Tangeni Amupadhi
Namibia’s political stage was shaken this week by the formation of a new political organisation which threathens to cut into the power base of the ruling party.
Ben Ulenga, respected veteran of the governing South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo), broke ranks to form the Congress of Democrats and prepare for the general and presidential elections at the end of 1999.
Observers say the new organisation will provide the most serious challenge yet to Swapo’s stranglehold on power. Unlike existing opposition parties, Ulenga and his interim leadership are not tainted by collaboration with South Africa’s apartheid government.
Ulenga resigned last year as Namibia’s high commissioner to Britain in protest over increasing dictatorship in Swapo, which he said was borne out by Namibia’s involvement in the Congo war, and the changing of the Constitution which allows President Sam Nujoma to rule for 15 years rather than two five-year terms previously prescribed. Swapo, which commands more than two- thirds in Parliament, changed the Constitution last year.
Said Ulenga at the launch of the Congress of Democrats this week: “We’ve watched in alarm our sacred law, our Constitution, get re- tailored like a dress, to fit the expanding aspirations of individuals.”
Nujoma is accused of increasingly amassing power – by attempting to change the law so that he can appoint regional governors.
Hundreds of aspiring members, observers and political personalities packed the hall of a city hotel to hear what the new party had to offer. However, Ulenga only announced the intention to provide a “political vehicle” out of the “present political disillusionment”.
Ulenga, a former Swapo guerrilla, was captured by the South African Defence Force in 1974 after trying to shoot down a helicopter. He was incarcerated at Robben Island until 1985. Upon his release he became a trade union leader.
He said the policies of the party would be defined by members at a congress which would be held in the next few months. Leaders would be elected at the meeting.
Ulenga spoke of events over the past year as “symptoms of a deadly disease that afflicts our nation. By the look of things, self-enrichment and self-aggrandisement have apparently become virtues, while democratic accountability has turned into a vice.”
Swapo have put on a brave face saying they have no problem with the formation of the new party. However, the state’s spy network has admitted to “monitoring” the main players in the Congress of Democrats.