Recently, social media has been home to comments insulting and bad-mouthing Inspector General Sebastian Ndeitunga, after he addressed police regional commanders on Monday, July 13 at Otjiwarongo, ahead of the July 31 deadline that was set for local authorities by the Affirmative Repositioning group.
This move was not received well by the youth, and they called it a threat by the police chief. The Inspector General was in fact neutral, as he only wanted the law enforced. Ndeitunga is not a politician, and just because politicians have failed to allocate land to the youth and landless people in general, does not mean that the Inspector General was going to fail in enforcing law and order.
He is a law enforcer and he swore under oath that he would enforce the law and maintain order at all times and in any situation. On the other hand, Ndeitunga was just showing government that because of its failure to allocate land to the landless, he would not fail to do his duty and he was ready to enforce the law, even if it meant to forcefully removing people from areas they were to occupy.
In addition, this did not just threaten the youth (landless), but the government too. The outcomes of the meeting were serious and Ndeitunga was clear and prepared, as he declared that no police member would be granted leave from July 15 to August 15. All police officers were expected to report for duty, including those who had gone on leave.
“Threats of this nature and their consequences should not be underestimated, hence the need to prepare appropriately,” he was quoted as saying.
I am quite sure that this was one of the things that made the Head of State, Dr Hage Geingob rush to engage the AR, because he knew that if he was to keep silent and let July 31 come without good counter-proposals, he was permitting the landless to occupy land.
If no solution was reached by then, many people would have ended up blaming the president and not necessarily Ndeitunga. As far as I am concerned, Ndeitunga was simply doing his job and mainly trying to avoid setting an important precedent for future illegal occupations of land.
One of the criteria of natural justice is that similar cases must be treated in a similar manner. So, him not enforcing the law would have been a failure on his part.
Elifas Andreas,
Windhoek