No ‘Back To Basics’ For NUNW In Swapo

IN sport, one does not change the rules of the game at the end of the match, or when you are losing.

You keep to them until the end or else don’t compete in the game at all.
The inability of the unions under the National Union of Namibian Workers’ (NUNW’s) umbrella to extricate themselves from being the master’s (Swapo’s) voice is making their theme of this year’s May Day, ‘Going Back to Basics’, a mockery of the workers’ plight.
Apart from some union leaders who continue to live in cloud cuckoo land and can best be described as ‘yes-men’ of some political elites, unions affiliated to the ruling Swapo Party continue to be the breeding ground of corrupt, undemocratic, elitist leaders.
These are ‘thugocrats’ who threaten the future of unions for personal political interests and rule them with strong-arm tactics they inherited from their masters in the ruling party.
I am saying all this because we have had theories that this year’s May Day would be all about workers’ anger and their demands for better living conditions. But really, it was all about political interests and careerism among some leaders who see unions as a stepping stone to a political career.
The Walvis Bay Workers’s Day rally was supposed to centre around NUNW going back to the basics.
As one newspaper reported, the aim was to restore lost pride in the workers’ movement.
But then the president of NUNW, Elias Manga, used the platform to state that “you can never separate a child from his parents - Swapo is our father and mother”. In the same breath he said the Government Institutions Pension Fund (GIPF) N$600 million debacle “is the business of the union”.
What a contrast.
It is the same as throwing the debate about the affiliation of NUNW to Swapo and workers’ unity in the same hat. They contradict each other.
How can you be united when some unions do not pay affiliation fees to the umbrella body and thus contribute to the low-profile celebration of May Day?
Workers of Namibia can never be united while the unions are affiliated to Swapo. That is unless you do not count the working-class members of other political parties as workers.
The NUNW needs to create room for non-Swapo members to join and take leadership.
In any case, there are also Swapo members in other unions like the sea-going personnel at Lüderitz and Walvis Bay who continue to vote faithfully for the ruling party during elections but remain members of unions affiliated to the opposition the Trade Union Congress of Namibia (Tucna), which is independent of any political party.
I believe that even Paulus Hango, the president of Tucna, is a Swapo member. He is just more principled as a union man and does not consider his own political career (if he has) above workers’ interests!
As long as the revision of the NUNW affiliation to Swapo is a sensitive issue, there is no room for going back to basics with the same vigour and zeal that was displayed prior to the country’s Independence.
Currently, NUNW and its affiliated unions are at the service of politicians.
That is why they invite them and they use the platform to humiliate workers instead of coming to such events to answer questions about the concerns of the working class.
Therefore, it was also interesting to note that NUNW secretary general Evilastus Kaaronda, who probably organised the Walvis Bay event, did not address the workers at the celebration.
I personally believe that Kaaronda is a young man of refreshing openness who has a penchant for directly interacting with workers while others behave like Swapo apparatchiks.
He took on the GIPF issue when everyone else took a backseat and joined workers to demand answers. In the process he now faces disciplinary action. Anyone but a blind man could have seen the writing on the wall for that. The good thing is that Kaaronda will go down a brave union man, if his opponents in NUNW were to manage to get rid of him.
And once he is gone, others should stand up for the same principles. There is no place for the faint-hearted in unionism.