Pacon critics want board to step down

THE inactiveness of the Pan-African Centre of Namibia (Pacon) has caused a cyber war between Pacon chairman Victor Tonchi and an aide to Swapo secretary general Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana.

The dispute between Tonchi and Henny Seibeb, Iivula-Ithana’s personal assistant at the Swapo head office, recently got personal with Tonchi describing Seibeb as having been ‘poorly brought up’.The fight started late last month when Seibeb criticised Pacon for being inactive and not doing what the centre was initially set up to do.He went on to say that there was no platform for students to air their views or debate nation-building issues.’What will Tonchi and Maureen (Hinda) offer the new generation, what have they got to contribute after dis-serving Pacon for the past ten years?’ Seibeb wrote in an e-mail discussion forum.He went on to say that they demand political leaders to make room for the new generation of leaders, but the Pacon board was clinging onto the institution. Seibeb also accused the Pacon board of being greedy.After reading the circulated e-mail, Tonchi responded by saying that he could not recall any contribution to pan-Africanism made by Seibeb. He added that the was not going to sink to the level of Seibeb’s ‘childish utterances,’ since Seibeb had been making such allegations for two years now. ‘I wish there were still programmes of party schools … [you] need to be sent there for political education or maybe we should start an pan-Africanist ideological school taking cognisance that you have been poorly brought up. Or maybe I should send you to my village for a week and you will come back a well-grounded pan-Africanist,’ Tonchi wrote in the public e-mail platform.He added that Seibeb would not last a minute at Pacon, once he realised there was no money ‘to eat’. When approached for comment, Seibeb confirmed that he was in correspondence with Tonchi but that their discussions had become personal.’I just inquired about the status of Pacon as an institution,’ he said, adding that a group of Pan-Africanists got together to discuss the fact that Pacon was under-performing, while others felt it was privatised by a few people. Pan-Africanist Bankie Foster Bankie responded in Seibeb’s defence and wrote that he knew Seibeb as an ‘active Pan-Africanist since at least 2005’. Bankie added that Seibeb’s views on the state of Pacon were shared by many and added that Seibeb’s statements came out of frustration at the absence of a forum to push Pan-Africanism further forward. ‘It is high time that the board vacate. It is an embarrassment to all. Ten years is too long, even if the product was worthwhile, your insistence on staying sets a bad example of how we run our affairs,’ wrote Bankie. He added that Pacon had not yet convened a stakeholders’ meeting, as instructed by the Swapo Central Committee in December last year. Bankie went on to add that ‘there are no annual meetings, no public records. Pacon is run as a private entity.’Tonchi then hit back at Bankie, saying he did not know that Bankie worked for Seibeb. ‘You wouldn’t want your friends to know the efforts some of us made to provide you with a meagre resource that you so desperately needed despite the financial difficulties the organisation experienced,’ Tonchi slammed Bankie in the e-mail platform. Bankie refused to comment, stating that the discussion was private and confidential. The Swapo Party Youth League has also called for Pacon to be revamped. After the Swapo Central Committee decision in December last year that something should be done about the state of Pacon, the party’s secretary general, Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana, is said to have written a letter to Pacon calling on them to convene a stakeholders’ meeting, since the party was unhappy with the institution. During a media briefing in April, SPYL information secretary Clinton Swartbooi called for the Pacon board to step down. At the media briefing Swartbooi accused the board of only meeting when they wanted to claim money from the institution but doing nothing for its advancement or programmes. Swartbooi added that Government annually funded Pacon to the tune of N$250 000, but the institution remained dormant. He called for Government to withhold the funding until a Government-supervised annual general meeting was held. Tonchi could not be reached for comment, despite several calls to his mobile phone.

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