The President of Namibia, Hage Geingob, who served as the country’s first post-independence prime minister, has died at the age of 82.
He passed away early Sunday in a hospital in Windhoek, where he was receiving medical treatment according to a statement from Nangolo Mbumba, acting president.
Geingob revealed in January that he had been diagnosed with cancer.
“The Namibian nation has lost a distinguished servant of the people, a liberation struggle icon, the chief architect of our constitution and the pillar of the Namibian house,” the statement from Mbumba reads.
“At this moment of deepest sorrow, I appeal to the nation to remain calm and collected while the Government attends to all necessary state arrangements, preparations and other protocols.”
Geingob returned from a trip to the US last Wednesday after undergoing a two-day treatment as part of a medical trial.
He became president in 2015 and was re-elected in 2019 for a second and final term of five years.
Geingob had been in charge of the thinly populated and mostly arid southern African country since 2015, the year he announced he had survived prostate cancer.
A presidency post on social media platform X did not give a cause of death, but late last month the presidency said he had travelled to the United States for “a two-day novel treatment for cancerous cells”, after being diagnosed following a regular medical check-up.
Born in 1941, Geingob was a prominent politician since before Namibia achieved independence from white minority-ruled South Africa in 1990.
Advertisement · Scroll to continue
He chaired the body that drafted Namibia’s constitution, then became its first prime minister at independence on March 21 of that year, a position he retained until 2002
