Month: August 2018

WINDHOEK - Namibia’s only tower infrastructure provider, PowerCom, has provided further sponsorship for the ICT Summit in Namibia with a financial contribution of N$50 000 for a two-year period, which has increased their total contribution since 2016 to N$150 000. PowerCom joins other corporates in partnering with the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology in sponsoring the event which is scheduled for October.

WINDHOEK - When one thinks about the tourism industry, what usually comes to mind are the tourism facilities along with transportation service providers. These players have a significant role to play to ensure tourists are accommodated and transported. 

WINDHOEK– Despite Namibia being in the process of becoming more self-sufficient in terms of electricity production, the country is still overly reliant on sourcing power from neighbouring countries as it still imports approximately 60 percent of its electricity requirements. Due to this factor, the country has to identify new means to generate more electricity locally and to make it more accessible in the country where electricity-wise less than 50 percent of the population is connected. This is according to Minister of Mines and Energy, Tom Alweendo, who shared these sentiments while addressing the 2018 Electricity Supply Industry Forum, which took place in Walvis Bay yesterday, under the theme ‘Building a Sustainable Future’.

WINDHOEK-MNCapital Group, an international investment advisory and institutional business development firm, in association with Africonomie UK, a UK-based investment advisory and communication firm, have confirmed that various pension funds and several international and local leading institutions will gather in Windhoek on August 22 and 23 to discuss Namibia’s economic growth through pension fund investments. African pension funds are estimated to be holding US$334 billion in assets and 90 percent of these assets are held in only four countries of which Namibia is one.

Dr Abisai Shejavali wrote an Open Letter to me as the Speaker of the National Assembly. This letter was published in the New Era newspaper of 27 July 2018. It covered a broad array of issues, several of which do not necessarily fall under the mandate of Parliament. I now hereby take the opportunity to reply to my good friend’s Open Letter, by identifying the key issues he raised as follows.

Predictably, and as some observers expected, including this columnist, the hearing in the Class Case brought by the Ovaherero and Nama against the German government last Wednesday was without any immediate closure, with the judge deferring the judgement.

I have never quite understood why rich kids often talk back to teachers. I mean, for us who grew up in the hood - a teacher’s wish was your command! You asked no questions, offered no comments - you just got your lazy behind up and do whatever the heck he/she asked you to. That is, of course, if you knew what’s good for you.

From the outset, one has to understand what this means multifaceted, difficult and contested word, ‘development’. The Society for International Development defines development as a process that creates growth, progress, and positive change to the physical, economic, environmental, and social life of citizens. The purpose of development is a rise in the level and quality of life of the people, employment opportunities without damaging the resources of the environment.

This article is meant to present my contribution to the prickly debate that is underway on Facebook, especially among the residents of the Zambezi Region. It is my desire to demonstrate the intellectual bankruptcy embedded in the contributions made by the sympathisers of the secessionists, as these individuals seem to be motivated by nothing else but family loyalism, and utter indiscretion. It is quite irritating when the residents of this region are again and again drawn back to the debate of an issue that exists in the minds of individuals who failed in their pursuit of different careers. These individuals have used their failure, and the bad experience associated with it, to justify the secession of the Zambezi Region from Namibia. It is so sad that these individuals have won sympathisers among innocent fellows who have failed to rise above imaginary tribal boundaries either due to sheer absurdity, or little education.

The highly controversial, contentious and sensitive issue, which might divide the Namibian people, is the issue of the land taken from those who were forced to withdraw from the lands on which they pastured their animals to let the colonialists take over and pasture their animals on those lands. Between 1893 and 1903 the Germans went on a rampage of expropriating land and animals from specific groups of people. This process became even worse when German colonial forces decided to exterminate the Ovaherero and Nama people during 1904-1908. The South African regime, which took over the country from the Germans, continued with the land expropriation of some of the groups of this country, and victims of this land expropriation are known and they were the people who owned the land in the South and Central parts of the country. The descendants of those people are the ones who are demanding restoration of ancestral land rights today.