Iivula-Ithana hoped to reconcile with Geingob

Former Swapo Party secretary-general and home affairs minister Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana said late president Hage Geingob’s character shaped her political career, and she had hoped the two of them would one day iron out the differences that led to her dismissal from Cabinet in 2018.

She and Geingob competed from rival slates at the 2017 Swapo congress, and she and Jerry Ekandjo were relieved of their Cabinet positions soon after their slate lost to Geingob’s.

The sacked ministers had also challenged Geingob at the 2012 congress, but he won and became the Swapo presidential candidate in 2014. He won the national election and retained the pair in his Cabinet at the time.

During an interview yesterday at her homestead in Omutsegondjamba village in the Oshikoto Region, Iivula-Ithana said she is disheartened by the death of Geingob, whom she first met in 1976.

She was eagerly awaiting an opportunity to sit down with Geingob, she said, narrating that she did not understand why the man she looked up to and worked closely with decided to substitute her as a member of Cabinet.

The official justification at the time was that she and Ekandjo criticised Geingob’s initiatives - such as the much-maligned food bank - while they were part of a Cabinet collective that endorsed the anti-hunger programme.

Iivula-Ithana supporters argued that she was entitled, during her congress campaign, to propose alternative interventions in hopes of being elected head of state, and should not have been fired for her views.

She has remained a critic of Geingob’s leadership style since leaving Cabinet.

High regard

An emotional Iivula-Ithana yesterday said she always held Geingob in high regard, and was looking forward to meeting up with him one day to resolve their differences.

“I never believed that comrade Hage and I had differed indefinitely,” she said.

“I was always looking forward to a moment when the two of us were going to sit down and talk about what had happened. Truly speaking.”

“This [Geingob’s death] came unexpectedly and it’s a chapter that leaves me hurt because I thought we would sit down and [I could say] ‘comrade, what happened? I am sorry’ and we [could] move on.

“God’s wish is not our wish, so he is gone. It is very unfortunate, but there is nothing I can do about it.”

Mentor

During the 30-minute interview, Iivula-Ithana said she regarded Geingob as her mentor since she first met him in 1976 in Lusaka, Zambia, where the late head of state was a director of a public administration institute established by Swapo.

At the time, Geingob was a young, tall, handsome, jovial and neat man, she said.

“If there is anything that intrigued the students, it was his cologne. Whenever he passed through a corridor, you would know that the director was here. He would leave that scent there,” Iivula-Ithana reminisced.

Geingob was the first person to introduce her and her colleagues to the Swapo Party constitution, she added.

“We were learning [the constitution] through him to such an extent that we had a play in 1978 and went to attend a youth conference in Havana, Cuba.”

Empty space

“Every student at the institute liked the director. He was not reserved. His house was a house for everybody - particularly on Fridays. We used to enjoy what they called a go-down, where we danced and had some drinks. He was such as loving person, we got so attached to him,” Iivula-Ithana recalled.

“Hage was such as genuine person. I trusted him and I could stand by him when he wanted to stand for the position of vice-president at the party’s first congress. I fully supported him.”

Having lost a husband herself, Iivula-Ithana expressed her sincerest condolences to Geingob’s widow, Monica Geingos, adding that it is not easy to lose a loved one and that it takes time to heal.

“I feel for Monica. Although I was not as young as her, I know how long it took me to heal. Losing someone you lived with leaves an empty space,” she said.