Elijah Ngurare: You can't bring a good man down

The now famous picture being widely shared on various social media platforms, where Dr Elijah Ngurare, is finally seen sharing podiums and political platforms with some top Swapo leaders, is heart-rending.

He once was regarded as an outcast. Few people wanted to be associated with him. Some leaders even avoided calling him. So fuelled were the anti-Ngurare antics that I was once summarily summoned by a deeply angry Nangolo Mbumba, Swapo Secretary General then, to "explain why Namibia Today was giving Ngurare more coverage than other Swapo leaders."

Ngurare was actually being shunned like a person with leprosy. This was psychologically killing. But being a good and humble man that he has always been, he never slid into depression. He took and accepted that fate like a man. And he survived, unscathed. To date, he holds no vengeance.

The worst nightmare fell on him like a ton of bricks in 2015 when the top leadership unceremoniously expelled him, and three others, from Swapo, without even giving him a hearing, even if its outcomes were pre-determined.

He took the matter to the High Court to have his membership reinstated. They won the case. That blistering judgment by High Court Judge Collins Parker had Swapo top leaders being humiliatingly lectured in public on how to treat and respect the dignity of their members, using the Swapo Constitution and its Rules and Procedures.

After several years of mutual avoidance which has wrecked unity in Swapo, it is quite fulfilling to see these leaders sharing a platform like this. Let bygones be bygones. Broken fences can indeed be mended.

Seeing how Dr Ngurare has been figuratively skinned alife since 2012 by the Top Leadership, and how Comrades Nahas Angula and Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana have been equally humiliated and unceremoniously chucked out of the Swapo leadership since the 2017 congress by the same cabal, whoever imagined that this would ever happen?

Seeing them together now, were the animosities and purging, which have cost Swapo so dearly, really worth it? We have learned a lesson the hard way. We are only powerful and forcefull when we are united. Let this lesson sink deeper into our heads.

The arrogance of power should never ever again blind us into believing that we can only prosper through hurting and humiliating others. We are because you are. Leadership is about striving to make tomorrow better than today, for all of us.

You can't bring a good man down. Now that Swapo is sick, that notorious cabal now knows where the medicines are. True, the sick always know where the hospitals are. Welcome the Biblical leprosy son, you once shunned, into the fold. This is classic.

Let these be the first steps to bringing back Swapo to its former self! It must have been an uphill task to bring these former rivals together, but the Namibian Exile Kids Association, NEKA, has done it. This is, indeed, fulfilling. To them, I take off my hat! These were not just some crasy and smarmy instant stunts by NEKA. These were daring and bold strategic moves.

There must have been tense moments at this event, where NEKA also launched its Five Year Strategic Plan, most likely about who should start the conversation and who should crack the first joke to break the ice, as it were.

But be that as it may. The biggest and hardest hurdle towards unity in Swapo - mutual avoidance - has been removed. We are now speaking not just to each other, but also at each other as well. The elders have, through recklessness and arrogance, almost destroyed SWAPO, with all its priceless heritage and institutional memory.

It took these exile kids unsurpassed courage and foresightedness to bring these elders together, once again, for the sake of Swapo. Seeing children facilitating peace efforts among quarreling parents is indeed laudable. That is leadership. They are not called exile kids for nothing.

With this chapter, they have clearly demonstrated that they are indeed the heirs apparent of the revolution, which Swapo had spearheaded with a majestic sense of purpose, until independence on 21st March 1990.

They were born in the crucible of that revolution. Their umbilical cord to that revolution is deeply rooted in their understanding of what it took those gallant sons and daughters of Namibia, who sacrificed their precious lives, buried in marked and unmarked graves, to make Namibia what it is today.

In all these efforts, may we all remember that lifeless body of Frieda Ndatipo, the exile kid who was gunned down in cold blood when police officers fired "teargas" to the exile kids who were demonstrating at the Swapo Headquarters, demanding jobs!

Like all the exile kids, Ndatipo simply wanted a job from her negligent Mother, Swapo. Sadly, the search for that job cost Ndatipo her life, at the feet of her Mother, Swapo Head Office. May her death always remind us of the wickedness in us as human beings!

Exile kids, take the lead to heal those wounds before they become septic. The steps you have taken now may look easy and simple to some people today, but as time goes by, they will understand their historic value.

To cut a long story short, you have put out a suicidal menace that has hovered over the Swapo horizon like a fireball. History will reward you someday soon.

• Asser Ntinda is the former Editor of Namibia Today, the Swapo Party official newspaper.