Dismissed, dropped or resigned: Geingob’s 2015 appointees

When President Hage Geingob became head of state in 2015, one of his biggest challenges was assembling the right team for his first Cabinet, amidst jostling by those who catapulted him into power. Geingob had a daunting task to strike a balance between meritocracy and appeasing his bloc within the party. Mathias Haufiku revisits those appointments and tracks down the appointees. Dr Bernard Haufiku - DismissedA revered technocrat who thrived as a general practitioner running his own medical practice, Haufiku’s appointment was lauded by many. However, he struggled to transition from his profession as a medical doctor to a full-blown politician. As health minister, he could seemingly not confine himself to the restrictions that comes with the position and fell out immediately with his executive director. Geingob removed him from his Cabinet in December 2018. To mend ties, he was appointed as a special advisor on health matters in the presidency, but was again sacked after a public fallout with the new health minister, Dr Kalumbi Shangula, as Covid-19 ravaged the country.Dr Zephania Kameeta - DroppedA retired bishop at the time, Kameeta was seen as the ideal candidate to lead the newly-established poverty eradication ministry – having cemented his reputation within the basic income grant coalition. Geingob vehemently defended the appointment, saying he chose the man of the cloth due to his ‘selfless personality’. Geingob’s decision to bring Kameeta out of retirement did not yield the desired fruits, which led to the poverty eradication and social welfare ministry being merged with the gender equality ministry. This saw Kameeta being relieved of his ministerial duties, never to be seen again.Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana - DismissedThe political relationship between Geingob and Iivula-Ithana has always been a love-hate one. At times they would get along perfectly and later they turn from friends to foes in the blink of an eye. This could perhaps be ascribed to the fact that both held senior positions in the party over the years, with both eyeing the top spot. After defeating Iivula-Ithana at the party’s 2012 congress, amid heated internal campaigns, Geingob extended an olive branch to his party fellow and appointed her into her Cabinet in 2015. Surprisingly, Iivula-Ithana was part of the Swapo faction which challenged Geingob’s own at the party’s congress in November 2017. Geingob’s faction won the contest and he decided to dismiss her from his Cabinet in February 2018. Katrina Hanse-Himarwa - ResignedAfter she and others helped Geingob ascend to power after the 2012 congress, Hanse-Himarwa was a rising star in the party. Geingob brought the Hardap governor into his Cabinet in 2015 to head the education ministry, getting rid of Dr David Namwandi. She was appointed despite a known albatross around her neck in the form of a corruption case she was fighting in courts. Four years later, in 2019, High Court Judge Christie Liebenberg found that she used her office for self-gratification to remove names on a national housing beneficiary list and replace them with those of her relatives. She resigned within hours, with the presidency stating she would have been fired if she did not voluntarily relinquish the position.Obeth Kandjoze - DemotedPlucked from relative political obscurity, Kandjoze resigned from the state’s oil parastatal, Namcor, to take up a seat in Geingob’s Cabinet as minister of mines. Three years into his tenure, Kandjoze was demoted following widespread allegations of corruption in his ministry. He was subsequently appointed as the director-general of the less influential National Planning Commission. At the time, the Anti-Corruption Commission expressed concern about how Kandjoze applied Sections 44 and 45 of the Diamond Act of 1999 to handpick C-Sixty Investment for the multimillion-dollar diamond evaluation contract of state-owned Namdia. He was one of the ministers reshuffled after Geingob demanded answers from them over corruption allegations.Jerry Ekandjo - DismissedHard-liner Ekandjo challenged Geingob at the 2012 congress as both sought to be Swapo presidential candidate for the 2014 general election. Having lost that year, Ekandjo challenged Geingob again at the 2017 congresses and, like Iivula-Ithana, trashed some of Geingob’s policies and initiatives like the much-maligned food bank. Geingob did not take kindly to the criticism and, after triumphing at the latter congress, fired Ekandjo in early 2018. After performing poorly at the party’s 2019 electoral college, Ekandjo was all set to be absent from parliament for the first time since 1990 but Geingob threw him a political bone to chew on by appointing him as a backbencher of the ruling party in the National Assembly.Heather Sibungo - PromotedThe only Geingob 2015 appointee to move up the ranks, Sibungo climbed the political ladder from being a mere civil servant. Upon her appointment in 2015, she remained a backbencher in parliament until her patience paid off in April 2021 when Geingob appointed her as the deputy minister for the environment and tourism ministry.Albert Kawana - RetainedThe long-serving Cabinet minister faced a bleak political future when he failed to make it onto the ruling party’s parliamentary list in 2014. He has been used by Geingob as an all-rounder over the years, having served in four Cabinet portfolios in the last seven years. Geingob appointed him as justice minister in 2015, attorney-general in 2018, fisheries minister in 2020 and then made him home affairs minister in 2021. He is set to retire when Geingob leaves office in 2025.

Dismissed, dropped or resigned: Geingob’s 2015 appointees

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Namibian Sun 2024-11-15

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Dismissed, dropped or resigned: Geingob’s 2015 appointees

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Namibian Sun 2024-11-15

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