Rehoboth’s Dax accuses Ekandjo of hypocrisy

FORMER Rehoboth mayor George Dax has hit back at media reports where Local Government Minister Jerry Ekandjo was quoted as backing Dax’s removal as mayor.

Last week Ekandjo said Dax’s removal was linked to the fact that last year the Rehoboth Town Council had ignored party directives not to change the leadership, a CoD councillor was appointed at the expense of a Swapo councillor and that the community was not happy with the way the council was run, leading to the party’s poor performance in last year’s national elections.
In a letter dated June 7, Dax accused Ekandjo of hypocrisy for his ‘selective condemnation’ of the demonstrations held by Dax’s supporters. He added that the Rehoboth Town Council had faced numerous demonstrations spearheaded by known Swapo leaders.
‘I can’t recall any senior member of the party who regards these [demonstrations] as wrong. Is this not hypocrisy at its best?’ he said in response to Ekandjo’s statement in The Namibian, where he was quoted as saying that those demonstrating for Dax’s reinstatement as mayor had no right to do so.
Despite saying that he was no longer interested in a position, Dax accused Ekandjo and some of the party leaders of trying to use political tactics used by the apartheid political powers.
He said before Independence those with political power always tried to divide and rule the people of the South.
‘We do observe the same tendency, some people might try to subject us to the same tactics to reach their eventual goal, but we have already opened our eyes for these dirty tactics,’ Dax said in his letter.
Dax also accused Ekandjo of blaming him for the fact that a Congress of Democrats councillor was elected to the Council’s management committee last year at the expense of a Swapo councillor.
He said the Swapo councillor in question had boycotted the management committee election since he was denied the mayor’s position, forcing the others to nominate the CoD councillor to be part of the management committee.
He went on to say the party failed to perform last year because the party leadership at the town had failed to campaign and campaign material piled up at the house of the district co-ordinator.
He also challenged Ekandjo to follow the legal route and prosecute councillors accused of corruption in a court of law.
Earlier this year, Ekandjo wrote to all Swapo-controlled local authorities that they must not change their council structures before this year’s local and regional elections. Swapo deputy secretary general Nangolo Mbumba also wrote a letter affirming Ekandjo’s directives.
The directives would have meant that Dax would keep his position as mayor but Ekandjo said he had made an exception of Rehoboth because the council had defied the same orders last year and the party only wanted to rectify that.
Dax supporters then took to the streets in protest against his removal as mayor of the town. But Ekandjo, who is also the Swapo national leader assigned to the town, said the demonstrators had no right to do so since the community was not happy with the way the council was run.