Succession: Shouldn’t We Also Think Outside The Box

CANDIDATES have strategies to win the race in Swapo but do they have the strategies to run the country? And do they have the qualities of a leader the country needs?

These are but two of the most crucial questions that Swapo and any delegate to the congress later this year must ask before deciding on the presidential candidate.
Instead too much time and effort is wasted on personalities and character assassination and who will benefit through tenders or prepare the State for collective piracy if their candidate wins.
Even though Swapo was known as the traditional hope of the oppressed and there is a feeling among some of its members that others have no right to poke inquisitive noses into its affairs, ignoring what is going on in the party is as good as cutting the thread that holds the country together. Swapo is the ruling party since Independence and therefore everything it does matters to outsiders also.
With the debate on succession thus limited to the Politburo, Central Committee and the congress, it should be the sole business of everyone else who thinks they are obliged to have a say to use available platforms to try and influence party members on the type of candidate to be elected. It is only right to do so even though it is not written in stone that the Swapo candidate will become the next President of Namibia.
It is a fact that the majority of Namibia has relegated the responsibility of choosing that candidate to around 500 delegates at the congress.
As for now the names of the party’s Vice President Hage Geingob, Secretary General Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana, Information Secretary Jerry Ekandjo, Prime Minister Nahas Angula and Deputy Prime Minister Marco Hausiku are all being touted as candidates to take over the party leadership from President Hifikepunye Pohamba.
All of the above have had their share of time in Cabinet and should by now have shown their capabilities.
Since Independence Swapo has hammered home the message of peace and tranquility. In fact even though former President Sam Nujoma emphasised economic independence towards the latter years of his rule, and Pohamba (being the continuation of programmes) reiterated these words, Namibia now needs a manager as President.
The next President should be able to steer the ship with very clear aims and be able to mobilise Cabinet, top ministerial management as well as the private sector with clear economic goals.
It should be someone who will manage Cabinet in such a way that ministers must present regular reports on progress of programmes undertaken but when they fail to deliver, sideways reshuffling should not be the option.
They should know that even though there are traits of servanthood in their leader, such a person will not tolerate laziness, lack of honesty, and will not hesitate to fire those who fail to carry out plans.
It means someone who is willing to take unpopular decisions in the interest of the nation and not a politically well-connected elite group.
When the second term of President Pohamba started, we were told that he had given each minister a set of goals/targets to achieve. The mistake he made was that those targets remained confidential between him and the ministers.
If he had gone the transparent route of revealing each minister’s target, he would have been more empowered when taking steps against a non-performing Cabinet member.
As it is now, he can keep track of the delegated work, but who says that he is in fact doing that? How do we know that his non-performing ministers face his wrath? And what type of wrath is it that we don’t actually see?
Also, our next President should be someone who will not generalise targets but zoom in on them with short-term deadlines. Even though we have Vision 2030 as an overall goal, there are many short term solutions which can make it a success.
Only a seasoned navigator can steer the ship in that direction.
We have many candidates, some of them even outside the group I referred to earlier.
Therefore, if need be, the delegates must start to think outside the box.

Swapo Women’s Congress: Paving The Way For ‘A Neutral’?

THE outcome of last weekend’s Swapo Party Women’s Council congress has given many following the 2012 Swapo succession debate much food for thought.

While, for instance, there were attempts by both camps of the two main candidates for the vice presidency race in Swapo to block the incumbent women’s league secretary Petrina Haingura from re-election or even standing, she thrashed her opponent and came out tops with a huge majority.
Her victory was not entirely surprising but the huge number of votes gave an indication that there is a third group – the silent majority – who prefer neither Hage Geingob nor Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana as the party’s candidate for the 2014 national presidential election.
That group could be key in next year’s congress of the party and President Hifikepunye Pohamba’s recent outburst against the two candidates indicates that he was driving home a message that Geingob and Ithana should remember that other possibilities do exist.
I can safely mention the likes of Deputy Prime Minister Marco Hausiku and Speaker of the National Assembly Theo-Ben Gurirab as two of the possibles.
Both are in the mould of Pohamba and having either of them will mean that the “ship will remain as steady as Pohamba kept it”. That’s continuity in Pohamba’s eyes and mind.
He likes to play it safe and under Hausiku or Gurirab, we will neither make a big leap forward nor deteriorate significantly.
A ‘neutral’ like those two would also be a surprise to all those who have so far invested in one way or another in the underground campaigns of Geingob and Ithana.
So when we see attempts fail, like the one to remove Haingura by lobbying Pohamba, it gives us an indication that the President has made room for an outsider in the race, in the event the two key candidates do not toe the line as he requested.
Of course we know that Haingura had to be wheelbarrowed in by former President Sam Nujoma (as one of his 10 choices for the National Assembly). Therefore, the former nurse from Rundu was seen as one of Nujoma’s favourites and it was not a surprise that Pohamba gave her a deputy minister position when he took over in 2005.
It is worth pointing out that although Ithana supported Haingura to become the SPWC secretary during the Rundu congress election five years ago, much has changed since then.
For instance, Ithana’s camp included those who blamed Haingura for failing to push the party top structures for a 50/50 representation which would have ensured that more women were elected to Parliament. Geingob’s people also supported the push which failed to materialise.
But Haingura managed to shrug off both sides, thanks to support from the neutrals.
Many would then ask how it was that Ithana topped the list but was not able to convince the congress to elect her candidate of choice.
Swapo’s voters, especially at congress, have a voting pattern that perplexes me continually.
When they target one person, they seem to forget another opponent.
In simple terms, the women were out to stop Karin Nghishidimbwa from becoming secretary of the SPWC and that is where their energy was concentrated. In the process they ‘just ticked’ the name of Ithana without realising that they were voting for her!
It has happened in the past.
When they targeted Ithana because she was a supporter of Geingob at an earlier congress, she was not even able to make it to the top 15 of the SPWC.
So Ithana being number one on the list could also only last until the next chance they get to vote. I think she knows this very well!

Ithana Has A Strategy For Geingob

IN July 2009 Swapo’s Central Committee took a resolution which, at first glance, looked like it was effectively paving the way for Hage Geingob to succeed President Hifikepunye Pohamba.

The rules and procedures passed with the resolution for the election of Swapo’s office bearers clearly defined the line of succession and stated that the party’s presidential candidate would come from the top four party leaders in order of seniority.
Party insiders, especially the youth wing who moved the proposal, argued that the documented line of succession would avoid what happened at the 2004 Swapo extraordinary congress where Pohamba went head-to-head with Hidipo Hamutenya, after Prime Minister Nahas Angula fell out in the first round.
The acrimony around the tussle for the position was so bad it led to Hamutenya ultimately leaving Swapo to form the Rally for Democracy and Progress.
The rules and procedures state that if the sitting President cannot be re-elected because of the two-term constraint, the ruling party’s vice president will be the automatic choice as presidential candidate.
Geingob, being the current vice-president of the ruling party, just needed to hold onto the position at the 2012 Swapo congress to be in line to contest the country’s presidency for the 2014 presidential elections.
The rules are also clear that in the case of the vice president not being available, the secretary general is next, followed by the deputy secretary general in case the SG cannot stand or declines.
The secret, however, was for Geingob to hold onto the position he currently occupies.
Those in the party’s inner circles regarded such ‘holding onto’ as ‘very easy’. He was just required to remain quiet - not campaigning and going about his work as Trade Minister while diligently attending party functions.
But those supporting Geingob must have got wind from somewhere or did not trust the party inner circle enough and started campaigning openly.
One of those is Kazenambo Kazenambo who made no secret of the fact that Geingob should be the next leader of the ruling party. In the process he ruffled a lot of feathers.
Geingob has not openly stated his ambition to take over when Pohamba steps down but it is no secret that he is after the position.
It is also a fact that, although there are others, Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana has emerged as his immediate challenger.
The party’s secretary general has repeatedly attempted to play the ‘if people want me’ and ‘it is not the right time’ card. That is at least in public, but she has been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes campaigning among the party wings.
We know that in Swapo, to progress at the electoral college, you need to hide your ambitions as much as possible in public circles.
That’s Ithana’s recipe for now, coupled with the fact that it is time for a first female President of Namibia.
But it should be on record that both Geingob and Ithana have gone all-out with their campaign and that both are not holding back in their attempt to be the presidential candidate of Swapo.
Meetings are held on a one-on-one basis with key people while the machinery is running at full steam to get the right people at section, branch and regional levels.
The aim is to have enough people in the right places when the party’s wings elect people who will attend the electoral college.
So when Ithana publicly states that ‘it is not the right time’ to talk about succession or that the people have not yet decided, this is merely a strategy and nothing else.
She has already informed the people that she is ready to stand. As has Geingob.
It will be interesting to see who else, if anyone, will join them in the race and if so, what strategy such a person will employ.

Team Namibia: What Type Of Players Do We Need?

SWAPO has banned a public debate on the succession issue but discussions over who should take over from President Hifikepunye Pohamba continue in public places such as football pitches, bars and shebeens, shopping malls and mahangu fields.

It is the way it should be!
We cannot allow the party, undoubtedly the main political grouping in the country, to keep the debate away from non-members. There is a likelihood that the elected leader will be the person to steer the country's boat for five years and decisions taken by such a person will affect us all and not only Swapo members.
It is against such background that I have decided to throw in my ten cents' worth by looking at collective (team) leadership for the next five years.
I suggest that, instead of looking at individuals, aka Hage Geingob, Marco Hausiku, Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana, Jerry Ekandjo, Utoni Nujoma or even Nahas Angula who has declared his intentions to retire, we look at the kind of team Swapo needs to re-energise itself and which will inspire Namibians.
In any case, and whatever people might think of former President Sam Nujoma's leadership style, he did have a team, although it included some questionable characters.
Nujoma was surrounded by the likes of Geingob as first Prime Minister, the calming influence of Pohamba and the late Hendrik Witbooi but also fiery ones like another departed comrade, Moses //Garoeb, while he even brought in someone like Otto Herrigel in the beginning to take care of the country's finances.
He would use someone like Pohamba to talk nicely to the white community but when things were getting tough, motor-mouth activist //Garoeb would go in to shout, threaten and make noise. That was when Nujoma chose to stay away only later to step in as a peacemaker!
I am not saying that Nujoma's team was brilliant. At times some characters in his team could best be described as political gangsters or their performances were an epic lesson in political buffoonery.
But there was still a sense of a team whose aim was, especially at the beginning, to create an environment of peace through national reconciliation, democracy and tranquility, as Nujoma would selectively point out from time to time.
Once Nujoma was about to move out, the team started falling apart and some, like Hidipo Hamutenya and Jesaya Nyamu, resigned to form their own political party. They claimed victimisation and lack of democracy within the party.
Swapo needs to think carefully about what it wants for the country now.
Do we want a team with extreme business skills and economic interest at heart; traditionalists who will only pander to the whims of the ruling party, or a group who will blend economic development of the country with what the majority of the voters wish for.
Do we want Hage Geingob, of late seen taking huge business delegations (including some questionable characters) on foreign trips, with the likes of Sven Thieme and Haddis Tilahun (both complete outsiders vis-a-vis Swapo leadership or Iivula-Ithana alongside Joseph Diescho, Boniface Mutumba and John Walters (to mention a few) or Abraham Iyambo leading Richard Kamwi, Saara Kugongelwa-Amadhila and Tom Alweendo. The last group are already in Cabinet but tend not to be associated with camps. They are mainly seen as go-getters.
In South Africa, Jacob Zuma came up with a new team and it seems to be working, albeit still with some minor problems.
What Namibia needs is a group of hardworking, prosperous and shrewd people (team) who love the country and its people. They should be able to inspire Namibians and re-energise Swapo, but not be seen as apparatchiks.
I think of a team with like-minded people. Currently we have a few sharp minds but they seem to operate in isolation.
There are bound to be squabbles and divisions if the Swapo traditionalists start thinking along those lines and I might be accused of promoting cliques or camps. I am not for playground politics of the most immature sort!
I just want Swapo to think about whether a debate around a team will not be appropriate at this moment.
The ball is in the party's court.

Pohamba’s Dilemma:Whether To Support Angula Or Geingob

OK, I’ve been paying a disproportionate amount of attention to Swapo and its internal politicking, but it’s not my fault.

Most of the debate within the opposition parties is incredibly boring.
In fact, in some, like the United Democratic Front or the National Unity Democratic Organisation (Nudo), you do not even hear about a debate for succession.
A child born in 1990 has known only one leader of the UDF and can be pardoned for thinking that the party is the property of Justus //Garoëb. And the same goes for Nudo where we have not seen a contest for the presidency for some time now.
At the DTA, Katuutire Kaura has had challengers but they struggle to come up with a better candidate to take over from him.
So succession and opposition are two symmetrically opposed ideas.
With Swapo, there continues to be a lively debate, not only among members but even outsiders, about positions within the party.
This is because many see the party – at least for now – as a vehicle for the political hopes of many as well as a key player in the delivery of services.
There is no way you can talk about bread-and-butter issues without mentioning Swapo at the moment.
That is also why Swapo should stop telling others to mind about their own affairs.
And the latest affairs in Swapo deal with the succession debate.
While President Hifikepunye Pohamba is guaranteed to serve as the party’s and country’s leader for the next four years, the party approved rules and procedures in 2009 already for the election of its office-bearers, clearly outlining the line of succession.
The procedures state that the presidential candidate will come from the top four party leaders in order of seniority. Another line in the document states that if the incumbent President cannot be re-elected because of the two-term constraint, the ruling party’s vice president will be the automatic choice as presidential candidate.
Such rules and procedures were introduced to avoid a repetition of the 2004 Swapo extraordinary congress.
During that congress Pohamba came up against Hidipo Hamutenya (who has since left the party and formed the Rally for Democracy and Progress) and Prime Minister Nahas Angula in a three-cornered contest.
So the key to ascendancy to the party presidency is to become the vice president of Swapo at next year’s congress and that is why some in the Swapo Party Youth League and other levels have started campaigning for debate.
In fact, they have not only started campaigning for debate but moves such as the calls to disband the youth wing’s national executive committee are directly linked to getting people who will support a certain candidate.
Soon similar calls for changes will emerge from within the Swapo Party Women’s League.
For now, Hage Geingob faces Prime Minister Nahas Angula and the party’s secretary general, Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana.
Both Geingob and Angula will have served the country for two terms as Prime Minister and both believe that the next step is to lead the country.
No one will admit it yet, but Angula’s machinery is well oiled with current and former Cabinet members as people who do the donkey-work (campaigning) and some of them have openly revealed that it is time for a Ndonga to take over.
Similarly, Geingob also has his backing with people such as Kazenambo Kazenambo who believes that Swapo is ready for a non-Oshiwambo-speaking leader. Geingob is a member of the minority Damara tribe.
With Angula having thrown his weight behind Pohamba after the fallout from the 2004 Swapo candidacy race, it will now be interesting to see who Pohamba will back next year.
Will he opt for Geingob, who is also favoured by former President Sam Nujoma, or will he throw his weight behind the man he handpicked as Prime Minister?
Should Pohamba’s decision be guided by favours from the 2004 congress or by who will best serve the nation as a leader and keep the ruling party intact?
That surely will create a mesmerising debate as discussions around the presidential race continue.

I’ve Got A Feeling It’s Over Between Ithana And Geingob

ONE of Gregory Abbott’s most well-known songs is entitled ‘I Got The Feelin’ (It’s Over)’ and he sings about the “funny feelin’” he had that his relationship with a girl was on the rocks.

I got the same impression over the past couple of days about the relationship (not love, but camaraderie) between Swapo secretary general Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana and the party’s vice president Hage Geingob.
The two were close allies for years and many regarded Ithana as a protegee of the former Prime Minister.
In fact, her support for Geingob was tested to the limits in 2002 when he refused to accept a lesser position of Local Government Minister and was frozen out by former President Sam Nujoma. Both were prominent figures in the party’s inner circles as Prime Minister and the country’s first female Attorney General respectively.
Geingob’s differences with Nujoma resulted in him plummeting in the party top structure and within a month he failed to be re-elected to the Politburo. The same congress also rejected Ithana to an extent that she was placed 23rd in the election for the Central Committee seats. Worst was when she failed to make it to the Swapo Party Women’s Council executive committee, of which she was an almost automatic choice for many years.
Reading the latest reports about the feud between Ithana and Sport Minister Kazenambo Kazenambo, you get the impression (and “funny feelin’” as Abbott put it) that she is on a very clear mission to become president of Swapo at all costs – even if it means pushing Geingob out of the way.
I know that Ithana has rejected claims that she was on a collision course with Kazenambo (better known as KK) and that she attempted to get him fired because of a remark he made about prostitution.
But I believe the news report that appeared in a weekly newspaper.
First, Swapo has the tendency to deny such sensitive stories very quickly if they are not 100 per cent true- which the party’s top structure did not do for days.
Secondly, the story was broken by a newspaper whose top structures are known to be close to both Geingob and Ithana. As a result, they would not have reported on the issue unless they were ‘dead sure’.
I believe Ithana’s attempt to get KK fired as a minister was not provoked by the statement about prostitution. It had all to do with his previous statement about wanting a non-Owambo Swapo president.
He is a known Geingob supporter. In fact he is one of the main proponents for his presidency.
And because there is the illusion that Ithana is very powerful in the party, she tried to push for KK’s demise at the top-four level.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she had not also tried to use other party instruments, such as the Youth League, Women’s League and Elders’ Council before attempting at it at the highest level.
The fact that KK didn’t even get a rebuke from the President tells it all.
Ithana has shown that she does not have the authority to dictate appointments or dismissals and that she is just another minister.
In fact, KK’s political resilience was boosted in the process.
But what is more harmful to Ithana is that she has not only disclosed her presidential ambitions very early (something that is not advisable in Swapo) but also possibly isolated herself in the process.
While already dealing with the undeclared ‘cold war’ with Jerry Ekandjo from the same Omusati-clique stable, Ithana has added more enemies by isolating herself from those who supported her through Geingob.
Ekandjo must be having a good laugh!
Ithana can also not expect any favour from the Ndonga group in the party, who want Nahas Angula as the party’s next president.
The end result is that her actions might lead to a complete realignment of allies and powers within the party while, in the broader scheme of things, I have the feelin’ it’s over between her and Geingob.

Dealing With The Symptoms Rather Than The Causes

ON February 9 1990 an open-air ceremony was held on the steps of the then colonial Tintenpalast administration building where all 72 members of the Constituent Assembly, led by its chairman, Hage Geingob, agreed on a new Constitution for Africa’s last colony.

“Now, therefore, we the people of Namibia accept and adopt this Constitution as the fundamental law of our sovereign and independent Republic,” Geingob said during that ceremony.

The next month, on March 21, the country’s first President, Sam Nujoma, said in his inaugural speech that Namibians will be “the masters of this vast land of our ancestors. The destiny of this country is now fully in our own hands”.

For the past 20 years we were, thus, supposed to be masters of our own destiny.

The “sick society” that some have referred to over the past two weeks following the barbaric killing of schoolgirl Magdalena Stoffels thus made me wonder where things have gone wrong and why we seem to have lost the moral fibre to the extent that we are constantly faced images of almost unsurpassed gore.

Is it a case of violence being used by men to achieve a certain purpose? And how effectively can we respond to such violence?

I am not qualified enough to come up with solutions to the questions I have just posed.

However, I am ‘dead’ certain that calls for the death penalty are misdirected, even though we are hurt by the atrocities committed against our daughters, mothers and sisters.

We need something more radical than the death penalty, life imprisonment or an effective justice system. Somehow we must recover the values of life as a nation.

There is an age-old African proverb that says “it takes a village to raise a child”. That is, among others, what I am alluding to. It strikes at the heart of what we are experiencing today.

My issue today, however, is about the calls for the return of the death penalty and the cries by some of the angry mob who pleaded with the Police to hand over the suspect in the Stoffels case so that they could avenge her death by killing him in return.

Similar calls were made in February 2005 when two girls, Rachel Hamatundu (6) and Manuela Sofia Hoesemas (4) were raped and brutally murdered in Swakopmund and Windhoek within a space of a week.

The reaction included calls for the death penalty; cries that we have lost morals; are a hypocritical society which accommodates and protects criminals; and calls for a commission of inquiry into rape, murder and domestic violence.

Looking back on those two cases now, it appears that our response towards violence remains more muscle than power. Our blood reaches boiling point for a couple of days but then we revert to the same devil-may-care attitude with which we had tackled many other crucially important issues.

The only time we hear such concerns is when those who make careers and money out of citizens’ problems, air them once again! And I found it sickening to notice this week how some supposedly ‘concerned’ people tried to cash in through publicity stunts with the death of late Magdalena.

Some people wearing political parties’ colours at a clean-up operation, others distributing company T-shirts to promote themselves while some organised/attended a clean-up in a riverbed which had already been cleaned simply to get publicity.

One news report even said the young girl would be buried in a T-shirt of a certain entertainment group!

But back to the death penalty, which is a big ‘no’ for Namibia because for it to happen we must completely throw away the Constitution – our fundamental law as Geingob referred to it 20 years ago.

Chapter three of Namibia’s Constitution explicitly outlaws capital punishment as it states that that part of the fundamental human rights and freedoms cannot be amended.

Article 6 in that chapter states that the right to life shall be respected and protected – that is irrespective of whether we are dealing with a rapist or a murderer.

“No law may prescribe death as a competent sentence. No court or tribunal shall have the power to impose a sentence of death upon any person. No executions shall take place in Namibia,” the article states.

Thus for the death penalty to return, we must first completely get rid of our Constitution – something which is certainly not desirable or advisable right now.

Also, Namibia has signed several international treaties which enshrine the right to life and thus we are obligated to honour them.

Studies elsewhere have not been able to show that the death penalty can deter or reduce crime rates.

What it has shown is that the death penalty can lead to state-sponsored killing of innocent people. In countries like the United States, individuals who were on death row were released following an appeal which showed their innocence.

All I am saying is that (a) individuals are innocent until proven guilty and thus cannot be handed over for mob justice and (b) the death penalty is basically a cop-out from dealing with the root problems facing our society.

In fact, Members of Parliament in the National Council should be among those on the forefront, not only to protect the Namibian Constitution, but also help tackle the social decay which contributes to the senseless violence and the horrific killings.

I am as horrified by Magdalena’s untimely death as I was by the deaths of Rachel and Manuela, but killing the perpetrators, who by the way are our own sons and come from our midst, instead of dealing with the underlying social causes which result in these atrocities, is not the solution.

Imagine a Namibia without Nujoma

FORMER US politician Chester Bowles once said: “Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians.”

He was 100 per cent right. I want to take his quote a little bit further by stating that a Swapo without Sam Nujoma is too big and too important to be left to Swapo alone.
That is why I have decided to raise the question: If Nujoma dies tomorrow, who will be his successor as the main power broker in the party?
Who will succeed him as the one who holds the party together? Who steps into his shoes? Who will hold things together when Swapo is clouded by his absence? Where will the power come from? And will democratic centralism (which requires that the ruling party should provide direction to the government of the day) in Swapo still remain as powerful as it is now?
I don’t think people wish for Nujoma’s death, and that includes myself.
However, it is time we start thinking about a Swapo without him.
With the word ‘successor’, I do not mean someone who can just take over as a leader of the party. For that we already have President Hifikepunye Pohamba and others will follow in time.
I also don’t argue that Nujoma is irreplaceable. I am one of those who said more than six years ago that he had served the country brilliantly but that it was time for him to make way for new blood.
At that stage I also expressed concern about the perceived lack of ingrained culture of succession in the party.
I am thinking along the lines of a United National Independence Party in Zambia without Kenneth Kaunda or the Kenyan African National Union Party without Daniel arap Moi and the impact their absence had on the election performance of the two political parties.
That means I am looking towards someone who has the gravitas of a struggle background and also the necessary charisma to pull the party in a new direction and at the same time hold it together.
Of course, charisma alone is probably not sufficient to guarantee the survival of a party in the future.
Pohamba has since taken over but, for me, being a good person does not equate to effective leadership.
Judging from the open infighting between Swapo cadres, he also appears not to be able to stamp his authority.
You need more than just being a good person but then again we get some strongly Machiavellian characters. A good person also cannot wield that type of leadership.
The others include the cantankerous type who foments things like tribal wars and dictatorships.
For me Pohamba is best described as benign but I am not convinced that he has what it takes to hold things together in Swapo.
If one throws the net wider it will mean zooming in on the likes of Hage Geingob, Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana, Nahas Angula, Marco Hausiku, Jerry Ekandjo and possibly also Nujoma’s son Daniel Uutoni Nujoma.
Do any of them have the characteristics displayed by Nujoma who held the party together for more than 40 years or will it result in a power vacuum and intense power struggles?
Another key question will be: What does Nujoma have? What makes him tick? Who is therefore the ideal person to replace him?
This can be coupled with questions such as whether people will still be loyal to the Nujoma-less Swapo.
I am raising all these questions because Swapo needs to brainstorm them.
They cannot afford a vacuum as experience elsewhere has shown that such a situation can be exploited.
Perhaps one of the key issues is whether he mentored or coached someone to take over from him and indications are that he has not.
Is there still time for him to do succession planning even though he is no longer the leader of Swapo? Will such a move be seen as him interfering with or remote-controlling party structures?
I believe now is perhaps the time for the party to start interrogating the ‘Nujoma succession’ in order to avoid a power vacuum and the subsequent exploitation of such a leadership lacuna.

* This column first appeared in The Namibian

Deliver Us From Vision 2030

A COLLEAGUE of mine can’t stand words such as ‘stakeholders’, ‘synergies’ and ‘dovetailing’. She has advised reporters to steer clear from those words in their stories. I wish she could do the same with Vision 2030 and people who haven’t read it but continue to week in and week out churn out references to it without contextualising them.

The centre of her target should be veteran politicians, many of whom have not even read the document they are often quoting, as well as some upcoming ones who think they know it all despite knowing nothing!

The Vision is the brainchild of former President Sam Nujoma and a noble idea indeed as it aims to put the quality of life of all Namibians on a par with people in the developed world by 2030.

The blueprint for the country’s long-term national development policy was officially launched six years ago although Nujoma addressed Cabinet on the need to plan for the country’s future already way back in 1998. So it took six years to come up with it.

Trade Minister Hage Geingob recently described Vision 2030 as “a tall order” while the former Director General of the National Planning Commission Peter Katjavivi said “vision is one thing; the process to get there is another thing”.

I agree with both.

That is why I don’t take many people who use the phrase ‘Vision 2030’ seriously.

Many of them can hardly explain the reality, but opt for the cheap way out by making trite statements like “we need to work towards Vision 2030”. They trot them out whenever they want to avoid thinking and it can mean whatever the user wants it to mean!

I actually believe that many use Vision 2030 to make claims about Government achievements that are not true - like that we are on target with things such as information and communication technology goals.

Will Rogers, a United States humorist and showman who died 75 years ago, once said: “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the Government and report the facts.”

I fall in the same category today. This is no joke.

I believe that many speakers do not use Vision 2030 in their speeches to explain a reality, but to avoid doing so.

You turn up at a blanket donation ceremony to impoverished people in Okahandja Park or Ombili and politicians talk about Vision 2030 without even explaining how it links to the occasion. They leave many at grassroots misty-eyed over those big words but get away with blue murder in the process.

As Andre du Pisani said a few years back, Vision 2030 requires “much hard thinking, much doing and much dialogue”.

A quick check on the Vision and targets has revealed the following, among others:

* to significantly reduce unemployment to less than five per cent of the workforce – “close to a condition of full employment”;

* have a social security support guarantee with an acceptable quality of life for the disadvantaged (think Basic Income Grant);

* have a strong and active opposition;

* media that are mature, investigative and free;

* have independent ‘watchdog’ institutions to monitor Government, private sector and civil society organisations and agencies;

* new towns throughout the country, so that the big cities are no longer congested;

* IT training to start at the pre-primary level!;

* There will be a functioning University of Applied Science and Technology by 2005;

* 50 per cent of all Namibian students will study at the University of Applied Science in the areas of electrical and electronic engineering, and computer science;

* by 2005 selected governmental institutions will provide e-business services to the Namibian public and to foreign investors;

* from 2004 win at least four gold medals in international competitions in boxing, cycling, swimming and marathon;

* win at least three gold medals at the Summer Olympic Games of 2004; and

* equip all schools with furniture, water and electricity by 2006.

However, at the current rate land redistribution is going, it will take 40 years before half of Namibia’s commercial farmland will be turned over to black people.

To their credit those who developed Vision 2030 said it is a process and not a plan.

However, a process needs a clear national strategy to give guidance and direction and also people who will be mindful of what they say about the Vision.

The way in which politicians subject citizens to the parroting around Vision 2030, currently amounts to nothing less than verbal abuse.

If there is such thing as the Vision 2030 zeitgeist, it must be now (2010). Two decades should have been enough time to change things around. Or else we will be confined to the dustbin of history.

If not the case, please deliver us from Vision 2030.

* This article first appeared in The Namibian

Swapo battle shifts into another gear

Swapo battle shifts into another gear


THE appointment of Utoni Nujoma as Namibia’s new Foreign Minister should not be seen as the high-water mark of his political ascendancy, nor just a run-of-the-mill promotion as some may think.

On the contrary, it is yet another shift in gear for Nujoma junior who has been waiting patiently in the wings to strike at the right time and ultimately become not only Swapo but also Namibia’s President.
Strikingly, not only Nujoma but several others must have walked away on Sunday night believing they had made progress in yet another round of the battle for supremacy in the ruling party and Namibian politics.
Also in this elite group are the likes of new Education Minister Abraham Iyambo and new Safety and Security Minister Nangolo Mbumba. Both have made steady progress in the party ranks and their chances of ending up in the uppermost office should also be seared into the nation’s consciousness.
The dark horse could be the gravel-voiced, outspoken and straight-talking Kazenambo Kazenambo, the new Minister of Youth and Sport.
By the way, these are all challengers for the presidential race after Hage Geingob has finished his one or two terms as well as the emergence of either the first female President in Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana or a Jerry Ekandjo, who is also waiting in the wings.
To all intents and purposes Geingob appears set to become the new Swapo leader, but his followers would be wise to play by the party rules and not frustrate the “power-that-be” in Swapo for the next two years.
By frustrate I mean the noise made by Kazenambo in a local weekly about whether it is time for a non-Owambo leader to become Swapo president.
While Kazenambo has every right to freedom of expression, Geingob needs no campaign team in Swapo to become the successor to Pohamba as things are now.
In July last year, the Swapo Central Committee effectively paved the way for Geingob when it approved draft rules and procedures for the election of its office bearers, clearly outlining the line of succession.
It states that the party’s presidential candidate will come from the top four party leaders in order of seniority. Another line in the document states that if the sitting President cannot be re-elected because of the two-term constraint, the ruling party’s vice president will be the automatic choice as presidential candidate.
It was introduced to avoid a repeat of the 2004 Swapo extraordinary congress when Pohamba had to vie with Hidipo Hamutenya, who has since left the party and formed the Rally for Democracy and Progress, and Prime Minister Nahas Angula, in a three-cornered contest.
A campaign for Geingob will only harden the hearts of those who have started accepting that the Swapo vice president is likely to become their new leader after Pohamba’s exit. It won’t do him any favours as ‘guided democracy’ has already been set in motion.
What it will certainly do is to antagonise certain quarters, widen already existing camps and cause an uncomradely kerfuffle which could easily reverberate throughout the party.
The end result is losing out on a leader who stands head and shoulders above many of his colleagues as a voice of reason.
Without wanting to sound like an oracle ensconced in some seat of better wisdom, I believe that the question on many minds should be whether Iyambo, Mbumba and Kazenambo will now build their ascendancy on a rock or on sand.
For Swapo are, in many respects, a difficult bunch to unbundle. The internal political dynamics can change very quickly. Just take Helmut Angula who ended up jobless after taking on the party’s youth league.
Those who may look askance at Utoni Nujoma’s ascendancy need only glance at other family dynasties around the world. An example is the Bush family in America and how the son returned a few years after the father stepped down as the president of one of the world’s biggest democracies.
Nujoma has an influential group of backers in Swapo, starting with his father, and the power of historical example can never be ruled out completely.
That is despite him trying by all means to be a politician in his own right, and attempting to move out of his father’s shadow.
The 2012 party congress thus becomes increasingly important as any serious contender for the higher echelons of Swapo needs to get into the top four positions and move up the ladder with time.
For now, and as sure as Amen follows a prayer, the political battle in Swapo has just stepped up another gear.

* This article first appeared in The Namibian