2018.
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“We needed to build a Namibia in which the chains of the injustices of the past would be broken.” Geingob served as trade and industry minister before becoming prime minister again in 2012.
He secured victory in the 2014 election with an 87 percent majority, but in a later poll in November 2019, he narrowly averted a runoff, obtaining just over half of the votes.
The election occurred in the aftermath of a government bribery scandal. Officials were accused of granting horse mackerel quotas to Samherji, Iceland’s largest fishing company, in exchange for kickbacks, as reported by local media. The public outrage that ensued resulted in the resignation of two ministers.
In the subsequent year, Geingob expressed concern that the economic prosperity of Namibia continued to be predominantly held by the country’s white minority.
“Distribution is an issue, but how do we do it?” Geingob said in a virtual session at an event organized by the international organization 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,” he said.
He made these remarks following the government’s decision to withdraw a policy deemed impractical, which would have required businesses owned by white individuals to sell a 25% share to Black Namibians.
Geingob passed away at Lady Pohamba Hospital in Windhoek while under the care of his medical team, as announced by the presidency.
Namibia’s President Hage Geingob, 82, Dies After Cancer Diagnosis
