The 4th of February 2024, a day of historic significance on which the extraordinary president Hage G Geingob passed away, remains unquestionably the most sombre hour since the founding of our Republic on 21 March 1990. 

With all events of cataclysmic magnitude, moments during which the history of the nation is marked by defeats and the resolve of republican institutions is tested, providential men and women emerge to lead nations through those dark hours of unchartered waters. 

With great difficulty, emotion and hurt, President Nangolo Mbumba stepped forward to assume the reigns of the Namibian nation on the very same day we had lost a president he had known for over five decades as a cherished comrade and brother.

Notwithstanding the unimaginable weight and the strain of the moment, including accompanying a nation engulfed in collective emotional and institutional stress, what President Mbumba had achieved as head of State over the past six months is exceptional. 

On the one hand, President Mbumba reconciled Namibians with the inevitability of death at the summit of the state, whilst ensuring continuity of the republic and its institutions on the other. As with all transitions, and as many guests of the President have unanimously cautioned ex post facto, a number of things could have gone awfully wrong, and missteps might have proven catastrophic for the stability of the Namibian state. 

Contentedly, consistent with our constitutional architecture, President Mbumba navigated with skill and composure the Namibian ship out of the morass of our collective anguish and ambiguous moments of the interregnum by taking the broad-minded actions and decisions that have entrenched the foundations of our democracy as peaceful, stable, and one that is in the words of the late scholar president Geingob, “buttressed by an effective governance architecture.”

Through the tears, President Mbumba did not flinch in the face of all the challenges, but remained noble and decisive in his command of the Namibian ship, urging our people to rise from the momentaneous defeat of mortality. 

Fittingly, the President pressed us to focus on the tasks of development we had committed to undertake 34 years ago when the revolutionary founding President Sam Nujoma urged us courageously, “to set ourselves higher standards of equality, justice and opportunity for all, without regard to race, creed or colour”. 

To play his part in the garb of the fourth President of the Republic and in furtherance of the ideals of justice and equality, President Mbumba has moved swiftly to reconcile our politics with its essence – hard work in the interests of developing the Namibian people. In that vein, over the past unprecedented six months, the President put his best foot forward, leading marathon meetings attentively with traditional leaders from, and in almost every region of the country, emphasising the crucial role they should continue to play in development and nation-building.

Strengthening a culture of transparency, public consultation and political dialogue in a year of elections, President Mbumba held various engagements with religious leaders of different denominations, including political parties in the opposition benches, listening patiently to their assorted concerns, serenely providing highly-logical but empathetic and comprehensive responses to their questions and demands. The President gave an audience to business leaders, ordinary Namibians, seeking to find pathways to their challenges, guided single-mindedly by the need to unlock more developmental and economic opportunities for Namibians. Additionally, President Mbumba participated and officiated at countless events in the realms of sports, business and culture, conscious of the ideals of social cohesion, nation-building and development.

In the pursuit of our foreign policy ambitions, which ordinarily intersect with our domestic agenda of socio-economic development, President Mbumba has been accentuating the need to put our national interest first. The Head of State has been encouraging pragmatism foreign policy implementers to unambiguously define what we want from our external actions, including bilateral and multilateral partners.

The solemn weekend that commences and the week ahead of us does not only close a sequence of six months, but it also opens the final sprint in the Mbumba Presidency. 

President Geingob would have feted on the 3rd of August 2024 his 83rd birthday. Coincidentally, a day later, President Mbumba will cross over the symbolic six-month mark in the mothership, the Presidency. Moreover, our nation will be left with less than 100 days to pivotal Presidential and National Assembly elections that could lead to the election of the first female President in our brief history.

In the march to the November 2024 elections and our rendezvous with history on the 21st of March 2025, President Nangolo Mbumba will carry out the final acts and tasks of a punctual, but far-reaching Presidency with his trademark art of leadership that privileges a focussed operational style, nobility, wisdom and perseverance.

*Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari holds a doctorate in international relations from La Sorbonne, and serves as an advisor to President Nangolo Mbumba.