Renthia Kaimbi
Former Omuthiya councillor Nghipudilo ya Shiindi has said she will not repay her Namibia Students Financial Assistance Fund (NSFAF) loan until the government first recovers billions lost to corruption and mismanagement.
She criticised the state’s renewed push to collect student loan repayments and condemned recent amendments to NSFAF, calling for a pause on repayments until what she described as equal justice is applied.
Ya Shiindi said student loans should not be treated like commercial debt.
“Student loans are policy instruments, not commercial products. They are issued for education, not for profit, and are intended to expand national human capital. Treating them as punitive debt, comparable to tax arrears or commercial default, undermines both their purpose and the social contract that justified their creation,” she told the Windhoek Observer last week.
She questioned why the state applies different standards when dealing with public funds.
She pointed to the Development Bank of Namibia’s (BoN) decision to write off about N$579 million in non-performing loans.
“If debt relief and write-offs are acceptable tools of public policy when applied to development finance institutions, then it is neither principled nor defensible to deny similar consideration to student debt,” Ya Shiindi said.
She argued that before stepping up loan recovery from students, the government must show the same urgency in dealing with large-scale losses of public money.
“Before intensifying recovery efforts against students, the Namibian government must first demonstrate equal urgency and political will in recovering billions of public funds that have already gone missing,” she said.
Ya Shiindi cited losses at the Social Security Commission (SSC), ongoing leakages at the Government Institutions Pension Fund, the collapse of the SME Bank and funds linked to the Fishrot scandal. She said these unresolved cases outweigh the total student loan book.
“The injustice is structural. Children from elite and well-connected families accessed NSFAF scholarships and grants, while students from poor families were issued loans. Years later, it is the latter group… who are being pursued with urgency.”
Drawing on her own experience, Ya Shiindi said she received demand letters while she was still studying and after NSFAF stopped funding her.
“I have received demand letters while still studying and while financing my education independently after NSFAF refused to fund me further. This is not an evasion of responsibility. I am just rejecting selective enforcement,” she said.
She also criticised the state for failing to create enough jobs for graduates, leaving many unable to repay their loans.
Ya Shiindi said her position is clear.
“Until the Namibian government demonstrates equal commitment to recovering stolen and mismanaged billions, I will not prioritise repayment of a student loan that generated no profit,” she said.
She called on other former students to act together.
“On this basis, I issue a public call to all Namibians who received student loans from NSFAF to pause repayment and to collectively demand policy consistency, transparency and equal justice,” she said.
Ya Shiindi said education should not be treated as a crime and that poverty must not be punished through policy. She added that debt recovery should not replace political courage and that students should not become the state’s easiest target while billions in public funds remain unrecovered.
When contacted for comment, NSFAF acting chief executive officer Kennedy Kandume declined to respond, saying questions should be directed to the launch of this year’s student loan applications taking place online later today.
Governance expert Johann Coetzee, while acknowledging the structural concerns raised by Ya Shiindi, offered an assessment of its arguments from a public finance and rule-of-law perspective.
He affirmed the core governance merits of the intervention. “The statement is correct in governance terms,” Coetzee noted, explaining that student loans are human-capital investments and social policy tools, not commercial credit.
He found the comparison to large-scale unresolved losses at state institutions like the SSC, GIPF, and SME Bank to be “governance-relevant, not rhetorical,” highlighting a credibility gap in the state’s enforcement priorities.
However, Coetzee cautioned that certain elements weaken the argument strategically.
He identified the public call for a repayment pause as a point of legal risk, potentially exposing individuals to enforcement and allowing the state to dismiss the critique as unlawful agitation rather than engage with its substance.
“Do not reject repayment in principle,” he suggested, “reject a governance framework that prioritises enforcement against the poor while failing to resolve large-scale public financial losses.”
This approach, he argued, would position the argument as a demand for policy consistency and administrative justice, preserving its moral force while reducing legal exposure.
His bottom-line analysis was that the statement’s power lies in rejecting “selective” accountability, not accountability itself.
He further advised that a focus on constitutional and policy-based demands would make the argument “hard to dismiss, legally defensible, and governance-correct.”
