WINDHOEK- In an unprecedented turn of events, Swapo Party Youth League (SPYL) Secretary for Information, Publicity and Mobilisation, Job Amupanda, yesterday resigned from the league’s national executive committee, saying he will not sell his soul for political convenience.
The outspoken youth leader said he will invest his energies in seeing through his campaign for equitable access to land, as well as vigorously campaign for a convincing victory for Swapo and its presidential candidate, Dr Hage Geingob, in this month’s general elections.
By resigning from the SPYL National Executive Committee, Amupanda is effectively no longer the league’s secretary for information or its spokesperson.
SPYL secretary, Dr Elijah Ngurare confirmed that him and Amupanda met with Swapo Secretary-General, Nangolo Mbumba on Tuesday night – the first meeting since Amupanda and other youth activists demarcated a piece of land in the upmarket suburb of Klein Kuppe last weekend.
Amupanda’s campaign for equitable access to land is christened ‘Affirmative Repositioning’.
Ngurare did not divulge the content of discussion at that meeting, but Mbumba was quoted in the media this week saying that he has been seeking to speak to Amupanda since news of his “land grabbing” reached his [Mbumba’s] office.
Amupanda tendered his resignation to Ngurare yesterday, and copied all members of the Swapo National Executive Committee into the same letter.
In the letter, he stated that he could no longer stomach the conventional expectation that the youth’s role must be that of “tea boys clapping hands and singing songs”.
Without mentioning names, Amupanda said some people have found his character alien to the usual way of doing things whereby the youth are expected to ask no questions and “get rewarded for their mediocrity and for maintaining silence”.
“You have been very supportive Comrade Secretary and allowed me and other young people to own themselves and find compatibility between us, the organisation and the greater collective,” he said to Ngurare.
He said there are attempts to place the principle of self-ownership on auction, something the SPYL leader said he would not tolerate.
“To reduce me into a jacket, a consequence and extension of other people’s opinion. To reduce me into a silent zombie with no opinion but clap hands and sing songs.”
“It is being made clear that I must begin to look away even on matters of inconsistency. It is being made clear that I must appear indifferent even when those we represent are desperately looking for someone to stand up for them,” Amupanda said in his resignation letter.
“This, Comrade Secretary, I cannot allow.”
“I refuse to turn the other cheek to be slapped as would the biblical character we read when we were young.”
He said being a member of the national executive committee of the SPYL has become untenable; saying serving on that platform is different from what many of them thought it was.
“I will, however, remain a member of the SPYL Central Committee,” Amupanda, who ranked top of the central committee after the league’s last elective congress said.
“I have a well known bias towards the oppressed poor black people and critical of the elites and bourgeoisies. I am very biased, of course, the youth that I represent. Expectedly, those opposed to these principles, those who think our role must be tea boys clapping hands…” he said.
He vowed not to abort his activism on land, a role that has enjoyed the support of many young people inside and outside the rank and file of the ruling party Swapo.
Regarding his future, Amupanda wrote: “I will concentrate more on my activist’s campaigns and will spend more time in villages and rural communities that need help the most.”
“For the immediate, I will concentrate my efforts to Affirmative Repositioning, mobilising youth so that our leaders can realise how serious the issue of land is and that the solutions need to be found before it is too late.”
“Affirmative Repositioning is a cause that I am committed to see through to its logical conclusion.”
Ngurare yesterday confirmed that he received Amupanda’s resignation notice, but did not want to comment on it. “I have not applied my mind on the matter,” he said.