As I was penning this revered weekly column of mine, my fingers were trembling and my heart aching after witnessing the ill-treatment and abuse of fellow journalist and brother from another mother, Sheefeni Nikodemus of The Namibian newspaper.
Being a proud product of many veteran journalists, some alive and some no longer with us, I have never been and will never be in the business of sitting arms-folded cowardly watching a fellow pen-pusher being mistreated for telling the truth.
Let me pause and take a cue from the wise words of American statesman, attorney and renowned writer, the late John Adams, who reminded us more than a hundred years ago that: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence”.
This week, the top leadership of the sports ministry accused Sheefeni of trying to falsely engineer a war between sport minster Agnes Tjongarero and her deputy Emma Kantema-Gaomas by reporting that Kantema-Gaomas, her personal assistant and members of the Namibia Sports Commission (NSC) took an unsanctioned trip to Cameroon to attend the recently-ended Africa Cup of Nations without Tjongarero’s blessings.
According to a raft of local reports, Kantema-Gaomas and the others were in Cameroon on a ‘fact-finding mission’, and also engaged top Caf leaders on matters of ‘sport development and cooperation’.
The trip was reportedly also to further solidify Namibia’s bid for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations, which the country intends to co-host with Botswana.
It, however, still remains unclear if Cabinet has even given the ministry the go-ahead to start canvassing support for the country’s bid to co-host the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations.
Interestingly, the country’s football governing body – the Namibia Football Association (NFA) – seems to have been side-lined from this whole process and is now a project of the NSC and the ministry.
I would have expected the NFA and their Botswana counterparts to be in the driving seats of the biding process and once all technical aspects are well in place on both sides, for the FA to then take the final proposal to government through the relevant minister for consideration and eventual approval.
When Sheefeni journalistically enquired about Kantema-Gaomas’ ‘unsanctioned’ trip to Cameroon, the ministry’s public relations department in a letter dated 3 February 2022, confidently confirmed that “the ministry has not sent any of its employees to Cameroon and has no plans to do so in the future”.
But yesterday, in another letter from the ministry’s executive director Audrin Mathe, the ministry contradicted its own public relations team by saying Tjongarero did sanction the trip, and said any further suggestions to the contrary by the media “is an attempt to create divide between the two ministers”.
As shameful as it is, I expected the ministry to at least have the decency to call up a press conference and clear this embarrassing issue once and for all, but they instead chose to go on the offensive.
The ministry dismally failed to clarify their own contradicting versions of the trip, and rather chose to attack an innocent journalist who is seeking nothing but to account taxpayers’ money and operations of a public office.
What we the media, and by extension the general public, want to know is who is telling the truth? Did Tjongarero sanction the trip or not? Should we take the words of the ministry’s public relations officers or the words of the executive director? What were the outcomes of this trip? What are the facts from Kantema-Gaomas’ ‘fact-finding’ mission? Who did they engage and on which specific matters?
No number of attacks on Sheefeni or any other journalist will deter us from seeking the truth and asking the tough questions about the usage of taxpayers’ money or how public institutions are run.
Namibia, through the assurance of president Hage Geingob, took oath that it will at all material times protect and preserve the rights and freedoms of the media and journalists, and we should at no point derail from the president’s stance on media, freedom irrespective of our personal and selfish interests.
An injury to Sheefeni or any other journalist is an injury to all journalists, period!! I, personally, will not sit idle and watch a fellow journalist being humiliated for seeking and telling the truth.
Let me part with these wise words: “Facts are always too busy being true to worry about how you feel about them”.
Until next time, sharp, sharp!!