Namibian President Hage Geingob, 82, died in hospital early Sunday, the presidency said, weeks after he was diagnosed with cancer.
Geingob has been in charge of the sparsely populated and mostly arid southern African nation since 2015, the year he announced he had survived prostate cancer.
Vice President Nangolo Mbumba leads Namibia – a mining region with large diamond deposits and the lithium material for electric car batteries – until presidential and parliamentary elections later this year.
The position of president on social media platform X did not give a cause of death, but late last month the presidency said he had traveled to the United States for a “novel two-day treatment for cancer cells”, after being diagnosed after a routine medical examination.
Born in 1941, Geingob has been a leading politician since before Namibia gained independence from white-minority South Africa in 1990.
He chaired the body that drafted Namibia’s constitution, then became its first prime minister at independence on 21 March that year, a position he held until 2002.
Hage Geingob, the president of Namibia, died on Sunday after a battle with cancer. AP
‘CHAIN OF JUSTICE’
In 2007, Geingob became vice-president of the ruling South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO), which he had joined as an independence activist when Namibia was still known as South West Africa.
SWAPO has remained in power in Namibia unchallenged since independence. The former German colony is technically an upper-middle-income country but one with a huge wealth gap.
“There is no textbook to prepare us to achieve the task of development and share prosperity after independence,” he said in a speech to mark the day in 2018. “We need to build a Namibia where the chain of injustice of the past will 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 on October 23. 2019. VIA REUTERS
He won the 2014 election with 87% of the vote but only avoided a run-off by more than half the vote in the next poll in November 2019.
The election follows a government corruption scandal, in which officials are alleged to have given quotas of horse mackerel to Iceland’s largest fishing firm, Samherji, in exchange for kickbacks, according to local media reports.
The outrage led to the resignation of two ministers.
Geingob has been in charge of the sparsely populated and mostly arid southern African nation since 2015, the year he announced he had survived prostate cancer. Reuters
The following year, Geingob complained that Namibia’s wealth was still concentrated in the hands of its 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 take from white people and give to black people, it will not work,” he said.
Hage Geingob, third from left, and US Vice President Kamala Harris, right, pose for a picture at the COP28 UN Climate Summit on Dec. 2, 2023 in Dubai. AP
His comments came after the government scrapped an unworkable policy that would have required white-owned businesses to sell a 25% stake to Black Namibians.
Geingob died at the Lady Pohamba Hospital in Windhoek, where he received treatment from his medical team, the presidency said.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
