I must marvel at the Namibian presidency’s performance art posing as a communications strategy. Madam president’s PhD thesis could be ‘The Comprehensive Guide to Evading the Free Press’ because her execution of it is flawless.
How inspiring to watch the Namibian Presidency refine the art of the state-sponsored vanishing act.
Let’s drop the pleasantries: President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah’s communications strategy is not performance art, it is an eviction of the public from their own democracy.
The local media – burdened with the audacity to ask about nepotism, unemployment and a starving working class – are apparently so terrifying our leaders must flee the continent to find a safe space to speak.
Are Namibian journalists that frightening? Flying all the way to Beijing to hold a press conference says so.
There, in the embrace of foreign state-vetted media, our vanguard of ‘economic diplomacy’ could pontificate about green revolutions and critical minerals without the unrefined, inkstained hands of domestic scrutiny begging for answers.
The president has not faced a real domestic press conference since a half-hearted attempt to explain her relationship with Swapo secretary general Sophia Shaningwa shortly before taking office.
Instead of engaging with independent journalists, her solitary post-inauguration local interview was given exclusively to a friendly media house to ensure the velvet gloves stayed on to protect her fragile optics.
But not before she gave an interview to Russia Today.
The nomadic flight from accountability never stops.
During a brief stopover in Windhoek, before the Beijing dust could settle, she was off to South Africa for another round of bilateral pageantry on the Orange River border ‘dispute’.
The international red carpet is far more hospitable than the dusty, neglected realities of the people who elected her.
When the executive actually deigns to look at the domestic populace, the results are a masterclass in bureaucratic dishonesty.
In August 2025, the Presidency panicked over rumours that ambassador Albertus !Aochamub was being recalled from France to run Meatco, whining that the info was “unverified”, only for him to be appointed Meatco boss days later.
In November 2025, the presidency was again forced into damage control after a video clip showed Nandi-Ndaitwah berating labourers during a road groundbreaking ceremony, saying she did not want employed people being sick all the time.
How dare the sick and malnourished interrupt the state’s photo-ops with their weaknesses!
The presidency rushed to claim the clip lacked “context”, just as they rushed to defend her bloated delegation to China, lecturing the public that debate must be guided by “accurate information.”
Does the lady clarify too much? No, she fibs by omission.
While the substance of governance evaporates, the state engages in a frantic linguistic dance that communicates absolutely nothing.
Senior officials disappear into a vacuum, political alignments shift like desert sands, and official press releases offer deafening silence where there should be explanations for sudden firings.
The public is left trying to parse the divine intent of the state through a thick fog of bureaucratic arrogance.
Does raw fear drive this magnificent isolation?
Perhaps she knows her media relations are in the toilet and, rather than fixing the plumbing, she prefers to let the public discourse overflow with sewage while she gazes at grander foreign horizons.
Or worse, she simply does not care.
She operates on the assumption that an electoral majority, no matter how thin, is a mandate for silence and immunity from the people.
This is the toxic reality of our current regime.
The elitist state assumes that by hoarding information, it preserves its power. In reality, it breeds a rancid atmosphere of rumour, cynicism and hatred.
To use the current administration’s warped logic, you cannot fly the kite of democracy using the broken strings of elite indifference.
If the presidency continues to treat the public as an adversary to be managed from the safety of foreign capitals, the ultimate breakdown will not be a poorly written press release.
It will be a systemic collapse of public trust.
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