WINDHOEK – The Rally for Democracy and Progress Youth League (RDPYL) leadership, which RDP congress nullified last month, is threatening to take the RDP to court if they are not restored as the legitimate leaders of the youth league. Sacked RDPYL leader Monica Nambelela made the threats in a letter addressed to RDP secretary general Mike Kavekotora, dated February 23 2015.
Nambelela and the entire RDPYL leadership elected at Keetmanshoop in 2013 were sacked on February 14 by the RDP’s central committee, in what it said is a solution to the long-standing dispute of the RDP youth league by complying with the 2013 High Court judgment in 2013.
A six-member interim committee was to be established to manage all RDPYL matters and to organise a convention to elect a new leadership by May this year.
However, Nambelela has rejected the dissolution of its leadership, and threatened to take its mother body to court if it fails to address all issues that led to the party’s youth wing being dissolved.
Nambelela said: “I will be left with no option but to seek possible relief in court if the party fails to retract its decision to dissolve the entire youth leadership, take action against deputy secretary Agnes Limbo for her role in the matter as well as to instruct the party’s legal affairs department to deal with the Keetmanshoop matters where the division within the youth league initially began.”
Kavekotora yesterday refused to comment on the letter but acknowledged receiving it. “For now that is work in progress and I can therefore not comment on it,” he said.
“The RDPYL is utterly disappointed in the manner the youth issue was handled. We have come to learn that the matter is being handled in a very biased manner by your office, clearly favouring the plaintiff’s side,” Nambelela told Kavekotora in the letter.
Referring to Limbo, Nambelela said: “We find it unprofessional, not only is it a conduct of nepotism for a senior leader to sign documents representing the first respondent (RDP), and yet vehemently denied remembering to have signed such documents. In any fairly run organization, this would amount to a fair hearing, whereby the senior leader is disciplined after being on record admitting to the entire NEC that she cannot remember what she was signing for.”
RDP’s central committee resolved to dissolve the party’s entire youth league leadership. A youth convention will be held before May to elect a new leadership.
The party’s national executive committee has since established an interim committee to manage the RDP youth league matters and to prepare a youth league convention before May.
“We have a youth league that is currently very angry and the leadership is seemingly not interested to solve the problems of the youth. We must remember that the youth league is the backbone of the party therefore it is crucial that we have a functional youth league,” a senior figure in the party said.
The source blamed party elders for the division within the youth wing, saying: “The youth league is at a crossroads because some elders were using the youth for their own agenda.”
The source said apart from the youth wing, RDP is full of camps and extremely divided.
“With the May convention coming up to elect a new president, it is my hope that the person who is elected is one who can unite the party, and young and energetic,” said the source.
The source also called on the party’s central committee to consider electing a new leadership altogether at the May convention.
“Although the top four were democratically elected last year, it is my wish that the top four step down voluntarily; if they so wish, stand for re-election, because it will not help having a new president while the very same leaders who were partly to blame for the mess are still in their places,” the source said.