Namibia’s President Hage Geingob, 82, died in hospital early Sunday, the presidency said, weeks after he was diagnosed with cancer.
Geingob had been in charge of the sparsely populated and largely arid southern African country since 2015, the year he announced he had survived prostate cancer.
Vice President Nangolo Mbumba takes the helm in Namibia – a mining hotspot with significant deposits of diamonds and lithium, the ingredient in electric car batteries – until presidential and parliamentary elections at the end of the year.
A presidential position in social media platform He did not give a cause of death, but late last month the presidency said he had traveled to the United States for “a new two-day treatment for cancer cells” after being diagnosed following a regular medical check-up.
Born in 1941, Geingob was a prominent politician since before Namibia achieved independence from white minority-ruled South Africa in 1990.
He chaired the body that drafted Namibia’s constitution and then became its first prime minister after independence on March 21 of that year, a position he held until 2002.
Hage Geingob, president of Namibia, died on Sunday after a battle with cancer. AP
‘CHAINS OF INJUSTICE’
In 2007, Geingob became vice-president of the ruling South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO), which he had joined as an independence agitator when Namibia was still known as South West Africa.
SWAPO has remained in power in Namibia unopposed since independence. The former German colony is technically an upper-middle-income country, but with huge disparities in wealth.
“There were no textbooks that prepared us to fulfill the task of development and shared prosperity after independence,” he said in a speech to mark the day in 2018. “We needed to build a Namibia in which the shackles of the injustices of the past “It would be broken.”
Geingob served as Minister of Trade and Industry before becoming Prime Minister again in 2012.
Geingob and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands before a meeting in Beijing September 2, 2018. REUTERS Geingob and Russian leader Vladimir Putin shake hands at a summit in Sochi October 23, 2019. VIA REUTERS
He won the 2014 election with 87% of the vote, but narrowly avoided a runoff with just over half the vote in a subsequent poll held in November 2019.
That election followed a government bribery scandal, in which officials are alleged to have given quotas of horse mackerel to Iceland’s largest fishing company, Samherji, in exchange for bribes, according to local media reports.
The resulting protest led to the resignation of two ministers.
Geingob had been in charge of the sparsely populated and largely arid southern African country since 2015, the year he announced he had survived prostate cancer. REUTERS
The following year, Geingob lamented that Namibia’s wealth was still concentrated in the hands of its white minority.
“Distribution is a problem, 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 problem here, a historic racial division. “Now you say we should take it from the white people and give it to the black people, that’s not going to work,” he said.
Hage Geingob, third from left, and US Vice President Kamala Harris, right, pose for a photo at the COP28 UN Climate Summit on December 2, 2023 in Dubai. AP
His comments came after the government rescinded a policy that would have forced white-owned businesses to sell a 25% stake to black Namibians as unviable.
Geingob died at the Lady Pohamba Hospital in Windhoek, where he was receiving treatment from his medical team, the presidency said.
Categories: Trending
Source: vtt.edu.vn