The photo is a screenshot taken from broadcast footage of thousands of unemployed waiting to be interviewed for a handful of government positions in Ohangwena region.
On Thursday, 12 September 2019, the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) posted a story to its website under the the headline ‘Over 6 000 invited for written interviews for nine cleaner positions in Ohangwena’.
The NBC website story includes an embedded Youtube video of the topic that gives more detail.
The story seems to have caused quite a bit of consternation online and appears to have gone viral on Namibian social media.
When the story initially appeared on social media, people started questioning whether it was true, as well as the authenticity of the photo used with the story. Some people contacted Namibia Fact Check directly to request that the photo posted on the story be checked, as they appeared not to believe that it could have been taken in the part of Namibia – Eenhana, Ohangwena region – that the report was referring to, arguing that the structure depicted in the photo did not exist in that part of the country.
An editor at the NBC confirmed to Namibia Fact Check that the photo posted on the NBC website with the story was indeed a screenshot taken from the footage embedded with the brief online news report.
However, the broadcast story and Youtube-linked video were not produced by the NBC, according to the NBC employee, but were supplied to the broadcaster by the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT). In the video story the structure is not identified, but the reporting mentions that the interviews were held at three venues in the region, specifically the Haimbili Haufiku Senior Secondary School, at Eenhana, and two Lutheran churches.
An image search indicates that the structure appears to be the school hall of Haimbili Haufiku Senior Secondary School.