By Tulinane O Emvula
The announcement of the breakaway party, Rally for Democracy and Progress, was received with a colourful reaction as members of the society aired their different views on the implications of the new political party that involves some key members of the ruling Swapo party.
Many brushed off any significant impact that would pose a serious political threat to the continued dominance of Swapo as the ruling party. The concern of many seems to focus on the effect of social peace and therefore, national security.
A prevailing feeling is that the Namibian masses may have difficulty to give political space and credence to those that, in effect, bring into disrespect the party to which they owe the freedom and peace they are enjoying after the defeat of the cruel apartheid colonialism. The masses have great difficulty to understand and accept that those who abandon the national liberation hero were indeed genuine members of Swapo before or they were indeed the ones who were collaborating with the enemy all along but were shielded and secured by the ambiance of their positions within the ranks of Swapo leadership.
One Swapo member recalls an incident in Luanda when President Sam Nujoma made an evident mistake and he asked one of the now top leaders of RDP why, as a member of the Politburo, he could not advise the president correctly? To which he replied: “Let the bloody old man make his blunders!” (Encouraging blunders that could adversely affect the liberation struggle?) That reply caused the member to fear that there must be something seriously wrong within the top leadership of Swapo.
The current unfolding events vindicate that all along there was something unbecoming there.
The correct attitude would have been “I/we have advised the President but he did not listen.”
Another question arises as to whether the article that appeared in the Windhoek Advertiser on July 16, 2005 where the RDP leaders claimed that a certain tribe was made to provide leadership in Namibia has not established the essentially tribal thinking underpinning the philosophy of the RDP leaders. Looking at the line-up of the RDP leadership and its following does not provide comfort to those who uphold the Swapo ideology of the unity of the Namibian people regardless of their origins.
Tribalism affronts the Namibian people. The easy peace on the Namibian streets is the reflection of the success of the Swapo Party wise polices of genuine unity and national reconciliation that the RDP seems to threaten now with its apparent tribal and planned subversive tendencies.
Members of the society are still debating among themselves as they try to unravel the ongoing political saga.
You hear them saying if what is claimed that ideas were smothered within Swapo, how cowardice were these guys not to have caused a stir within the Party on those ideas if they are so many, intelligent and powerful. Was the one Sam able to drag them into doing all the good and bad things that Swapo experienced throughout the liberation struggle and the initial years of independence?
Then Thank God that Sam was there to cause independence and freedom to come single-handedly! If their ideas were not accepted by Sam and yet we got independence then those ideas might not have been good at all.
Coming to making RDP the political home of the non-voters and others one may be reminded of the strategy of the Europeans, particularly the Germans in the 1980s that if you cannot beat Swapo join them and neutralise them from within.
Are the Namibians now experiencing the fruition of that strategy? Will that then, be to the advantage of the broad masses of the Namibian people?
Questions are free to be asked. Will there be answers to them?
Why is Sam (Nujoma) the target of those who want to do their things in Namibia? Why concentrating on what he did badly and obliterate the good he did? The problems within Swapo would better have been shed abroad and cause a row within it and then on those open and clear facts, a political party could be established. Revolutions are not planned. They arise from the people and then leaders assume positions to interpret their aspirations.
Others believe that the promises of anything good cannot be true if the same persons were not doing those things over the many years while they occupied well placed positions in Swapo. Were they then saboteurs? If so who were they for all along?
There are many examples of intellectuals who broke from Swapo because of the “uneducated leadership”. They went on to establish a string of their political parties.
They even established a history of abandoning their members as other ideas made them to form new parties.
They ran from the uneducated and continued to run up to now. Nature has it that when one starts something you would own it up. When one starts running s/he will continue running.
In their analysis of the situation Namibians are well advised to remember that the struggle is far from being over. United Africa is the only assurance of the African people to free themselves from foreign domination. So no letting up until that goal is achieved.
Nothing much has in fact changed in the Namibian equation of things as far as the balance of forces is concerned.
Only open verbal abuse has subsided or is being done less loudly. On the whole things continue to be as they were and no one in his right mind can ignore the fact that the Swapo Party ideology must be pursued to ensure that Namibia remains a shining star on the African continent and in the world at large. We are doing well.
The peace must not be disturbed.
All involved in politics must take the Namibian peace established by the Swapo Party as sacred.
The SWAPO Youth League on the whole seems to have taken a very mature position in that they accept people are free to create or belong to political parties of their choice, yet they take exception to people with a leaning to RDP continuing to remain in Swapo possibly to carry out acts of sabotage from within. Hence, they call for the verification of genuine membership by reaffirming membership by an oath before the upcoming congress.
Practically nothing is wrong with that.
It would also be entirely correct for the Swapo Party to insist that all those who are in any employment position on the card of Swapo membership should be striped of such positions and, however, be allowed to re-apply and be re-appointed on personal basis. That is entirely fair. The qualification would now become the only criteria, not political vetting. Certainly it would be unfair for the ruling party to house individual people who would work against its interests in disguise. Transparency must prevail, yet no political victimisation on the ground of political difference should be allowed.
More exposed members of society bemoan the fact that such fellows with seemingly broad understanding could indeed risk to drag Namibia down the road of the known African tragedy. Will Namibia become just another African country to sink into the morass of selfish, short-sighted and tribalistic leadership?
Shall Namibians risk annulling something so beautiful, established in the short seventeen years of independence?
Our peace is so beautiful and God-given, and the God that has so well directed the Namibian liberation struggle to its marvellous conclusion will also accomplish His will for generations to come.
The Lord says to His Namibian children that “no weapon fashioned against them shall prosper!”
Is the pie in the sky so enticing? No evil shall prosper!