Linda cares

Emerging R&B singer Linda Simasiku is showing her soft side by giving back part of her winnings from this year’s Namibian Annual Music Awards to the community.

Linda, as she is affectionately known, took a bold step of paying school fees for 13 children, one from each region for the next school calendar year, viewing it as part of her social responsibility.

The artist walked away with three awards at this year’s NAMA’s that included Best Newcomer, Best R$B and Best Song of the Year accolades. These titles brought her a combined cash prize of N$65 000. She will now spend some of that on paying for the school fees of marganalised children nationwide.

"I want to make a difference so I am planning to take one child who can’t afford to pay their school fees in all 13 regions and pay their fees for them for a year," said the well spoken 16-year-old.

Linda described the past few months as hectic, fun, good and bad. Bad in the sense that people criticised her, adding that the good part is because she believed in her music and walked away with three awards.

The songbird is still in school though, but when she visited Namibian Sun’s offices this week; she showed a sense of maturity and appears confident.

Her motto she said is no matter how hard things may seem one must push harder."I believe my biggest competition is me, and every day I try to be better than what I was yesterday," she said.

Although there are some people who think she did not deserves to win all the awards she said: "Little do they know they are making me stronger and better and to my fans who voted for me, a big thank you and I will be forever grateful to you."

She is working on her new album now and planning to drop it this year.

"I am working hard on this one; this is going to be the hottest African R&B to hit Namibia. I am planning to travel from town to town during the next holidays in August.

Her biggest inspiration is her father. "Whenever I am down my father makes me laugh and calms me down,” she said.

He always says: ‘all that was, is now and all that is, was not', simply meaning “that I was just an ordinary girl and now I am an artist and my music that was not is now," she said with a smile. With all the hype and excitement, she must now go back to school, and she is looking forward to it, while aiming to work harder.