A campaign by a hard line faction in Namibia’s ruling South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo) to return former president Sam Nujoma to power has taken a hit in the past week as the faction has found itself isolated from the rest of the party and accused of self-promotion.
Swapo’s annual congress, which will decide whether Nujoma will again become the party’s president, has been postponed for four months, to the end of November. It was widely anticipated that it could take place as soon as July or August this year.
An early congress would have favoured the hard line Nujoma camp, which has become increasingly intolerant of criticism of the 78 year old. His unwillingness to clear the decks for his successor, President Hifikepunye Pohamba, is fast becoming one of the most divisive issues in Namibian politics.
Swapo’s constitution holds that the party president should be the presidential candidate, so Nujoma would be fielded as Swapo’s presidential candidate in 2009.
Members of the pro-Nujoma faction — which is led by Deputy Justice Minister Uutoni Nujoma, Nujoma’s eldest son, and Lands Minister Jerry Ekandjo — staged a ”morality debate” in Parliament last month. They attacked the media and demanded that all national radio call-in programmes be shut down for allowing ”insults” against Nujoma to be broadcast.
At the same time, three of Swapo’s regional branches ”spontaneously” declared themselves in favour of retaining Nujoma as party president. This was widely interpreted as an invitation to other regions to follow suit in order to ensure that Nujoma was elected by popular acclaim, rather than by the ballot at the party congress.
”There is a problem in Swapo: whenever someone stands up and says ‘Nujoma for this or that’, no one dares speak out against it,” said Robben Island veteran Helao Shityuwete. His Windhoek East constituency has been challenging a unilateral decision by Nujoma to replace him and his branch colleagues with more pliant, pro-Nujoma members.
On Press Freedom Day (May 3), all radio call-in programmes were suddenly jerked off the air and replaced with tedious scripted shows. In a speech to mark the occasion, Information Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah attacked the media, calling them ”irresponsible”, and defended the canning of the talk shows ”as necessary … to protect democracy”.
But the move provoked outrage from the general public, especially rural-based fans of the radio shows, which have been dubbed ”the people’s Parliament”, who see them as their only means of airing grievances. Invitations from presenters to callers to comment on selected topics instead invoked a torrent of calls from people demanding that ”their radio show” be restored immediately.
Paul Helmuth, a Swapo veteran and regular contributor to the most popular call-in programme, The Chat Show, likened the move to the situation in Soviet Russia, where only official versions of the truth were tolerated. ”It turned 260million people into 260million puppets,” he said. ”Whose puppets are we to become. Who will pull our strings?”
Much of the reason for the sudden ban of the call-in programmes was that a small number of callers demanded that Nujoma explain his links with people such as United States diamond dealer Maurice Tempelsman, who is generally considered to be the not-so-hidden hand of the CIA in post-colonial Africa.
Pohamba, who is seen as a peacemaker in the ruling party, appeared to agree with Helmuth. Three days after the call-in programmes were taken off the air, they were quietly restored, allegedly on his direct instructions.
At the same time, the calls by Swapo’s regional organisations for Nujoma to be retained as party president petered out. Well placed political insiders suggested that those who led the initial ”election by acclaim” campaign found themselves reprimanded by Swapo’s politburo for political opportunism that could push Swapo’s fractured politics into an open split between the Nujoma camp and the rest of the party.
The fight for ultimate power, however, is far from over. In announcing the Swapo congress date, no mention was made of the leadership debate or Nujoma’s eventual political fate — a clear sign that factionalism still dominates the political agenda.
Phil ya Nangoloh, a prominent local human rights activist, said: ”Pohamba appears to be increasingly flexing his political muscle, but we are not out of the woods yet.”