Mayor Job Amupanda said the City of Windhoek should resist becoming Hacienda Nápoles, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s luxurious estate.
The Affirmative Repositioning (AR) movement leader explained that before he joined the city council, he was made aware of an ‘Escobar’ who captured particular councillors using money to reverse council decisions to protect profit.
“During the November 2020 elections, his emissaries approached me for the purpose of delivering me to him for a meeting. This did not take place on account of revolutionary morality,” said Amupanda.
The mayor was addressing the strategic review of the city at a Windhoek hotel.
Escobar sold fake diplomas, stole and sold tombstones and cars to smugglers before becoming a notorious drug kingpin who captured the Liberal Party and ended up in the Colombian parliament through his “plata o plombo” (silver or lead) bribe or bullet strategy.
His plan was to reverse and renounce the extradition treaty with the United States of America signed in 1979.
Amupanda asked decision makers, both executive and administrative, what they can do to ensure transparency, fairness and social justice.
“Through strategic planning interventions, we must resist the conversion, via the sub-text of our city into a Hacienda Nápoles,” he cautioned.
The mayor added that he is prepared to become an ordinary member of the council for that resistance.
He further stated that corporate scorecards, key performance areas, key performance indicators and targets will be meaningless if the powerholders and decision makers do not take decisions guided by integrity and the oath of office but rather, by Escobars.