Republican Party sets its sights on ‘lost white vote’

THE Republican Party emerged from its congress this weekend without a manifesto or a party list for the coming election.

Technical problems were apparently to blame for the party failing to launch its manifesto on Saturday afternoon.Henk Mudge, elected as party president again, closed the congress calling on the participants to ‘reach out to those who are being seriously discriminated against and I am specifically referring to the white section of our population’.Flanking Mudge in his fight for the ‘second-class citizens in their own country’, will be the RP’s newly elected office bearers: Zoom Walubita (Vice President), Clara Gowases (Chairperson), Tartisius Gaeseb (Vice Chairperson), Gert Jansen (Secretary General), Celeste Hoaos (Secretary General for Women) and Daniel Raimund (Secretary General for the Youth).Mudge targeted the ‘lost white vote’ from the outset.His entire opening speech on Friday, attended by fewer than 100 people, of whom two were white, was aimed at diffusing the uproar created by the recent walkout of several white executive committee members and the resignation of the so-called youth league, following allegations of financial and administrative mismanagement by Mudge. Referring to it as a ‘storm in a teacup’, Mudge used all seven pages of his written speech to recap the RP’s history and his role as party president and to attack former RP leaders like Daan Holtzhausen and Nico Smit.At the end of his speech Mudge called on the congress-goers to reach out to the white population. Speaking off the cuff, he dwelt quite a bit on the subject.He told the congress that white Namibians are ‘like boxers in a corner of a ring’ and that they have ‘suffered enough’.Most of his closing remarks on Saturday were also reserved for canvassing the white vote.’Since Independence the whites have been marginalised due to policies of Government with specific reference to affirmative action and land reform. Then I do not have to mention the derogatory statements by Swapo leaders against the whites,’ Mudge said.The effect of all this was that the whites became apathetic towards politics and retreated into their own little corner, ‘keeping themselves busy with their businesses and basically just trying to attract as little a attention and to stay out of trouble’, he said.’But they are not only disappointed but also becoming fed-up, because they are being treated and fell like second-class citizens in their own country.’Mudge called on the congress to reach out to the whites.’Visit them, speak to them, tell them that they can play a tremendous role to solve the challenges we face in Namibia,’ he said.