The rise and fall of Munyama

FORMER NBC boss Gerry Munyama, who was sent to jail for seven years yesterday, is a ‘well-educated and psychologically resilient man’.

During the sentencing on charges of fraud and forgery in the High Court in Windhoek yesterday, Judge Kato van Niekerk said: ‘Even at this age of 54 years, a period of incarceration must be borne with fortitude. He is well educated and I trust that he will be able to put his education to good use while he is serving a period in prison.’
According to Judge Van Niekerk, Munyama has been able to overcome ‘many challenges such as growing up in relative poverty; facing regular physical abuse as a child from a violent male figure in authority; doing his schooling during the years of apartheid-driven racial discrimination’.
Munyama went into exile in 1977 to join the liberation struggle with no support and studied in several countries abroad.
Soon after leaving the country, Munyama worked as a trainee banker at the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa.
During 1984 to 1989, he was editor of a paper called The Combatant. In 1989, he was appointed as the information co-ordinator for the Swapo election directorate.
At Independence, the former NBC boss was appointed as the chief of youth services in the then Ministry of Education and Culture and later the Ministry of Youth and Sport. He held this position from 1990 to 1993.
Munyama, who holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration (MBA) from the Pacific West University in Michigan in the United States, was deployed as the vice president of the World NGOs Youth Organisation in Freetown, Sierra Leone, during 1992 and 1993.
In 1995, he was appointed as Namibian envoy to the United Kingdom. He held this position until 1997, after which he did the same job in the USA, Canada, Mexico and Brazil for the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
He joined the NBC in 2003 until 2005 when the fraud and forgery were uncovered.