Dr Hage Geingob was a bucket list man.
Well maybe not exactly a bucket list man, but one of the things the Namibian president who passed on last week wanted to do before he died was to slum it in Bluetown, a down-at-heel neighborhood in Botswana’s second city of Francistown.
In his past life as a SWAPO guerilla, the late Namibian liberation struggle hero holed up in this neck of the woods, in a run-down shack that suffered delusions of grandeur.
It was in this dump, outlandishly dubbed the White House (after the American first address) on the afternoon of April 4th 1974 that Geingob, surrounded by packed bags, kicked the air and cursed himself for missing a Douglas DC-4 aircraft to Malawi.
For months, Geingob had been looking forward to the trip.
There's more to this story
But to keep reading, we need you to subscribe.
Investigative journalism is an indispensable part of a healthy society, but it's also expensive to produce. We are reliant on subscriptions to fund our work, and while you can enjoy most of our stories for free, a small number of premium features are reserved for subscribers.
You can subscribe for one week, a month or a full year - the choice is yours.
Save 77% on an annual subscription. Click here to find out how.
Existing subscribers can log in to keep reading here.
