But he's certainly not the only one, and Namibia is awash with examples of lucrative payoffs given to people seen to be beyond their political or other sell-by dates.

IMAGINE what could have been done with these monies had they been put to better use? Certainly a couple of priority areas in Namibia could have been attended to at the very least, whether it be in terms of building more clinics; improving the standard of education; re-training the Special Field Force; providing our law enforcement officers with patrol vehicles; and the list goes on.

At Air Namibia, the Jafaar package cost us a mint, but then so did Andreas Guibeb's before that. The NBC saga probably won't end with Mulongeni's successor so we could face a few more payoffs there.

TransNamib's Peingondjabi Shipoh didn't leave empty-handed and NamPost's Abraham Kukuri, probably didn't either. These are but a few examples. Curious to know whether former MD of Telecom, Theo Mberirua, got a golden handshake too. And from Telecom he goes into one of the highest-paying jobs in the private sector.

But what confuses me above all is the fact that we seem to have instituted a new 'law' for MDs. Any ordinary working person who resigns from his or her employment, even in fairly senior positions, gets the usual payout which involves pension and leave pay, etc, but not a settlement amount.

Is there something in our Labour Code on this topic of which we are unaware? If you resign, you resign, simple as that. Why does the State have to pay millions to its parastatal heads when they do so?

We all know that this newspaper was roundly rebuked for having said that Mulongeni, for example, was ousted from the NBC. Quite the contrary, we are told, he resigned voluntarily. And if so, why the need for the protracted negotiations about his package?

Not sure how the 'comrade' issue comes into all of this. Some of the above, and other examples, were gotten rid of because they were just plain incompetent. Others were politically incorrect. It's difficult to establish if their replacements have, in all cases, been 'comrades', short of simply asking them.

Swapo's call for 'jobs-for-comrades' undoubtedly gave rise to some of these changes, perhaps not all, but it seems whatever you do, however you leave a parastatal, and whether you stole them blind or not, you still get a package.

So you really can't go wrong if you get one of these jobs.
One also notes that 'comrades' or not, some of the people getting these top jobs are leaving other lucrative posts to make the shift. So it's not as though they were jobless in the first place. And secondly, and perhaps more importantly, some of them are but a few years off retirement age, so in all likelihood they're going to get a big package when they hit that target as well!

It actually makes one feel quite sick. We cannot deny that this is wastage of resources. There is the good old argument that to get good people, you have to pay them well, In principle I agree, but in Namibia it's not only taken to extremes, but more often than not, it turns out it was the wrong person in the first place!

Added to the above, there's a lot of plain lying about whether or not certain top MDs resigned or were pushed. And not only does the taxpayer have to see his or her money going into mostly unworthy causes, but they also have to be duped about it.

In any case, I have mentioned only some topical and fairly current examples by name. There are many others. The fates of NamWater and the Social Security Commission MDs are still to be resolved, possibly in the courts, and one wonders what the final upshot of these will be.

Something tells me we really need to get to grips with the money wastage issue that still dogs this country at every turn, not least of all at parastatal level. Namibia is not quite as bankrupt as we think when there's money for luxuries we can hardly afford.

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