Praat Saam Briewe
Praat Saam Briewe

Tribute to the late president

Mandy Rittmann
GUBAGUB MEMBER WRITES:

It is with profound sadness and heartache that we, as the Gubagub Landless Community (GLC) from the Khomas region, wish to pass on our heartfelt condolences to our departed president.

Words will never be enough and may not even mean much in comforting the bereaved Geingob family, friends, colleagues, and the Namibian nation at large. With that said, we simply want to cut a long story short and thank the departed head of state for being the true statesman he was until his untimely and unfortunate death. The word unfortunate in this instance may not be appropriate, considering the fact that the president passed away at age 82. A life well lived, and as per our Christian faith according to the holy scriptures, the number of years given to mankind to live is 70, and if one is strong, you can reach the age of 80. And indeed, being the strong man he was, his excellency president Hage Gottfried Geingob made it to 80; the great statesman was 82 years old upon his death.

However, for us, the GLC, the president’s untimely death is unfortunate. Unfortunate in the sense that our steering committee, along with the elder’s council, wanted to pay a courtesy visit to the president regarding our landlessness issue. Already in the past, we wholeheartedly thanked the late president for convening Namibia’s national second land conference, which eventually led to our community also submitting our ancestral land rights claim. It’s now almost six (6) years since the claim submissions by various individuals and communities were made, but until now we are in the dark about the implementation of the resolutions by the Namibian government.

As a landless community with nowhere to go in our own region and country, we were looking forward to engaging the president, knowing that he understood the plight of the landless, especially farmland. The late president, during his new year’s message, said that 2024 is a year of expectations. Many Namibians have taken the new year’s message by heart, including the GLC, and thus we are expecting progressive results from the Namibian government in terms of land re-distribution. In the meantime, we continue to say “ancestral land, our land, our heritage, our pride, our dignity, and our identity”.

May the soul of the late president, dr. Hage G. Geingob, rest in eternal peace.

The Gubagub Landless Community is a landless (farmland) community from south-east Windhoek in the Khomas region who lost vast tracks of land at the hands of the previous white minority administration/rule.

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