Ludwigsdorf’s Gloudina Street a hot property

BEING the mayor isn’t easy. Just ask long-serving City Father Mathew Shikongo, currently the referee in a street-naming tug of war between Swapo Secretary General and Justice Minister Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana and Zambian High Commissioner Mavis Muyunda.

The street in question is Gloudina Street in one of Windhoek’s poshest suburbs, Ludwigsdorf.Iivula-Ithana wants the street to be renamed after her late husband, Joseph Mukwayu Ithana, because of his liberation struggle credentials and because he was living there at the time of his death in May 2008.Muyunda wants the same street renamed after Dr Kenneth Kaunda, the first president of Zambia. The City has already honoured Kaunda by renaming a street in Katutura after him, but the High Commissioner feels that it is not good enough.Currently, Dr Kenneth Kaunda Street is in Freedom Square near the Katutura Court. The street sign shares a corner with Mungunda Street, named after Anna Kakurukaze Mungunda, one of the only two women buried at Heroes’ Acre for her role in the Old Location resistance.The political and diplomatic hot potato landed in Shikongo’s lap after the City’s Street and Place Naming Committee, according to the latest City Council agenda, ‘could not reach consensus’ on whose name Gloudina Street had written all over it.The Management Committee of the City Council therefore decided at a special meeting on April 6 that Shikongo, ‘as a matter of urgency, engage in consultations with the relevant applicants’ on the issue.The matter has been dragging on since June 16 last year, when Iivula-Ithana wrote to ‘Dear Comrade Mayor’, saying that she regards her late husband as one of the ‘unsung heroes’ of the liberation struggle. She named all the positions he held in Swapo during his years in exile, and referred to the ‘vital role’ he played in shaping the public service as the first chairman of the Public Service Commission after independence.’On his return from exile he refused to resettle in Katutura as many of his childhood friends would have loved him to do,’ Iivula-Ithana wrote.’His principle was ‘he did not participate in the bitter struggle just for Katutura, he fought for Namibia and hence he could settle wherever he wanted’,’ she wrote.Iivula-Ithana said in her letter that, on the basis of this conviction, ‘Ithana and his family settled at Ludwigsdorf, a suburb considered luxurious in Windhoek, until the time of his passing on, on May 5 2008’.The Zambian High Commissioner started lobbying for Gloudina Street last September.On September 10, Muyunda wrote to Shikongo to ‘humbly make a compassionate and earnest appeal to the [City] Council to consider redirecting the ‘Kenneth Kaunda’ small close in Katutura with an Avenue or Street’. Motivating her request, Muyunda said this would ‘represent the unequivocal liberation contribution made by our First President and Chairman of the Frontline States during the liberation struggle’.She followed up this letter with another one on February 11. This time it was hand-delivered to then Swapo councillor Linea Shaetonhodi as chairman of the Street and Place Naming Committee, and a copy was delivered to Shikongo.In it, Muyunda made it clear that Dr Kenneth Kaunda’s name does not belong with the man in the street. She asked Council to once again consider allocating ‘Dr Kenneth Kaunda with an appropriate Street as opposed to a small close for his liberation contribution to the region and humanity in general’.This time Muyunda also did a bit of name-dropping to strengthen her case.’It is my humble request on behalf on my government and the Zambian people that the request for Gloudina Street in Ludwigsdorf will be considered,’ she wrote.At their monthly meeting last week, the City Council said that Shikongo was still consulting Iivula-Ithana and Muyunda about the renaming. They referred the issue back to the Management Committee.At the same meeting, the Council decided to rename Körner Street as Marien Ngouabi Street in memory of the assassinated former Congolese president. They also decided to rename Gevers Street and Mission Road as Dr Kwame Nkrumah Street, after Ghana’s first president.jo-mare@namibian.com.na