This week, New Era’s Edward Mumbuu sat down with Landless People’s Movement leader Bernadus Swartbooi, who pulled no punches when he confronted questions on the party’s achievements, internal chaos, ties to his former political home, how the country’s resources can benefit its citizen and coalition politics as the country gears towards the 2024 showdown:
New Era (NE): What is your party’s one big achievement since formation?
Bernadus Swartbooi (BS): [We have brought] a voice, an alternative that this country never had. If you follow our inputs in the National Council and National Assembly; if you follow the trajectory of the work we do at local and regional councils, that voice, which is an alternative in terms of the legal framework, the policy framework that we want, the progamic framework we want, the projects that we want for the people – that’s the big difference.
NE: The word ‘land’ in your name must have meaning.
BS: The land question is fundamental in this continent, and it has to do with our economic strength as a continent. And the continued neocolonial approach that the Western world had colonised us yesteryear still has in this continent. In other words, if you want to have a radical approach on the land question, you already know that your country will be destabilised, governments will be removed; therefore, most governments have opted to have an incremental approach. So, it’s important that we understand the context of what happened in Zimbabwe and why the West is still sanctioning them [or] why South African land reform – not only as a government policy but also as a measure of the class that owns land has strength versus government.
Very little has changed in the land question. This year, we are told that the Land Bill will be brought by the minister of land and agriculture for Parliament to debate. Hopefully [that’s] a new approach to the land question. The land question is at least three-legged for us. It’s land for commercial purposes [agriculture], land for urban settlement and land for mineral access. The one of mineral access is the least talked about. The one that is connected actually to ancestral land. If you look at B2Gold or Karibib gold mines, these mines are on ancestral lands of specific communities but they are not even paying royalties to these communities. So, it is a much more fundamental question than giving land and settling a person. Then the second question is that of somebody getting access to agricultural land to farm productively on that land with the necessary support.
On that score, this government has not made a single transformative decision since we started talking about the issue, or since the start of the resettlement programme or since the advent of proposals as a result of the land conference apparently included in the Bill. Nothing has really moved in terms of the land question. That’s why in the areas where we are governing, starting this weekend, we are handing over urban land to young people even if that land is unserviced in places like Gibeon, Mariental and Keetmanshoop.
We are handing over unserviced land – even if they do not have money to build their own houses. We are giving people land. In Mariental, we are giving people 700 plots [this weekend]. In Gibeon, about 200. In Keetmanshoop, around 360 pieces of land for young people, for working women or single mothers and those who have been on waiting lists since 2000, who never got land because of policies that are prohibitive. For instance, in this country, you can’t give urban land if it has not been serviced. How long will it take to get it serviced? How long will people have to wait? We are saying we are not going to wait for that. We will give you a piece of land; you will get a piece of paper – that land will belong to you. You will have security [of tenure] – and once you have the necessary resources, you can start building. Once the State resources have necessary resources, they will bring the services. When was the last time that residents in Keetmanshoop got a piece of land? Not even when I was [//Kharas] governor. That’s how bad the situation was.
NE: We are heading to another election. Will LPM have a congress to determine its leadership and who the presidential candidate will be?
BS: Our second people’s assembly will be held in December this year, which will mark the 5th anniversary of the LPM as an alternative political party in this country. But it will be preceded by a policy conference where we want to interrogate what our position will be in terms of education, healthcare, fourth industrial revolution, agriculture and so on. We will not have answers about every area of policy in this country. But we want to have a set of basic policies that inform the core areas in which this country needs to pivot forward and transition to a higher level of economic and social development output.
Subsequent to the policy conference, we will then have the people’s assembly where we will make a determination whether the founding period will still have to continue. We are still in the founding phase. The provision is when we are convinced all structures are put in place and that there are areas where the party still needs to be strengthened and consolidated. That can only be done in a founding phase; therefore, we are careful to abruptly end a founding phase of an important mass-based movement as LPM and rush to think we are solid at every level. The likelihood is that the founding phase will be extended for five more years.
NE: There’s this perception that in LPM, when you disagree with Swartbooi or your second-in-command, Henny Seibeb, you must go. It’s either the Swartbooi-way or the highway. Is this the case?
BS: On what scientific basis did you assess that even a perception exists? There will always be critics. If any of those critics articulate that they’ve disagreed with me, what is it that they’ve disagreed with me? Secondly, this party has grown so big that there are no elements of disagreements that are exclusively with Swartbooi. Never. Party discipline and cohesion is not a top-down thing. It’s a horizontal responsibility of all of us. I have to be disciplined as leader of the party. I have to submit myself to the will of the collective of the leadership of the party. So, those that peddle this thinking that I am particularly dictatorial as a person, they would keep on telling people that without telling you what they have done.
The party has organs and structures. It has two government authorities it leads in two regions. It has a multiplicity of local authorities that it is leading, and it has joint-voting agreements in other areas of the country. This party has experienced people that come from Swapo where the principle of democratic centralism was abused to the absolute that if you disagreed, you were ostracised. You were already systematically sidelined from association and assignments that you are made to feel you no longer belong here. That’s where we come from. When we started this political party, those types of political gimmicks are the types of things that we have deliberately said we don’t want in LPM.
NE: You have a history with Swapo. In the run-up to last year’s Swapo elective congress, you came out strongly, especially against the Prime Minister, Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila, pointing out her alleged incompetence and dodgy dealing. But there was little from you on the other candidates, Pohamba Shifeta or Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah. Do you have a soft spot for Nandi-Ndaitwah?
BS: You must understand what you do in a particular context. That’s the challenge that we have with some journalists in this country. They don’t apply an analysis that is scientifically, organically generated to appreciate why certain things are said. Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila went to the south, where we are governing, and said nothing is happening. That’s why we went after her. Recently, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah said something similar in Okaku. You could have seen yesterday [Tuesday’s National Assembly session] what we did with her in Parliament. So, we have no fundamental interest in who leads Swapo because there is nothing in that party. They are just a complete bunch of losers. People who have no ideas or plan for this country.
NE: This week, Job Amupanda announced his presidential aspirations.
BS: That’s his issue.
NE: Looking at the opposition, you already have Panduleni Itula, McHenry Venaani, Utjiua Muinjangue and others [as possible presidential candidates]. Then there’s yourself. But LPM has been on record that you’re not forming part of any [opposition] coalition. Do you still stand by that?
BS: Yes. We were in Windhoek with IPC. Amupanda was in coalition with IPC. Nothing moved. We went in there; everything we agreed with IPC, they were fighting us. We didn’t move. So, in some instances, there is good to be reported with those parties that are working together. In Gobabis, there is good progress between political parties, Nudo, LPM and the rates payer’s association. We are working well together there. In other areas, that is not the case. We will not, as a new political party, allow ourselves to start to accumulate the sense of others by going into coalition. We want to test ourselves, test our policies and the work that we have done and see the extent to which Namibians really appreciate and value our brand. That is what any reasonable political leader must do. You built something, and you want to see whether it can carry the luggage before you start to also carry other people’s luggage. Because, how will people now distinguish between who and what you stand for? In none of the discussions that we have had with these colleagues to work together, we have issues of ideology, and political programmes and economic programmes have come up. We have been the ones saying, what unifies us? The only thing is ‘we don’t want Swapo’. But that’s not enough. What, in terms of socio-economic development, ideological and economic practical posture should unify us, so that when things become difficult, those elements remain what we can remind each other about.
NE: What will decide the 2024 elections?
BS: What will change are two things. First, the people of Namibia. Are they not frustrated enough with seeing their children having done well in grade 12, having done well in obtaining university degrees but they are still in their living rooms, watching television? Are Namibians not frustrated with the lack of opportunities for SME development for agrarian reform? Are they not frustrated enough with the increasingly poorer and poorer public education sector, which actually in our view has collapsed under Swapo? Are they blind to the extent that they will still give Swapo a chance? That will determine the elections. Not manifestos of political parties unfortunately. Not the good English of leaders. The first thing is, are Namibians not ready for a new leadership in this country? That, the nation must answer for itself in 2024. Number two, if they are frustrated enough, if they are angry enough, righteously so, will they allow the electoral commission of Namibia to keep rigging elections in concert with Swapo? Will they allow it to happen? Those are the only two things.