Kalumbi Shangula

The author is a medical doctor, a public health practitioner, a businessman and an ex-PLAN combatant. He spent three years with the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), the military wing of SWAPO, before he went to complete his medical studies and graduated as a medical doctor in Moscow. He served as head of the Peter Nanyemba Military Hospital, as PLAN Chief of Medical Services and as a member of the PLAN Military Council until he was repatriated to Namibia under UNTAG.

After independence, he studied Public Health at Harvard University in the USA. He completed his post-graduate qualifications at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicines in London where he specialized in Public Health and Tropical medicine. He studied and completed a Masters Degree in Business Administration at the Maastricht School of Management in the Netherlands. After independence, he served as medical superintendent of Peripheral Hospitals in the North West Health Region and subsequently as regional director. From 1996 to 2007 he served as Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health and Social Services. In 2007 he served as Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Tourism. He retired from public service in February 2012. He is now the Assistant Pro Vice Chancellor for the UNAM Health Sciences Campus. In December 2018, President Hage Geingob appointed him as Minister of Health and Social Services.

Shangula served as personal physician of the Founding President, of the commissioner of the National Planning Commission, of the director of the Namibia Institute of Pathology, as member of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO), as director of the board of Namibia Wildlife Resorts, as member of the Medical and Dental Council of Namibia, as chairman of the Inter-regional Agreement for Africa (AFRA) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and as a member of the advisory group of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Dr Shangula is registered with the Health Professions Council of Namibia. He is a member of the Medical Association of Namibia, a fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in the United Kingdom and member of the New York Academy of Sciences, USA. He has written numerous scientific publications.

Books

Journey into the Unknown

by Kalumbi Shangula

120 p. • 2020 • ISBN 978-99945-76-67-8 • 148 x 210 mm

This autobiography relates the moving and exciting story of Dr Kalumbi Shangula, the Minister of Health and Social Services. He was one of hundreds of Namibians who left Namibia through Angola starting in 1974 to fight and prepare for the liberation of his motherland. It describes the author’s political awakening in the inhuman apartheid system and his hazardous journey through Angola up to Zambia with repeated arrests and escapes.
The reader learns about the hard life in exile, his military training and graduation as a medical doctor in Moscow, Russia, and his work as a dedicated medical doctor at the Peter Nanyemba Military Hospital back in Angola until 1989. Shangula also vividly recounts the repatriation of former exiles to Namibia in 1989, the joy of returning home, but also the fear and apprehension of the returnees, their resettlement and employment in an independent country.

“It is hoped that this book will give the reader insight into the experiences of exiles which people have talked about many times but which have rarely been documented in writing. It is also hoped that this book will encourage other former exiles to summon the courage and write down their own experiences.” 
Kalumbi Shangula

“(This book) makes interesting reading, especially his presentation of events. I encourage everybody to read this book.”
Sam Nujoma, Founding President of Namibia

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