Ngarikutuke Tjiriange

Who is Ngarikutuke Tjiriange?

Ngarikutuke Ernest Tjiriange is a Namibian politician, a member of the National Assembly and former Secretary General of the ruling SWAPO Party. He is the Minister of Veterans' Affairs in the Namibian cabinet.

Tjiriange, born in Windhoek, studied law at Leningrad State University and received a doctorate from Kiev University in 1973. After doing research at the International Institute for Labour Studies in Switzerland in 1974 and the International Institute of Human Rights in France in 1975, he was an assistant professor at the United Nations Institute for Namibia in Lusaka, Zambia from 1977 to 1982. He became the principal legal advisor of SWAPO in 1970.

Ngarikutuke Tjiriange was a notable no-show in the High Court in Windhoek in 2009 as the trial of his son on charges that include counts of murder and robbery entered its final phase. Tjiriange’s son, Elias Nhinda-Tjiriange, was convicted of murdering a cousin of his, robbing him, and later burning his body in Windhoek near the end of 2004.

Tjiriange was a SWAPO member of the Constituent Assembly, which was in place from November 1989 to March 1990, immediately prior to independence. At independence in 1990, he became a member of the National Assembly.