Zorena Jantze
THE Namibia Economic Freedom Fighters (NEFF) political party has lodged a formal complaint with the Ombudsman’s office about President Hage Geingob’s alleged involvement in a money laundering scandal which has rocked South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa.
The complaint is the result of an affidavit of former South African spy Arthur Fraser who alleged that Geingob gave Ramaphosa a helping hand in catching Namibian thieves who stole money from the SA president’s property in 2020. The stolen money which amounts to over N$60 million was supposedly laundered by Ramaphosa.
“We are handing in a complaint which we wish the Ombudsman to study. There are allegations coming forth that our president Hage Geingob had aided the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa. This is the complaint we are tabling today, for this office to further an investigation. We trust that these offices have more power than us civilians,” the vice president of the NEFF party, Kalimbo Iipumbu, read.
In response, the deputy director at the Ombudsman’s office, Timotheus Shangadi, said the NEFF is not the first political party to lodge a complaint at the office and neither is it the first complaint against the president.
The deputy director said the Ombudsman’s office is impartial and only deals with matters within its jurisdiction. Shangadi said the office will analyze the NEFF’s complaint and assured the two political heads that there is still the rule of law in Namibia.
The deputy director, however, shared the challenges facing the Ombudsman’s office. “When you go back to parliament don’t forget that this office is not independent operationally. It’s a baby of justice, it’s a directorate, we don’t have our own funding, we don’t have our own staffing. The independence that you come to seek at this office, defend it in parliament.”
Adding on to Shangadi’s earlier statement, the Ombudsman, Advocate Basilius Dyakuga, stated that this is the first complaint involving the president brought to the Ombudsman’s office during his tenure. He however added that the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) also made a complaint against Geingob to the Ombudsman in 2020.
The PDM accused the president of uttering threatening and intimidating hate speech against white Namibians. This was after Geingob during the Swapo party’s campaign for elections said he had noted a trend in which white Namibians have been registering themselves to vote “in big numbers”.
The problem was they were conspiring to vote for “anything else but Swapo”, the president was quoted as saying.
The third case, Dyakuga stated, also included a complaint by the PDM in which it accused the president of giving special treatment to Struggle Kids when it came to employment opportunities. The party also accused the president of giving preferential treatment to certain civil servants, Dyakuga said.
