Who's Who
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| Nandi-Ndaitwah, Netumbo - Swapo | ||||
 Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah was appointed Minister of Information and Broadcasting in March 2005. She has had ministerial status since 1996 when she was made Director General of Women Affairs in the Office of the President. In 2000 she was given her own Ministry – Women Affairs and Child Welfare.She has also held several senior positions in the party. In 1996 when she was appointed Deputy Secretary General of the party – a position that put her on the Politburo and appeared to make her heir apparent to Moses Garoëb as Secretary General. However, at the 1997 Congress Hifikepunye Pohamba became Secretary General and John Pandeni his deputy. She is a member of the Swapo Party Central Committee and Politburo. As Swapo’s Secretary for Information and Mobilisation, Ndaitwah is one of the party’s main spokespersons. In the late 1990s, she emerged as the dominant personality in the Swapo Party Women’s Council (SPWC). In a 2002 SPWC Central Committee ballot for places on the wing’s Executive Committee she came top. However, five years later her influence in the Women’s Council had waned as she struggled to obtain a place on the Executive. Ndaitwah joined Swapo in 1966 while a student at the Odibo mission school and from 1969 to 1974 she was the Chairperson of the Swapo Youth League (SYL) in northern Namibia. Amid growing persecution of the SYL leadership she left the country to join Swapo in exile in 1974. She went on to represent the movement in central and eastern Africa and undertake studies in the United Kingdom before returning to Namibia in 1989. In 2002 she guided the Combating of Domestic Violence Act through the National Assembly, amid much criticism and joking from some of her male colleagues. At one point she warned her fellow Swapo MPs that chauvinism was against the party’s constitution. Ndaitwah has called for 30 percent of Namibia’s elected representatives to be women by the end of 2004, saying that a 50 percent target is unrealistic in the short term. Ndaitwah has served on the board of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (Nepru) since 1998. She is married to a leading figure in the Namibian Defence Force (NDF) – Brigadier Denga Ndaitwah. |
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| Personal: | ||||
| Born on October 29 1952 at Onamutai in the Oshana region. Lives in Windhoek. | ||||
| Education: | ||||
| Masters Degree in Diplomatic Studies, Keele University, UK (1989). Post-graduate Diploma, International Relations, Keele University, UK (1988). Post-graduate Diploma, Public Administration and Management, Glasgow College of Technology, UK (1987). Diploma in work and practice of communist youth movement, Lenin High Kosomol School, USSR (1976). | ||||
| Career: | ||||
| Masters Degree in Diplomatic Studies, Keele University, UK (1989). Post-graduate Diploma, International Relations, Keele University, UK (1988). Post-graduate Diploma, Public Administration and Management, Glasgow College of Technology, UK (1987). Diploma in work and practice of communist youth movement, Lenin High Kosomol School, USSR (1976). | ||||
| Legislative: | ||||
| Foreign affairs, gender issues, and environmental issues. | ||||
| Contact: | ||||
| Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Private Bag 13344, Windhoek; tel: (061) 283 9111 | ||||
