The Namibian @40: Tangeni Amupadhi

The Namibian’s current editor, Tangeni Amupadhi, was a primary scholar when he first heard of The Namibian newspaper. He says his father used to read magazines like Omukwetu and Omukuni as well as Afrikaans papers.

However, towards the beginning of his high school years, his father started reading The Namibian and that’s when he first saw the paper.

He went to Martin Luther High School at Okombahe and was involved with student movements and political parties such as the Namibia National Students Organisation and Swapo.

In 1988, they had a solidarity strike and closed the school down. This led to Amupadhi and his friend being expelled from the school.

The Namibian then wrote a solidarity piece on the school being against the demonstration.
“That was my first direct encounter with The Namibian,” he says.
He says he got into journalism in 1990 through the Namibia Press Agency (Nampa) because of his activism and later had bylines in The Namibian while working at Nampa.

Amupadhi says he used his church name, ‘Josua’, in the bylines at the time.
In 1999, he joined The Namibian after founder Gwen Lister asked him to join the team. At the time he was working at the Mail & Guardian in South Africa.
“We have had conversations about me joining the company but I was not ready to work at The Namibian then,” he says.

When he joined the paper, there was a ban by the government and parastatals on advertising and purchasing the paper, citing an anti-governmental stance.

He says it was not publicly announced but institutions were informed quietly.

Amupadhi says he remembers covering the Caprivian uprising on the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola attacks.

“I liked being on the ground so I went to the area where many families had fled their homes and spent time with them in the bush,” he says.
In 2004, he left for Italy to set up Insight magazine. When he came back he negotiated with the paper to write an exposé on Social Security Commission where N$30 million went missing. An exposé is a form of investigative journalism that reveals scandalous truths.

“It was one of the first times where a government leader was held before court to explain a corruption case,” he says.

He adds that at the time the publication had one terminal with an internet connection. He brought his laptop on one day and demanded to be given internet connection.

“I had an argument in the newsroom with Jean (Sutherland) and Gwen (Lister) that we cannot have one terminal with the internet. My colleagues felt I was demanding luxury and some of my colleagues said I was being special,” he says.

The paper now publishes online and it remains one of the papers with the widest reach in the country.

Amupadhi says with older people in leadership positions, most newspapers struggle to retain audiences as senior journalists are slower in informing the public.

Amupadhi took over the paper’s leadership from Gwen Lister.

– Compiled by Dolly Menas

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