By Emma Kakololo
New Era recently interviewed former president of the ruling party Swapo, Dr Sam Nujoma.
Nujoma, who has been Swapo Party president from its founding in 1960, talked at length about the achievements of the party and the new leadership elected at the just ended fourth Party Congress last Friday.
Nujoma did not stand for re-election, paving the way for the party’s vice-president, Hifikepunye Pohamba, the Head of State since 2005, to take over as Swapo Party president.
New Era: What are your plans for the future now that you are no longer the president of Swapo?
Nujoma: I am still a member of Swapo Party and I can always be directed by the president of Swapo Party Comrade Hifikepunye Pohamba and the rest of the leadership to undertake any mission on behalf of the party or do any other concrete work.
I am most specifically keen and interested on continuing with participation in voluntary work, mobilising the youth so that we instill in the minds of the youth that, if we would want development in our country, we must actively participate, but not necessarily think all the time that, “oh, I must work for the Government”, although Government definitely needs people, because where there are no people there can be no government.
Therefore, the youth particularly who are the future leaders of the country have to participate in voluntary work in order to ensure that we create infrastructure in the country because to do away with poverty, disease and ignorance, this demands us to tighten our belts and work harder in order to ensure that there are tarred roads throughout the country.
Right now after independence, we have established main highways like the Trans-Kalahari Highway which leads the Republic of Namibia to Botswana and the Gauteng Province of South Africa, where Pretoria and Johannesburg are the life and the heart of South Africa’s economy, all the way up to Mpumalanga to Maputo. Thus, we have established the Walvis Bay-Maputo corridor.
This road is quite busy throughout. Even Botswana now exports and imports its goods through the Port of Walvis Bay since it is shorter than going through Cape Town.
Also, the most important one is the Trans-Caprivi Highway which leads the Republic of Namibia to Zimbabwe to Zambia with the bridge over the Zambezi River that also puts Namibia in a position to import and export goods to and from Lubumbashi, former Katanga Province of DRC. So we have also concluded the Namib, Torra, Lubumbashi corridors.
This did not exist before independence. Now we have also constructed the extension of the railway line from Tsumeb to Oshikango; we have concluded already 246 kilometres from Tsumeb to Ondangwa and we are only left with 55 kilometres from Ondangwa to Oshikango to our border with Angola.
The idea is also to meet the Angolan Namibian railway system through the Port of Walvis Bay to Lubango, Matara, Kassinga, Shamutete, Ondjiva, Namakunde and Oshikango. The idea is also to conclude the Walvis Bay-Namib corridors to strengthen economic links within the SADC region and beyond.
New Era: Your life and Swapo have always been tied together. Now you’re leaving the leadership of Swapo, something that you have been doing for so long, would you miss it? The personal sentiments you attach to Swapo, do you feel you have lost something?
Nujoma: No, I have not lost something. I am still a full member of Swapo and I can be given any task to carry out by the party leadership and I would certainly do so without any hesitation.
It is important for young people to come along while we are still alive, so that we gather them from the rear. Normally in a war, we say retreat to the rear.
That means you don’t run away, you are ready at the rear to make sure that the party is moving in the right direction, that the Party constitution is followed and that the party programme and its economic manifesto are implemented.
During this congress, we discussed thoroughly the economic development of this country and mapped out new strategies of economic development, of course taking into account global warming which causes disasters.
We looked into the implementation of distillation of seawater if the drought continues as it is. It has already started this year, we don’t have good rain in Namibia at all, so we have to look into the distillation of water.
Luckily, we have uranium in abundance in this country, but we need to educate and train our youth in the fields that are relevant to what we have in Namibia, for example we need engineers.
Luckily the University of Namibia (Unam) decided to establish the faculty of engineering at Ongwediva where the university has been donated land by the Town Council of Ongwediva.
So we need land survey engineers, electric and electronic engineers, we need geologists, we need agriculturists, and we need doctors. Unam will also establish the faculty of medicine soon.
These are the most important things we need to concentrate on, education and scientific research, in order to make sure that we compete with the rest of the international communities.
New Era: Are you leaving Swapo in a strong position?
Nujoma: Yes, Swapo certainly is in a strong position. You saw that during the congress people were happy at least that even for the first time they elected the secretary general from female comrades.
Thus, Swapo has implemented its policy on gender equality. We hope at the next congress we will have 50/50 men and women from all the regions of the country in order to ensure economic development because if you talk about economic development it needs everybody, including women.
Women being the majority in the country, they should definitely be given the opportunity to equally participate in the economic development of our country. We have embarked upon the second phase of the struggle for economic independence. We have just concluded the first phase for the struggle for freedom and independence.
The political freedom will be meaningless if it is not accompanied by economic independence. That is why the Swapo Party adopted gender equality.
New Era: What is your assessment of President Hifikepunye Pohamba and others that are going to run the party and Government? Would they be able to run the party and country effectively?
Nujoma: Most certainly. During my administration, we ran together with the same colleagues. They were the first ministers in my Government and they are the old cadres in the party. We have been together in exile fighting together until we overthrew the Apartheid regime. So these are dedicated and committed cadres.
They would certainly run the government effectively as we did in the beginning. As we have already now established some of the economic infrastructures such as roads, rail, harbours.
We have deepened Walvis Bay, which now attracts many SADC countries that are now exporting and importing their products through the coast of Walvis Bay and Lǟ