Zoom In - Free, Fair and Peaceful Elections

By Asser Ntinda

Last year’s National Assembly and Presidential elections were really taxing, impacting fatigue on those who had been running up and down throughout the country. But the taxing part aside, the elections also gave us some laughs and quips which will keep us laughing for many weeks to come.

Last year, Jesaya Nyamu, Secretary General of the Rally for Democracy and Progress, RDP, told an RDP meeting that RDP “has people everywhere, even at State House, the Police and the Intelligence.” He warned that such people should not be called “hibernators” because they were on a “mission.”

People in the intelligence community must have been shocked, their heads spinning, by such revelations, coming as they do from the mouth of one of the persons who planted them there. Only a fool will reveal the names of his spies in public like that. Whatever Nyamu wanted to achieve with such revelations, he alone knows. The fact that he clashed with his idol, Hidipo Hamutenya, over such revelations tells us more. Things must be horribly wrong in there. But as Cde Elijah Ngurare, SPYL Secretary, would say “God is great. We have been vindicated!”

And sure enough, a week before last year’s elections, one of the high profile hibernators working in one of the three institutions which Nyamu had referred to, walked into one of the departments in that institution and asked the junior staff members: “You should start packing now. The term of your government is coming to an end. Ours will take over. Start packing now.”

The shocked staff members looked on and said nothing then. But when the election results were announced officially, it was their time to mock this hibernator. He has now become a butt of many savage jokes and consoles himself with bible studies at home. At work, he is like a wet chicken.

What is more interesting about these things is that: Did these people, in their heart of hearts, really believe that RDP would win last year’s elections to display such optimism in public like that? If they did, what were the facts that created such optimism?

Long before the elections, RDP, proclaimed to all and sundry that it had a data base of 390 000 registered members, enough to upset SWAPO Party’s two-thirds majority. But only if the figure was real. It was not, fortunately. It was a fictitious data base. According to those in the know, people in villages were paid to register people. The more people one registered, there more the money one got.

Some converted a few here and there. When there were no more people to covert and register and the money was still there, some clever chaps simply went from one graveyard to another, registering all the dead ones, neatly copying correct dates of birth and cleverly faking identity documents.

RDP fell in a trap. Its data base started ballooning. When RDP went into those elections, it hoped that at least more than 350 000 people would vote for it. Hence the high optimism. But money cannot buy hearts and souls. Hidipo should know better. The N$100 million the former apartheid South Africa spent on opposition parties during the 1989 elections to defeat SWAPO in those elections was designed to buy the “hearts and minds” of the Namibian people.

In typical Nyamu style, former South African Foreign Minister, Pik Botha, spilled the beans and said his government had given N$100 million to “internal political parties in Namibia to campaign against SWAPO.” The “slush fund” scandal finally came into the open and ended up being heavily debated in the National Assembly.

Hidipo, then Minister of Information and Broadcasting, and a noted “hardliner,” made some of the greatest contributions during that debate, challenging opposition parties leaders to “square up with the Namibian people and tell the truth about the slush funds, how it was used and who got what ….” He went on to say that the Namibian people could not be bought. “….. they have principles, as you (opposition parties) have seen the outcome of the 1989 elections.”

He was right. Namibians could not then, just as they cannot now, be bought. But little did we also know that Hidipo would do exactly that the same thing in less than 20 years after independence. He is a slow learner. During the struggle for independence and shortly after independence, I thought Hidipo was a smart and shrewd politician. We just admired a fool. In just four years, from 2004 – 2007, Hidipo successfully took his rich political career to the meat grinder.

But as a man makes his bed, so, too, must he lie. As Hidipo successfully completes the selfdemolition of his political career, the ghost of Jonas Savimbi — Angola’s notorious and murderous rebel leader – must be smiling and squirming in its grave. Hidipo has now found new friends in notorious organizations like UNITA in Angola and Renamo in Mozambique. While Namibians were busy counting the election results last year, Hidipo flew out of the country and went to Europe for medical treatment. While there, he found time to attend and speak at a conference in Brussels, Belgium. The conference, organized by Konrad Adenaue Stiftung, was themed: “Elections in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Hidipo’s topic was “The Challenges to establish a new party.” He said all the craps you can imagine.

Guess who were some of his guests? David Simango, President of Movimento Democratico de Mozambique, MDC,; Isaias Simango, President of UNITA in Angola, Mangosuth Buthelezi, President of Inkatha Freedom Party, South Africa, Mosiua Lekota, President of the Congress of the People, COPE, South Africa and many others.

One of the papers at the conference opened like this: “2009 has not only been an important year in Europe but also in Southern Africa. Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa have organized their 4th elections since their democratic transition in early 90s. Against former liberation movements that still dominate the political and socio-economic sphere, traditional opposition parties find it difficult to gain space and influence. In response to widening discontent with their ruling parties, new political movements have emerged in Southern Africa, but how much support are they able to achieve?”

Konrad Adenaue Stiftung! Is that all you can bring to Africa? Europe is still sponsoring rebel movements which it sponsored and armed to fight against liberation movements during the struggle for independence. Hidipo has now joined the chorus of Africa’s former colonial masters. Sharing a platform with UNITA or Renamo is, by design, an exercise in self-amputation while the race is till on. It will not be long before he learns the bitter lesson. But when will Africa, too, learn? These NGOs have become subversive indeed.