Iyambo’s Legacy Worthy Of Emulation
ABRAHAM Iyambo leaves Namibians a legacy which is worth emulating.
Before we go into the detail of why we make this statement, let us emphasise that it is made without reservation. For when people die, especially in our part of the world, the living tend to suffer from a sort of amnesia and recall only the positive characteristics of the departed. We are not in that category.
This newspaper has had its fair share of clashes with Iyambo, especially when we questioned his judgement in taking money from the fishing industry (as minister of fisheries) to pay for his wedding, dubbed the ‘wedding of the millennium’ for its sheer extravagance. We took a critical look at how he ‘Namibianised’ the fishing industry, a process some say has caused a lot of harm and instability for businesses and workers alike. But he received a lot of favourable coverage too, and this outweighed the shortcomings that lend themselves to public scrutiny.
It is the weight of the positive contribution that makes us declare that he leaves a legacy worth emulating. Many have eulogised about the person he was because of the contacts they have had with him. Many more have showered him with tributes because he has touched their lives through professional interaction. And nearly all agree he was among the most gifted government leaders Namibia has had.
For starters, he was unquestionably a competent administrator and we are not comparing him to anyone else as that might amount to making him stand out in a group largely dominated by mediocrity. As a politician he was genuinely friendly rather than someone merely trying to gain votes; he listened and consulted with anyone he believed to be a stakeholder; he was effervescent whatever the task at hand.
Yet, whatever epitaph is inscribed for him among those mentioned is likely to be “he got work done”. The person who takes over from Iyambo (as has been shown with the ministry of fisheries and it is now likely to become obvious with the education ministry) will slot in in the comfortable knowledge that a solid foundation would have been laid.
His academic training was in fisheries and in government he spent most of his time in that field, but once he was appointed the minister of education in 2010, Iyambo took to the assignment like a dolphin to the waves, tackling a myriad of long-standing problems step by step and not letting the stress show of the monumental challenges that weighed on him.
He made it look so easy after Namibians had lost hope that our education system would rise from the doldrums considering that several changes in ministerial personnel since independence in 1990 performed dismally. His takeover suddenly made many believe the problems were not insurmountable after all.
Mind, you it was under his watch that everyone was reminded that the Namibian Constitution promises free basic education to children up to 16 years. He ticked off that box like it never was an issue before. Pre-primary schools were reintroduced in state education. Tick. Classrooms were built and renovated. Tick. More textbooks were pumped into schools (tick), perhaps fortuitously as his taking over the ministry coincided with the introduction of the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) that injected money into education and demanded that the Namibian government match the American grant. But the job was being done under his care.
At the core of Iyambo’s “get the job done” approach appears to be a simple strategy and not the extraordinary and complicated remedies that one might expect. The lesson from his legacy is thus – do the basics.
Rest in peace, Abraham Apere ‘Puma’ Iyambo.