Lahja Nashuuta
The Namibian Defence Force (NDF) this week delivered army recruits representative of Namibia’s diverse groups and cultures, a promise it made over two years ago.
“The Ministry of Defence and Veterans Affairs is working hard to rejuvenate the Namibian Defence Force with young, energetic, healthy, and informed youth. We are working hard to realise the vision of having a small, well-trained, and well-equipped professional force that excels in the fulfilment of its mandate,” defence minister Frans Kapofi said.
Approximately 1 387 recruits out of 1 434 recruits who started their basic training on 7 December 2023 graduated and will be dispatched to the regions in a few weeks, Kapofi announced.
He made the announcement at the Graduation and Pass Out Parade of the 17th Intake Recruit Training held at the Osona Base on Wednesday.
The minister described the concluded training as tense, with deaths occurring during the selection process and many disqualifications due to mainly physical unfitness, pregnancies, and other medical conditions.
He also revealed that three recruits died during their training, while about 40 people fell out during the screening processes.
“Their journey was not easy as the initial screening had disqualified some, while 40 of them either voluntarily opted out or were disqualified during the final screening conducted here at the Namibian Defence Force training establishment,” he said.
Kapofi further said this radical transformation is aimed at conditioning the men and women in the military to be able to think differently and deal with emerging threats with vigour and determination.
“This is the reason why we take seriously the compliance of prospective soldiers to the set recruitment requirements. The need for an educated soldier is today more important than ever before,” he said.
He said with technological advancement, both State and non-State combatants are applying the latest technologies, which include digital and cyber technologies.
“The battlefield is now dominated by autonomous vehicles such as drones, while modern surveillance technologies impede freedom of movement and concealment. This is, therefore, the reason why we have undertaken to transform the NDF for it to be on par with the best in our region,” he
stated.
Kapofi said by developing soldiers and equipping them with the right technology, the government intends to explore the possibilities and methods of providing the necessary infrastructure at a reduced cost.
In the current financial year, an N$8 billion budget was allocated to the defence ministry.
In a recent interview with local media, Kapofi was quoted as stating that approximately
N$80 000 was spent to train each soldier.
National army
In 2022, the NDF took in 1 400 new cadets, a process that was lauded as a representation of a true Namibian army, with each political region securing a minimum of 103 slots.
Only the more densely populated Ohangwena (117), Omusati (117), and Khomas (133) had more cadets.
The NDF was deliberate about ensuring that recruitment reflected the ethnic makeup of the country: a Namibian house, wherein all have equal opportunity.
This was why the recruitment process was decentralised to each of the 14 regions and 121 constituencies, as opposed to a centralised one, whose outcome would normally be dictated in Windhoek.
In the past, the recruitment was directly proportional to each region’s population.
This meant that the more populous a given region was, the more members it would send to the force.
On the downside, it meant less- populated regions, such as Hardap, with fewer than 80 000 inhabitants, would secure only less than 20 slots during the given recruitment, which is not the case now when juxtaposed with the current over 100 recruits.
Things changed in 2022 when the NDF management decided that each region must get an equal share, irrespective of the number of its inhabitants.
The force also went a step further, deploying a watertight vetting process to ensure the majority of those being recruited from specific regions originally hail from those regions.