Landless People’s Movement leader Bernadus Swartbooi has claimed finely-crafted manifestos will not decide the outcome of the 2024 general election.

As with every election, bread and butter issues play a significant role in the outcome. But in 2024, the anger and frustration with the socio-economic situation of Namibia’s people will prove to be deciding factor, the firebrand opposition leader reasons. “What will change are two things. First, the people of Namibia. Are they not objectively and subjectively 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,” the outspoken former deputy land reform minister said.

The Ministry of Higher Education, Technology and Innovation in 2021 said the country has over 67 000 unemployed graduates. Namibia’s youth unemployment is estimated by the United Nations to be 50%. According to the World Bank, 200 000 Namibians were pushed into poverty during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, with 1.6 million Namibians now living in poverty.

Swartbooi added: “Number two, if they are frustrated enough, if they are angry enough, righteously so, will they allow the rigging of elections? Will they allow it to happen? Those are the only two things.”

He clarified what appears to be a love-hate affair between him and his former political home, Swapo, particularly its vice president, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah.

 Swartbooi and Nandi-Ndaitwah, or NNN as she has come to be fondly known among Swapo’s fervent supporters,
alongside other contestants will square off in their individual quests for the highest office in the land next year.

That election is expected to be fierce, and will separate pretenders from real contenders. 

In an interview with New Era recently, Swartbooi demystified any ties linking him to Swapo or any of its leaders.

Until 2017, Swapo was his home.

However, things took a sour turn when he was asked to apologise to his then supremo, former land reform minister Utoni Nujoma, defying an instruction from their
appointing authority, President Hage Geingob.

Swartbooi called Nujoma out for allegedly running a skewed resettlement programme that left many land-dispossessed and displaced Namibians landless.

He refused to budge, walked away from Swapo, and gave up his National Assembly seat.  

He, alongside his current deputy, went on to formalise the LPM, making it a formidable force in the local political theatre. The LPM had until then been a civil society movement.

At the twilight of the Swapo congress last year, Swartbooi and the LPM came out guns blazing against Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila, whom they accused of corruption and incompetence.

Swartbooi and his orange army had little to say about the other two candidates, Nandi-Ndaitwah and environment
minister Pohamba Shifeta.

His actions were seen by Kuugongelwa-Amadhila’s supporters as an attempt to
sway votes away from their candidate. At the time, the LPM head said Kuugongelwa-Amadhila’s meteoric political rise was built on successive failures, and that she was handed everything on a silver platter.

“This life of extraordinary privilege and her dramatic rise from rags to riches made her cold, robotic, unable to politically appreciate the dynamics of leadership and social relations,” Swartbooi said then, adding that the prime minister was just an “incompetent, exaggerated project”.

The Office of the Prime Minister rubished the claims, saying “allegations of unethical conduct are devoid of any truth, and have not been substantiated with evidence.”

The lawyer-turned-politician denies any assertions linking him to Swapo. 

He said the LPM only went after the prime minister after she accused the party of collapsing governance in the south,
where the party has made significant strides. 

The LPM has made the south its political fiefdom by governing the two southern regional councils and a majority of local authorities.

“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 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 what we did with her in Parliament,” Swartbooi said. 

He added: “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.”

Coalition

While other leaders see a coalition between the opposition as the only way to topple the Swapo-led government, he has other ideas.

The LPM, he reiterated, cannot be part of a coalition where no ideal unites them, apart from their collective hate for Swapo.

“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 build something, and you want to see whether it can carry the luggage before you start to also carry other people’s luggage,” a candid Swartbooi said.

He buttressed: “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?”

On the recent announcement by Affirmative Repositioning (AR) leader Job Amupanda that he will contest for the presidency, Swartbooi had a short answer: “That’s his issue.” 

-emumbuu@nepc.com.na