Ongwediva
Retired Lieutenant General Denga Ndaitwah has urged the youth to concentrate on studies, maintaining the favour of being given war veteran status will end with his generation.
Ndaitwah, who is the husband of the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah was a guest speaker during Onamutai Circuit Award Ceremony recently held at Oupumako Combined School in Oshana Region.
The retired army general motivated the youth to concentrate on their studies, maintaining the era will soon be gone where education will not be the main key criteria for receiving certain favours one including for jobs placement. “Previously, education was not an issue, but tomorrow you will not talk about ex-combatants. People will use a different measure [to recruit], you will not be assigned a unit if you have no education. These ex-combatants portfolios will die with us,” stressed the decorated former NDF general. “Ex combatants are now falling out, new faces are emerging. Old faces have to fall out otherwise we’ll have old faces over and over until nature takes its course, and it should not happen like that,” stated Ndaitwah. According to Ndaitwah, there are some Namibians who are against the idea of young people being appointed to parliament, maintaining the Namibian constitution is clear about the appointment of politicians and all the new faces in parliament are appointed within the frames of the law.
“Our constitution is very clear, if you are 35, you can be the president, those people in parliament are all above the age of 35,” said Ndaitwah. He said most of the people assigned to various portfolios by President Hage Geingob, do not only qualify in terms of age, but in terms of competency as well. According to him, the reason why the president asked for CVs is to ensure the right people are assigned to the right portfolios. “You cannot be the minister of International Relations if you do not understand the world, if you don’t understand other countries out there. But it all comes with education,” he said. The former PLAN commander also shared the moving story of his life with teachers and learner from various schools maintaining the will to learn, competency and ability to understand the world better motivated him to study and earn qualifications in his adult age. He said he was a cattle header when he decided to start school. “I was the eldest child in the family so my father decided that I should be at the cattle post looking after the cattle. I once came from the cattle post and the sight of other young people passing through our mahangu field to go to school forced me to approach my father and begged him to allow me to go to school. He allowed me to go on condition that I have to be absent at school on the days that cattle are being taken to water points. I was happy with the arrangement,” he explained.
Although he failed at the end of the year, as he missed several examination papers, his teacher promoted him to the next grade. He never failed a grade ever since. Ndaitwah who left for exile in his early 20s, only with a basic education, enrolled for Grade 10 after he returned from exile in 1989. Today he is heading the Strategic Studies Department at International University of Management (IUM) and he is a part time lecture at the University of Namibia as a proud holder of the Masters of Arts in Security and Strategic Studies from Polytechnic of Namibia.