PAUL T. SHIPALE (with inputs by Folito Nghitongovali Diawara Gaspar)
February has emerged as a month of reckoning for Namibia, a time heavy with memory, loss, and moral reflection. Within its short span, the nation finds itself repeatedly called to pause, to mourn, and to ask difficult questions about legacy, fidelity, and the meaning of service.
One year after the passing of His Excellency Dr Sam Shafiishuna Nujoma, the Founding Father of the Namibian Nation, Namibia gathered once again at Heroes’ Acre. Candles were lit. Speeches were delivered. Tributes were read. The nation paused, as it should, to remember the man whose life and sacrifice made our freedom possible.
This February pause is made even more solemn by the passing of Erkki Nghimtina, a respected Swapo Party liberation stalwart and former Minister of Defence. His death, coming at this reflective moment, reinforces the gravity of the season we are in. Erkki Nghimtina belonged to a generation that carried the burdens of liberation into the responsibilities of governance, offering their lives not for applause, but for the difficult work of building and safeguarding the Republic. We extend our sincere condolences to his family, comrades, and the nation at large. We are deeply pleased that after our article titled ‘Beyond Ceremony: Remembering Our Leaders Toward Enduring Legacy’, the government of the Republic of Namibia has heard our plea to host an official joint commemorative event at the Heroes Acre for both our Founding President and Father of the Nation, Dr Sam Shafiishuna Nujoma, and the third President and First Prime Minister, Dr Hage G. Geingob. The speeches of the President and those from both families, as well as from the Sam Nujoma Foundation and the Dr Hage Geingob Presidential Centre, reflected a spirit of unity, as both leaders were the champions of unity. We all recall that the Founding President and our Liberator strongly believed in the unity of our nation with his mantra or slogan “a people united, striving to achieve a common good for all members of society, will always emerge victorious”, while the late Dr Geingob, as the Founding Prime Minister and third President as well as the architect of the Namibian Constitution, strongly believed in pulling in the same direction and that no one should feel left behind. We are equally pleased that plans are underway to launch a commemorative stamp for the first anniversary of the departure of our Founding Father, Dr Sam Nujoma, probably on the 1st of March 2026, coinciding with the day he crossed the borders into the then British Protectorate of Bechuanaland, now the Republic of Botswana, and the day he was buried last year.
And yet, beyond the solemnity and ceremony, an uncomfortable question lingers in the air:
Did we truly honour the Father of the Nation as we should have done, or was this a last-minute commemorative event as an afterthought?
This is not a simple rhetorical question, neither of protocol nor of politics. It is a question of conscience.
We all know that Dr Nujoma never sought titles, never elevated family above institutions, and never confused leadership with entitlement. He believed in reconciliation through the slogan of “One Namibia, One Nation” and in the quiet discipline of service. Even after leaving office, he continued to serve through education, health, and rural development, not as monuments to himself, but as investments in future generations.
The tribute from the Sam Nujoma Foundation was eloquently delivered and challenged the nation to look inward. It suggested, with honesty and courage, that many of the difficulties Namibia faces today are not the result of a failed vision but of a vision abandoned. Unity replaced by convenience. Reconciliation diluted by selective memory. “One Namibia, One Nation” is invoked in speeches but neglected in practice.
Against this moral backdrop in this Month of Reckoning, the commemorative ceremony revealed a troubling contradiction.
We heard eloquent words about legacy. We saw symbolic gestures. Yet one of the clearest and most concrete commitments made to the Nujoma family remains unfulfilled. On 12 May 2025, during the Founding Father’s 96th birthday anniversary, the family was promised that his office would be declared a museum and a national heritage site. One year later, on the most fitting occasion to reaffirm that promise, silence prevailed.
This was not a minor oversight. For a nation that prides itself on honouring its history, the failure to restate or act upon such a commitment raises legitimate questions. What does it mean to celebrate a Founding Father while leaving the physical spaces of his leadership uncertain? How do we reconcile ceremonial remembrance with the absence of permanent, institutionalised preservation? Hopefully this promise will soon be honoured.
Yet the irony is difficult to ignore. We rightly commemorated Dr Hage G. Geingob through a highway and a banknote in his honour. These gestures are important and meaningful. But when the office of the Founding Father, valued not only in monetary terms but in historical significance, remains in limbo, one must ask, are we honouring legacy consistently or selectively?
Even the symbolism of the candlelight ceremony invites reflection. Dr Nujoma was a man of substance, not spectacle. He believed that leadership required presence, not performance. That time belonged to the people, not to ritual. Candles lit for the camera, only to fade without consequence, sit uneasily alongside a legacy built on sacrifice, discipline, and action.
This is not to dismiss the ceremony or the goodwill of those who organised it. The inclusive tone adopted by the president and keynote speakers recognising both the Founding Father as liberator and the late President Geingob as founding prime minister and architect of the Constitution, was commendable. The messages from both families and the Chairperson of the Dr Hage G. Geingob Presidential Center, former speaker professor Peter Katjavivi, and the Deputy Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Sam Nujoma Foundation, Honourable Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana, were balanced, respectful, and unifying.
But unity is not sustained by words alone.
The recent passing of Hon. Erkki Nghimtina, a former minister in various portfolios and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Sam Nujoma Foundation, reminds us that the generation of liberation is steadily thinning. What remains is not only their memory but also our responsibility. Both the Founding President and Father of the Nation and the Founding Prime Minister and Third President believed deeply that no one should feel left out. That institutions must outlive individuals. That history must be preserved not for nostalgia, but for nation building, education and continuity.
To truly walk with our Founding Father and with those who served alongside him requires more than symbolic gestures. It requires fidelity to promises made, respect for heritage, and consistency in how we honour those who shaped the nation.
If today it feels as though we never truly walked together, it is perhaps because walking together demands endurance. It demands follow-through. It demands that honour not be seasonal, ceremonial, or convenient.
Dr Sam Shafiishuna Nujoma walked with Namibia through exile, war, negotiation, reconciliation, and democratic transition. He did not walk part of the way. He did not step aside when it became uncomfortable. He carried the mission to its logical conclusion and beyond.
We must remember that we are not immortal; we are mortal, bound by time and circumstance. Precisely for that reason, the only way we can touch eternity is through the legacy we leave behind. But truly immortal legacies cannot be shaped only by present-day convenience. A legacy becomes eternal only when it is recognised by the people, when it echoes in the collective conscience, and when it withstands the relentless judgement of history.
It is not for us to conveniently choose which parts of history deserve to be remembered and which should be silenced. When we try to control memory, we end up betraying it. The will of the people – diverse, imperfect, yet sovereign – is what determines which legacies endure through time. Any attempt to impose selective immortality is, at its core, an admission of fear of history’s verdict.
Are we prepared to do the same for his legacy?
Because to stand with the Father of the Nation only when it suits us is not standing at all. It is hesitation disguised as respect. It is silence mistaken for loyalty. And history, as he so often reminded us, has a long memory. It remembers not only those who spoke loudly but also those who remained silent when it mattered most. It remembers who defended principles consistently and who invoked them only when it was safe to do so. Let us do the right thing and give honour where it is due and rightly deserved.
In the end, history does not negotiate. It observes, it records, and it judges. And it will ask whether we had the courage to honour a legacy in its entirety or whether we reduced it to a symbol we could conveniently display and quietly abandon.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of our employers or this newspaper but are solely our personal views as citizens and pan-Africanists.
