Albertina Nakale
Windhoek
The former Swapo Party Youth League secretary, Dr Elijah Ngurare, jolted the party’s youth wing over weekend – ahead of the planned April 29 central committee meeting – with a notice to members that he has with immediate effect resumed the position of SPYL secretary and the chairmanship of the national executive committee and would in that capacity chair the youth wing’s central committee meeting next weekend.
The 46-year-old Ngurare then fired off another salvo to acting youth league secretary Veikko Nekundi, demanding that he vacate the office of the SPYL secretary.
Nekundi responded cordially that Ngurare should have directed his letter to the secretary general of Swapo, Nangolo Mbumba, whose office routinely deals with the issues Ngurare raises.
“I can confirm that I received the letters through a WhatsApp message. Anything else, I will respond to tomorrow,” Nekundi told New Era when contacted yesterday. Mbumba was not reachable for comment yesterday.
In an interview with the Namibia Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) over the weekend, Nekundi said the letter was directed to the wrong address. It was advisable – given the content of the letter – that it be communicated to the appropriate office, the Swapo Party secretary general’s office, which has dealt with the matter from the onset, he said.
Ngurare was expelled from Swapo in 2015, together with other SPYL leaders Job Amupanda, Dimbulukeni Nauyoma and George Kambala, following a series of internal disagreements and confrontations over issues of conduct and party policy.
The High Court later ordered their reinstatement into the party, having found that their expulsion was not done procedurally. The court, however, did not order them to be reinstated to any of the positions they had previously held.
Nekundi told NBC that the status quo within the youth league remains as before, regardless of the letters circulated by Ngurare.
He said SPYL members and the public “should not panic”, because of any confusion created by the former secretary.
“It remains a political cycle we are in and the status quo remains as it is,” Nekundi told NBC News.
When asked what prompted his decision to seek to return to the position of SPYL secretary only now, Ngurare told New Era: “I have a choice to assist uniting the youth league members and leaders, or I ignore them to continue being divided, as you observed recently when a central committee meeting ended in chaos and [was] thus postponed.”
It is for this reason, he says, he decided to return to his former office assist the youth league to ready themselves for the upcoming SPYL congress later this year.
“It’s my constitutional obligation and which I will not fail, especially for meetings that will be held during weekends. I will attend and chair those meetings. I call upon on all members and leaders of SPYL to individually and collectively strive for and towards genuine unity,” he said.