In a groundbreaking and historic move, President Hage Geingob and first lady, Monica Geingos, in a televised press briefing last week, voluntarily disclosed their respective personal assets from the time they took office.
Geingob was sworn in as Namibia’s third president on March 21 this year, and exactly a month later, on April 21, in his State of the Nation address, he undertook to publicly declare his and the first lady’s assets in the second week of this month.
He also undertook to release his medical health reports for public scrutiny.
With this undertaking, he has engaged PriceWaterHouseCoopers Tax Advisory Services to help him with an independent assessment of his and Geingos’s current asset base.
A day before his second month in office, on May 20, Geingob and the first lady made the public disclosures despite the fact that they were not legally obliged to do so.
The combined net value of the first couple’s assets is in the region of N$110 million (R110m).
Geingob’s current net value is N$51m, while the first lady, a businesswoman in her own right, is worth between N$40m- N$60m. The first lady explained that it was difficult to quantify her net value because her wealth was largely stacked in shareholding in a number of companies.
Geingob was hailed locally for his disclosure with commentators saying that he was setting a new tone on the way things should be done not only in Namibia, but across the globe.
“I don’t claim any glory. This was done by (US president Barack) Obama. Some (world leaders) do that too. I am not trying to teach anyone else. I’m not holy or try to preach to others. I do it in the interest of Namibia,” Geingob said last week.
Geingob had gone into exile in 1962 and started working for the Swapo Party in Botswana. He ended up in the US in 1964 when he was appointed as the Swapo representative in New York.
While there, he carried out dual responsibilities of attending to Swapo business while studying on a scholarship of US$150.
He said last week that some of this money was spent on publishing the Swapo Information Bulletin in the US.
In 1972, he was appointed to the United Nations Secretariat by Swapo through the founding President Sam Nujoma. Here he was employed on a salary grading of P2 to P3 where he earned a salary of about US$2 000 (roughly the equivalent of N$50 000 in today’s terms).
He was later assigned to Lusaka, Zambia, to set up and head the UN Institute for Namibia (Unin) where he earned a D2-salary starting at US$141 550 per annum. His end salary as Unin’s head 14 years later was US$156 810 (roughly equivalent to N$1.9m at the current value).
Geingob last week said that he had asked the Swapo executive at the time what he should do with the money.
The party told him that he “knew how to use it”, and with this he had set up a fund that was used to assist People’s Liberation Army of Namibia veterans. Through this, they purchased artificial limbs for these veterans.
On his return to Namibia at independence, Geingob was appointed the first prime minister, a position he held for 12 years until August 2002.
After that he had a two-year stint in a management position at the World Bank where he received a monthly income of US$18 000 per month.
Geingob said he had made an “investment decision” to buy a house in the upmarket suburb of Potomac in Maryland for US$1.025m. He was able to sell this property for US$1.4m before the sub-prime housing crisis in the US.
He had also bought a 12ha plot just outside Windhoek in 1989 for N$500 000, of which he sold nine hectares.
From the proceeds of this, he said, he built his house on the remaining portion of the property. In 1992 he bought a farm in the Grootfontein area for N$1.4m. The value of this property is now estimated to be between N$4m and N$5m.
Geingob said he bought this farm through a loan from a commercial bank, and not through AgriBank of Namibia’s Affirmative Action Loan Scheme, which was created to allow for blacks to enter the commercial farming sector at lower interest rates than commercial banks.
He claimed that despite his fixed assets, during the early years he had experienced cash flow problems and had to rely on temporary overdraft facilities until he sold 39ha of land which was ordered in a court settlement in his divorce from his second wife, Loine Nuushona Hepiiwo.
Daily News