EDITORIAL: President must stick to written speeches

It is often said with age comes wisdom. But, as conventional wisdom itself would have it, one can only grow wiser up to a particular stage in their cycle of life. After that, wisdom evaporates like rainwater in the Namib.

President Hage Geingob is a wise man. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have been tasked with the noble duty of chairing the Constituent Assembly that birthed our internationally-celebrated constitution.

But with age – he is 80 now – comes natural frailties in both wisdom and reasoning. His remarks that young people should use their education to innovate and become self-employed are spoken from a position of privilege, but also intellectual dishonesty.

It’s rich of President Geingob to urge other people’s children to self-employ when his own are enjoying a free ride at government-backed Tunacor fishing company and the state’s N$10 billion solar and wind energy programme as widely reported this year.

Whatever way you look at it, it can’t be by mere coincidence that his children are lumped together in this energy project with family members of former president Sam Nujoma, former minister Helmuth Angula, late vice-president Nickey Iyambo, late Ondonga king Elifas Kauluma and other powerful individuals.

The overwhelming majority of the unemployed youth have nothing beyond their qualifications. If they applied for stakes in fishing companies or billion-dollar government energy projects, their applications will be tossed aside like an Omicron-infested face mask.