President Nangolo Mbumba yesterday commissioned 149 military officers of the Namibian Defence Force (NDF) during the graduation parade of the 11th regular commissioning course at Osona Military Base near Okahandja.
During the ceremony, Mbumba said proper training of military personnel cannot be overemphasised, praising the defence ministry and NDF leadership for ensuring Namibia’s military personnel are well trained and up to date with the latest military trends and doctrines, both at practical and theoretical levels.
Quoting renowned military general Douglas MacArthur, Mbumba said, “No other profession has the penalties for employing untrained personnel so appalling or so irrevocable as the military.”
Expanding on his choice of the quote, he explained: “With this thought in mind, it is pertinent that the Namibia Defence Force continues to prioritise training in order to guarantee military readiness, thereby enabling our soldiers to carry out their designated assignments and missions with efficiency, effectiveness, and precision.”
The regular commissioning course is an entry to the officer’s corps, which produces combat-ready officers who must possess the aptitude to positively respond to their responsibilities as leaders and commanders.
Furthermore, military training is the foundation on which a soldier fosters his intellectual, moral, and character growth, he said.
He then moved to commend the NDF leadership for its continued commitment towards ensuring that training and recruitment in the NDF, while competitive, are carried out in an inclusive and diverse manner.
“By so doing, we are providing all Namibian women and men who dream of a career in the armed forces an opportunity to pursue their dreams in the military and in the Namibian House, where no one is left out. Long may this trend continue as part of our nation-building aspirations for a united, strong, and peaceful ‘One Namibia and One Nation’,” he said.
On the day, Chief of Defence Martin Kambulu Pinehas reiterated the army’s inclusiveness, saying the officers being commissioned were drawn from the country’s 121 constituencies.
In September, the NDF also delivered army recruits representative of Namibia’s diverse groups and cultures, a promise it made over two years ago. Approximately 1 387 recruits out of 1 434 recruits who started their basic training on 7 December 2023 graduated and were to be dispatched to the regions, defence minister Frans Kapofi announced at the time.
Back in 2022, the NDF took in 1 400 new cadets, a process that was lauded as a representation of a true Namibian army, with each political region securing a minimum of 103 slots. Only the more densely populated Ohangwena (117), Omusati (117), and Khomas (133) had more cadets.
The NDF was deliberate about ensuring that recruitment reflected the ethnic makeup of the country: a Namibian house, wherein all have equal opportunity.
This was why the recruitment process was decentralised to each of the 14 regions and 121 constituencies, as opposed to a centralised one, whose outcome would normally be dictated in Windhoek.
In the past, the recruitment was directly proportional to each region’s population. This meant the more populous a given region was, the more members it would send to the force. On the downside, it meant less-populated regions, such as Hardap, with fewer than 80,000 inhabitants, would secure less than 20 slots during the given recruitment, which is not the case now when juxtaposed with the current over 100 recruits.
Things changed in 2022 when the NDF management decided that each region must get an equal share, irrespective of the number of its inhabitants. The force also went a step further, deploying a watertight vetting process to ensure the majority of those being recruited from specific regions originally hail from those regions. -emumbuu@nepc.com.na