Hage Geingob

Hage Gottfried Geingob (born 3 August 1941) is a Namibian politician, serving as the third president of Namibia since 21 March 2015. Geingob was the first Prime Minister of Namibia from 1990 to 2002, and served as prime minister again from 2012 to 2015. Between 2008 and 2012 Geingob served as Minister of Trade and Industry. He is also the current president of the ruling SWAPO Party since his election to the position in November 2017. In November 2014, Geingob was elected president of Namibia by an overwhelming margin. In November 2017, Geingob became the third president of SWAPO after winning by a large margin at the party's 6th Congress. In August 2018, Geingob began a one-year term as chairperson of the Southern African Development Community. Early life Geingob was born in Otjiwarongo, South West Africa (present day Namibia), in 1941. He received his early education at Otavi in South West Africa under the Bantu Education System. He joined the Augustineum, where most of today's prominent political leaders of Namibia were educated, in 1958. In 1960, he was expelled from Augustineum for having participated in a march in protest at the poor quality of education. He was, however, readmitted and finished the teacher-training course in 1961. Subsequently, he took up a teaching position at the Tsumeb Primary School in Central Namibia, but decided that he could not continue his own further education in Namibia. As a teacher, he also resented being forced to participate in the Bantu Education System. Therefore, at the end of the school year, he left his job to seek knowledge and instruction that could help him change the system. He and three of his colleagues walked and hitchhiked to Botswana to escape the system. From Botswana, he was scheduled to go to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on a plane chartered by the African National Congress (ANC), but the plane was blown up by South Africans. However, the bomb that was planted on the plane went off prematurely, before the plane was able to take off. Subsequently, the apartheid regime also tightened up the "underground railway". As a result, Geingob stayed in Botswana, where he served as Assistant South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) Representative (1963–64).