Cabinet secretary George Simataa maintains that academic and erstwhile Namibia Institute of Public Management executive director left the institute on mutual grounds, and was not pushed, as purported.

Simataa made these remarks during an interview with this reporter, while responding to a topic that has seemingly refused to die in the public space.

The interview took place in Simataa’s first floor office in the Office of the Prime Minister.

It was the same office where he and Diescho agreed on mutual grounds that the outspoken academic part ways with Nipam, Simataa recalls.

“Professor Diescho is a closed case. There on that sofa [pointing], we didn’t just want to talk. Professor Diescho knows that I was a very kind man. To say he was fired unnecessarily is not true. He was not fired. Professor Diescho and us at Nipam separated on mutual understanding. I know professor Diescho,” Simataa said. Simataa and Diescho first crossed paths in 1984 at St Joseph RC High School (Dobra) outside Windhoek as activists of the then militant Namibia National Students Organisation.

“So, I am not one of the people that would want to fight a long-standing friend. As a friend, I called him in my office here. I said, ‘there are these allegations about you and audits that come from PwC. These things are damning for you. You are the only educated man we have in this country. If we charge you with misconduct, you’ll be in trouble and it’s going to drag your name down. We can offer an opportunity to separate’,” Simataa narrated.

He continued: “I have never spoken about these things. But since you’re asking and it could be a good space now, I’ve said so. And he said, ‘Oh George, you’re saying the truth. Let me go and think about it’. I said, I give you one hour. But here is a letter, before this time tomorrow, call me back.” “He called me back and said, ‘I’ve accepted the separation and I’ll produce it in writing.’ The email is here. When there was noise at that time, I sent the emails to the newspapers to read which was sent by him. So, we separated with Diescho. We did not fire Diescho. But he went to court. And always, in all these situations, we won the cases as Nipam,” Simataa went at length explaining.

Opposing Simataa’s narrative, the German-based scholar maintained that he was unfairly dismissed and that there was no board meeting or resolution to effect his dismissal.

“I will try to find the only document that is in existence that he [Simataa] gave me [on a] Monday morning without any discussion prior to that, that my performance was under question,” Diescho said.

He went further to suggest that he has since been on an employment embargo in his motherland, following his fallout with the late president Hage Geingob, who allegedly declared him persona non grata. When delivering the letter, Simataa, according to Diescho, said to him: “The president [Geingob] came back over the weekend, and we worked throughout the weekend. This is the result.”

According to Diescho, Simataa’s missive suggested no room for negotiation.

“It was asking me to resign with immediate effect. That’s not an agreement. There were no charges put to me. There was no disciplinary procedure. As a matter of fact, there was no board meeting to discuss my resignation that he was referring to. There was no such,” Diescho recalls. According to him, the last board meeting he attended was on 2 December 2015. There, neither his performance nor resignation were on the agenda, he said.

“Thirdly, this matter came up in Rundu during the town hall meetings in preparation for the 2019 election campaign. The president was asked by two people in that meeting; Paulus Mbangu and Marcellus Haivera, who asked, ‘What is it that Joseph Diescho has done to get the anger of the government that he is being treated like this when criminals and thieves roam the streets freely?’”

On the day, Geingob retorted in the livestreamed meeting that: “That [Diescho] is the person I brought back from the wilderness because I was told he did not have a house here [in Kavango]. He cares for Kavango, and I am told he doesn’t have a house, he stays in the Catholic Church (premises) or something. If you are so committed and worried about your people, why don’t you have a house… After he came here, I do not know – he thinks I am following him. Listen, I do not have time. I have more important things to do.”

The president’s statement, at least from Diescho’s perspective, meant that he was blacklisted by the State.

It is this situation that forced him into self-imposed exile. According to Diescho, the greatest sins he committed while at Nipam were not owning a house in his region of birth and failing to pay municipal bills.

“In our laws, those are not dismissible offences,” he said with a grin.

Asked if he reconciled with Geingob before the latter’s demise, Diescho said he engaged several senior government officials to mediate whatever differences that existed between them.

Those efforts hit a cul-de-sac.

 “All of them informed me that it was a personal decision that the president took.”

In essence, the two never got to smoke the peace pipe. On whether he will return to Namibia, he said: “My dismissal led to a general embargo. You, when the head of State mentions a person by name [singles out], people become afraid. So, I lost all my friends. All my speaking engagements were cancelled.

“I could not find a lawyer to represent me at the labour commissioner. Only [Panduleni] Itula went with me. Do you see how difficult it is? All the lawyers cancelled on me; they were afraid.” For Diescho, returning home is a nightmare and a mirage, as he cannot secure employment in the public or the private sector, and has already seen some of his interviews cancelled at the 11th hour.

- emumbuu@nepc.com.na