It is with great honour that I join today this huge gathering of Namibians from many corners of our beautiful country, here in the magnificent setting of the Onambango Palace, in the company of our host Tatekulu Fillemon Shuumbwa Nangolo and other esteemed traditional leaders, in order to celebrate the Omagongo Festival of 2024. Human beings are inherently social. We are all born with an innate capacity for building social connections, and it is through these connections that we are able to form families, communities, societies and nations.
Through our social interactions, we develop a cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, hierarchies etc. This is what we refer to as culture. There are many meanings to culture and different types of cultures.
We have a culture of unity, that is what makes us live together in peace and harmony despite our differences or beliefs, a culture of working together and building together and not destroying; a culture of good neighbourliness, illustrating that we are kind and good to each other, a culture of self-sufficiency, working hard, saving up, and providing and taking care of each other’s needs, a culture of sharing, not to accumulate and refusing to share, or demand things while refusing to share the responsibility of labouring together. These are the characteristics that define us as members of the human species. It is therefore important that we gather on occasion, during times of peace, to socialise and c.