ON FACE VALUE, an by the family of football great Seth Boois that he be declared a national hero may seem like taking a chance or a display of unjustifiable entitlement.
But looking at the process of deciding who is a national hero, it is fair to conclude that the Namibian government has made a mockery of such a major honour.
Namibia has been independent for 30 years and still does not have clear and objective criteria on who is declared a hero.
President Hage Geingob needs to rework the existing process whereby an opaque ‘committee’ in the Ministry of Defence decides who gets national hero status and whether it takes them to Namibia’s Heroes’ Acre.
The country is at risk of having no unifying beacons to guide our republic as it grows older if anyone and everyone can be bestowed with the accolade hero merely by chance of what the ‘committee’ and the state president feel like at the time.
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