“Job has brought party into disrepute” so wrote Mandela Kapere on Friday, 21 November 2014 in the Namibian Sun newspaper.
His long essay, starved of clarity, style and substance, is a word-by-word recycling of Veikko Nekundi’s essay that hurriedly requested, in a Machiavellian fashion, for my suspension for taking up the land struggle on behalf of thousands of landless youth.
The essay launched desperate attacks on my character to which I must respond. I struggled responding for numerous reasons. I felt I must ignore, given intellectual kilometres between Mandela and myself. I have three university degrees while Mandela, a university dropout, only tested Grade 12.
I also felt I must only respond distinguishing myself as a youth that worked hard through sleepless nights to get here compared to a silver-spoon boy who had it easy and took shortcuts in life.
I thought of responding to dismiss Mandela as a sell-out careerist who loves cakes and is interested in the upward political mobility. I arrived at a conclusion that all these options will either be too personal leaving many without understanding the meaning and order of things concerning the motives and objectives of Mandela Kapere and his essay.
By conducting a critical analysis of Mandela’s politics, I concluded, readers will be equipped with a binoculars zooming into Mandela’s essay. It is as if Mahatma Gandhi had Mandela in mind when he developed his ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ as follows; “wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, science without humanity, knowledge without character, politics without principle, commerce without morality, worship without sacrifice.”
Mandela dropped out of university becoming a tourist in the Arab Maghreb thus having no qualification when he returned. Comrades felt pity for him that they urinated on democracy imposing him on youth as National Youth Council (NYC) Acting Secretary General. He still lacked legitimacy in the youth eyes.
SPYL Secretary Comrade Dr Ngurare also sympathized with the silver spoon-fed Kapere that in 2007 he was wheel-chaired unelected into the SPYL Central Committee.
Again in 2010, Dr Ngurare gave a directive that Kapere be legitimised to stand for NYC executive chairperson.
Shockingly, Mandela developed an exaggerated sense of self-importance mistaking mercy and pity with support. Before the 2012 SPYL congress, he travelled, with NYC resources, to regions and constituencies seeking nominations for SPYL secretary salivating to dethrone Comrade Dr Ngurare. No region nominated him.
During the congress he championed an agenda to prevent me and other radical youth from being elected into leadership. The delegates rejected his evil agenda. at 25, unemployed, without money and state resources, delegates elected me with the highest votes into the leadership. He did not stop there; he has been part of an agenda to remove the elected leadership together with some in the party leadership.
Following his failure to topple the democratic leadership, he now focused on 2017 telling his circles that I am the only obstacle to his upward mobility of becoming SPYL secretary. His 21 November 2014 essay is to be viewed from that context.
Under Mandela, the NYC has been reduced to a choir singing love songs, admired by those in power. A multimillion-dollar organisation, NYC’s visibility in most regions is like availability of clean water at Efinde Village. Mandela’s more than N$30 000 salary is classical wealth without work and pleasure, without conscience. He failed, for more than eight years to build any single independent NYC office in the 14 regions or 121 constituencies.
At most, he employed those like him, those without benefits of university sunshine. Those that disagree must conduct a skills audit at NYC.
For five years, he refused to appoint a director, as required by the Act, to run council operations. This is so to ensure that his nepotism and patronage continues undisturbed.
He misdirected millions of youth development money into a company without permission from the finance ministry as required by the Act. His term of office has expired but he is still in office; pleasure without conscience and politics without principle.
Doubling as National Youth Service (NYS) chairperson, he replaced NYS’s original objectives with capitalist objectives. With more than 200 000 youth helpless on the streets, with grades 10 and 12 offloading more than 50 000 youth per year, the NYS only recruits less than 600 youth per year. Those that pass through the eye of a needle are enslaved and exploited by making them security guards through Youth Security Service (Pty) Ltd. These at-risk-youth are paid peanuts if not subjected to cheap labour. Indeed, commerce without morality.
His essay was to win favours, get thanked by elders (linking Affirmative Repositioning to elections) and discredit our mass action, which was taking place the same day.
More than 6 000 brave youth ignored his politics without principle making history by submitting more than 14 000 land applications.
In their numbers they shouted, “We want land – down with puppets – down with sell-outs.” If youth are polled to choose between Mandela and musician Shikololo as in whose hands will they entrust their future, Shikololo may emerge from the polls as a black Moses. Those who disagree are to be reminded of what happened in Johannesburg on the 29th November 2014 at the congress of the Pan-African Youth Union (PYU) where African youth rejected Mandela’s bid to lead the youth as President of the PYU, instead electing a brave young woman Francine Furaha Muyumba from the DRC as president. African youth rejected wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, politics without principle and commerce without morality.
Mandela’s politics are characterised by the worst hypocrisy. Listen to his writing to me on 24 June 2012; “I am fond of your revolutionary zeal and bright-eyed approach to politics, it reminds me of the character of my late best friend Chris Hawala.” He went further to write; “be careful cadre, politics has many demons shrouded in the cloth of angels.” I am now to discover that he was referring to himself.
The forget-not pens of history will record him, for posterity; even elders he seeks to mislead for favours, acknowledge that the land issue needs addressing. If I were a teacher I would cry seeing my former learner defining ‘land clearing’ as ‘land grabbing.’ It is necessary to learn that revolutionary Nehale lyaMpingana, whose grave I visited weeks ago, took on his own brother King Kambonde kaMpingana for his receptiveness of whites who took our land. In a final analysis history absorbed the revolutionary King Nehale.
By Job Shipululo Amupanda