In a surprise move, Namibian Prime Minister Nahas Angula reshuffled 10 permanent secretaries — the government’s top public servants — this week to speed up delivery in key economic sectors and halt the rot in politically sensitive services such as health.
Working closely with the Central Intelligence Organisation’s directorate of counter-intelligence, Zanu-PF has been setting up secret death squads comprising members of the National Youth Service training programme. The squads petrol bomb political opponents’ homes, commit acts of sabotage and torture opponents to President Robert Mugabe’s regime, a former member of one such death squad said this week.
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/ 2 February 2007
Three years from now, will Namibians accept an 81-year-old Sam Nujoma as their next president, possibly for the rest of his natural life, if he so chooses? Like the proverbial 300-pound gorilla in the corner that no one wants to talk about, Sam Nujoma’s ambitions to return to the office he was forced to relinquish in 2004 because of a two-term limit are casting a shadow over Namibian politics.
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/ 27 November 2006
After many years of painstakingly gathering 1 800 signatures among the local !Kung people in Western Bushmanland, a communal area set aside for settling the San people in the 1960s, the !Kung appeared to have established their rights to land use in the area when the N#a Jaqna conservancy was recognised by the Namibian ministry of environment and tourism in July 2003.
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/ 25 September 2006
A secretive military company belonging to the Namibian Defence Force, has come under fire from opposition parliamentarians for its lack of accountability and transparency. Among other things, opposition parties are concerned about the foreign policy implications of the company supplying armoured troop carriers to private military companies active in Iraq.
After being the central figure in the ruling Swapo’s military and liberation mythology for 43 years, former Namibian president Sam Nujoma has suddenly become public enemy number one to his old comrades-in-arms. Former veterans of People’s Liberation Army of Namibia, Swapo’s liberation-era military wing, are publicly demanding payouts of R500 000 each.
An instruction from the Namibian Cabinet to Mines and Energy Minister Jesaya Nyamu three months ago to implement Section 59 of the Diamond Act and sell 10% of the country’s annual production outside of the De Beers monopoly appears set to cause a major showdown.
WOMEN cabinet ministers in South Africa have banded together to defend President Thabo Mbeki against accusations that he is a womaniser. A statement by Minister of Public Service Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, issued on behalf of all the women in the cabinet, and women deputy ministers, was published in the Sunday Independent newspaper. It says they took […]