Swapo’s young lions roar on bread and peanut butter

THE economic empowerment of young Namibians remains the top priority of the ruling Swapo party’s youth wing and will be intensively pursued, one of its leaders said yesterday, while foreign companies closing down and leaving thousands of Namibians jobless is a sign of these enterprises’ unwillingness to sacrifice their financial reserves in tough times.

‘Last year we were faced with many challenges such as the unfair treatment of our youth at the textile factory Ramatex and (job axing) at Lev Leviev Diamonds with over 6 000 youths losing their jobs,’ Veikko Nekundi, economic secretary of the Swapo Party Youth League (SPYL), said yesterday.Just before Christmas, the Weatherly International copper-mining company announced its shutdown and the retrenchment of 634 employees. ‘We notice the absence of a mandatory policy for value addition on all Namibian raw materials. At every stage of the value-adding chain jobs are created because another service and product is required. To produce peanut butter for example, one needs a farmer and his employees, sorters, packers, drivers, shell removers, crushers, conveyors, administrative and technical staff is required in the production chain; marketers, packaging materials, seed producers, fertilisers, stabilisers and other ingredients are required,’ Nekundi said.The SPYL leader praised Trade and Industry Minster Hage Geingob, who is also the Swapo vice president, who announced last week that his Ministry would put up an infrastructure fund aimed at assisting the youth and rural poor. ‘We applaud the Minister’s announcement to set up a Competition Commission and a Namibian Bureau of Standards as an indication of our sovereignty and independence and that we are no longer a homeland of South Africa.’Comparing the SPYL to young lions, Nekundi said: ‘The young lions shall roar as we, the youth of today, need better education like access to structured and professionally run sport development activities and to have access to information communication technology.’The youth should have access to funds to own their own enterprises, and should have farms just like the current elite – not in ‘valueless areas like the so-called communal land’.’Instead of Government wasting millions of dollars on travels and related costs for Government officials like S&Ts and often unnecessary workshops and conferences, funds should be allocated to empower Namibia’s youth,’ he demanded.Taking a swipe at prominent Swapo cadres who left Swapo last year to join the new opposition party Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP), Nekundi said the intention of the infamous ‘Nyamu notes’ to allegedly sabotage the Swapo Government by appointing sympathisers to key positions in State companies was not a secret. ‘We have observed ‘economic sabotage’ at TransNamib, NamPort, NBC and others. Instead of facing this reality some have decided to accuse the SPYL and NUNW of being responsible for economic sabotage when in fact the truth is pointing in their faces. The sympathisers of the RDP are well known, we will never shy away from pointing them out,’ Nekundi said. He fell short of revealing names, however.’It is the SPYL vision to see our people, when lifting their fists chanting Swapo slogans, bread should fall out of their under-arms [sic] and not sweat and poverty,’ Nekundi concluded.