Written by Patience Nyangove
Thursday, 17 September 2009
WITH a few weeks remaining before the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections, intra-Swapo foes are at each other’s throats with the youth wing leader Elijah Ngurare accusing veteran clergyman and youth minister of employing girlfriends and relatives, wining and dining while the youth suffer.
Swapo Youth League Secretary Ngurare charged that Youth, National Service, Sport and Culture Minister, Willem Konjore, is having an excellent taste of fancy dress, giving jobs to his girlfriends and relatives, wining and dining while Namibia’s youth suffer.
Konjore immediately dismissed Ngurare’s allegations as “falsehoods aimed at tarnishing his image” and unseating him as minister.
“Which jobs did I give to my relatives or girlfriends? I only joined this Ministry in April 2008. It’s untrue. There is nothing like that. Ngurare is trying to make a story to smear my name and tarnish my character.”
In an interview yesterday at the Swapo Headquarters, Ngurare also accused Konjore of being a failure.
“I have never seen him out there. All he ever does is to dress nicely, eat, drink, be pampered, enjoy being chauffer-driven and sitting in his air conditioned office and employing his cousins, sisters and girlfriends. It’s wrong. It’s bad. I don’t think you get into public office to serve your relatives,” Ngurare said.
Ngurare said although there are plans to relocate the “struggle kids” camped at the party headquarters, no action has been taken because Konjore was just seating doing nothing when decisions were made long ago.
“The Ministry of Youth has failed to implement the decisions taken. There is a committee which is made up of different other ministries including defence, education, gender, safety, agriculture and Swapo. What has it become? It’s become a talk shop where people go to the youth ministry to wine and dine, drink coffee with cookies. It’s a waste. I do not want to be part of that. Why should I just go there and have coffee in a Government mug?
“Konjore has failed. We want a new person to be minister,” he said.
Ngurare also accused Konjore of looking down upon people who voted him into power.
“We are not happy if you are appointed to serve the people and you look down upon those same people. Don’t be macho and master and look down upon those who put you there.
“He only likes to be driven around, get S&T (subsistence and travel allowances) and given nice things. Why is it when he visits places like Kunene he can’t sleep at the homesteads of the electorate? It’s like George Orwell’s synopsis that all animals are equal but some are more equal,” Ngurare charged.
When contacted for comment Konjore refuted Ngurare’s allegations describing them as mere falsehoods to tarnish his image.
Konjore said if Ngurare was aspiring to be the youth minister or wanted someone else to take over the job, he should do so using a different way rather than doing it through spreading falsehoods against him.
“If he understands what to look down upon people means, Ngurare should know that although he might be the judge he is not the only person who is looking at me. There are many people coming into my office who know I am not looking down upon them.
“I would like Ngurare to know that if he or knows somebody who is aspiring to be the Minister of Youth, National Service, Sport and Culture, there could be a different way rather than do it through newspaper articles to achieve their goals.
“In the past, I didn’t want to substantiate these newspaper articles because I don’t want to stoop so low discussing Government and party issues through the media. It’s too low. It’s not professional and respectful,” he said.
Konjore said the bone of contention between him and Ngurare started when he (Konjore) refused to sign a letter Ngurare had written instructing him to authorise the relocation of the struggle kids to a farm in Oshikoto.
“I did not sign that letter because it stated that the technical committee had made the decision to relocate those children when it’s not that technical committee or ministerial committee but Cabinet which has the power to make such decisions and this apparently is one of my greatest sins to Ngurare which finally angered him.”
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