Pohamba urges Namibians to stop stealing public funds amid rising scandals

Former president Hifikepunye Pohamba has called on Namibians, including leaders and public officials, to “stop stealing public resources”.

Pohamba said this during a visit by Ohangwena governor Kadiva Hamutumwa to his Okanghudi homestead in the Ohangwena region last week.

“There are people in custody. I urge Swapo, the salaries we get from the government should be enough for us. Let us not steal from companies,” he said.

“There was something called Fishrot, and now there is another one where someone has run away. People are stealing public funds. It’s not good,” he said.

Pohamba said Namibia is being infiltrated by corrupt individuals who are enriching themselves at the expense of the public.

“If I come to your house and give you a chicken or a goat, that’s not the kind of stealing I’m talking about,” he said, implying that large-scale embezzlement of public funds is the true danger to the nation.

Pohamba, who served as Namibia’s second president from 2005 to 2015, is known for his comments denouncing corruption in Namibia.

A few months after taking office in 2005, his administration established the Anti-Corruption Commission to fight graft and promote integrity in the public service.

However, during the early months of his presidency, the country was rocked by a major scandal involving the Social Security Commission, that N$30 million was controversially invested with Avid Investment Corporation, a company linked to politically connected individuals.

Political analyst Rui Tyitende says the media should allow the former president to rest as he has no solution to the country’s current socio-economic crisis.

“In fact, he was a passive spectator as the scourge of corruption entrenched state institutions during his reign.

He only became a willing president during the dying days of his presidency, as he claimed not to have known the country he governed for nine years was a paradise of shacks, poverty and corruption,” he says.

Tyitende says Pohamba was a reluctant and accidental president.

“He was more a village headman than a head of state,” he says.

Although Pohamba did not go into detail about who he was referring to as “stealing”, his recent remarks come amid ongoing public concern over corruption scandals such as the Fishrot case in which two former Cabinet ministers, Sacky Shanghala and Bernhard Esau, have been arrested and jailed for about six years.

Last month, 11 people were arrested over alleged irregularities at the National Petroleum Corporation of Namibia, where ex-managers and business people were arrested in connection with alleged fraud of about N$480 million.

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