A Swapo Party youth leader has taken a dig at the party’s draconian rules that effectively block any member younger than 35 years from vying for the top four leadership positions.
Infamously known as the ‘Helmut amendments’, the alterations to Swapo’s constitution were proposed by party stalwart Helmut Angula in 2018.
According to the amendments, aspirants for the party’s presidency, vice-president, secretary-general (SG) and deputy SG positions must have served 10 “persistent and consistent years” in the central committee and should have been a party member for not less than 20 uninterrupted years.
At face value then, the amendments were seen to be bona fide, as they were understood to be a way of guarding the party against infiltration by fly-by-night politicians and opportunists whose only desire is to vie for political office for self-gain, at the expense of Swapo.
But now, these amendments have left those loyalists wishing to contest for the top positions scratching their heads.
STINGY AMENDMENTS
Swapo Party Youth League (SPYL) secretary for labour and justice, Willem Amutenya has become the first youth leader within the party to publicly condemn the amendments, branding them as “stingy”.
Amutenya said it is peculiar that those who led Swapo at a very young age now appear to have lost faith in the youth.
He used the example of founding Swapo Party president Sam Nujoma, who was just 31 years old when he took the responsibility of leading Namibia’s armed liberation struggle from Apartheid colonialism and oppression.
“Young people have always led this [Swapo] movement. We cannot ignore that fact. Therefore, I am not in support of that [Helmut amendments]. We have young and able people in Swapo who must be given a chance to serve,” Amutenya said.
“When our parents went into exile for the liberation struggle, they were very young. Some were 15, 16 years…It’s a stingy policy. This congress should look at that,” he said.
He then called on young people in Swapo to avoid being used as pawns in the political chess game of the ‘elders’.
“As young people, we must organise ourselves. We must be firm so that we don’t sabotage our young people. We must not be used to fight wars of the elders at the expense of young people,” Amutenya cautioned.
Angula has since defended the amendments, maintaining they were in the best interest of Swapo.
‘WOUNDED’
Like a wounded lion, Swapo goes into this year’s elective congress deeply divided, battered and bruised.
Chief among other symptoms of dwindling dominance according to insiders, is Swapo’s reduced popularity at successive polls, having lost the two-thirds majority in the National Assembly in 2019 and reduced to the opposition benches in major municipalities.
Current party president Hage Geingob’s popularity has waned from 87 per cent in 2014 to just over 50 per cent in 2019.
“This should be a learning moment. People have spoken through ballots. We now need leaders who can set the ground differently,” Amutenya added.
Swapo has also conceded that the Fishrot corruption scandal – which saw Namibia’s natural resources (fish) looted at a grand scale – in which key Swapo individuals were fingered has damaged the party’s reputation.
Source: The Namibian Press Agency
