Sensitive issues should be approached with clear minds and urgency: Geingob

NKURENKURU, 27 AUG – Namibians should approach delicate issues such as poverty, landlessness and genocide with clear minds and urgency, President Hage Geingob said on Sunday.
Speaking during the Heroes’ Day commemoration at Nkurenkuru in the Kavango West Region, Geingob said although challenges remain, Namibia has made good progress over the past 28 years in issues such as reducing poverty; the expansion of infrastructure; increased monthly grants for pensioners and building schools across the country.
“As we try to deal with the remaining challenges, we should approach the issues of poverty, landlessness and genocide with clear minds and with urgency. For as long as we have Namibians who are poor, who have no access to the means of production and people who have not received satisfactory compensation for past atrocities committed against them, we will not be able to pay a fitting tribute to those who perished in defence of Namibia and its people,” said the head of state.
The president said he believes Namibians should have difficult conversations with the aim of finding peaceful and sustainable solutions to the challenges of inequality, landlessness and outstanding pains of genocide.
“As we try to find solutions to what I have mentioned, we should not succumb to cynicism and behave as if government is not doing anything,” Geingob stressed.
He added that government is doing its best, and if Namibians hold hands, they will achieve their objectives.
The President further said during his first State of the Nation Address in 2015, his announcement of the second land conference slated for October this year was done with the intention to create a platform at which the willing-seller, willing buyer principle, ancestral land claims for restitution and other issues of importance will be thoroughly interrogated and discussed.
“Government is opening up these difficult policy conversations because no one should be under the illusion that the fight for freedom is complete. We remain cognisant of the fact that we are now engaged in the second phase of the struggle; the fight for economic freedom and justice. The struggle for a better country shall continue until it is won,” Geingob said.
He further said without socio-economic justice, liberty will be short-lived.
“Until justice for the majority is achieved, Government will not rest because its work is not complete,” he said.
NAMPA