‘Swapo-bound’ Seibeb resigned to preempt sacking

Landless People’s Movement (LPM) deputy leader Henny Seibeb, who resigned from the party and parliament yesterday, quit in order to preempt a plan to recall him, which would have been ‘embarrassing’, sources said.

Party leader Bernadus Swartbooi confirmed that “it was just a matter of time” before they dealt with Seibeb and former party operative secretary Edson Isaacks, who also resigned yesterday from both the party and parliament.

Short-fused Swartbooi had allegedly intended to give Seibeb the boot in May already, but he was advised to hold his horses until after the elections in November. This was so that Seibeb’s constituency within the party’s support base – mainly Damara speakers – would still vote for LPM, which he allegedly called a ‘Nama party’.

The 46-year-old hails from Khorixas in the Kunene Region.

It is this label that escalated tensions between erstwhile comrades in arms Swartbooi and Seibeb, especially after the latter allegedly refused to publicly denounce the allegation that he labelled the party as such.

“Henny was told about this move [to expel him] and therefore decided to resign before he was removed and embarrassed. He is going back to Swapo,” a party official told Namibian Sun.

Seibeb cut his political teeth in the ruling party, where he served as a special assistant to then secretary-general Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana from 2008 to 2012. He was later fired by Iivula-Ithana because of remarks he made at the time.

With Swartbooi himself fired as deputy lands minister by late president Hage Geingob in 2017, he founded LPM, which Seibeb soon joined. The party won four seats in parliament in the 2019 elections.

Enjoying his ‘freedom’

Yesterday, Seibeb remained coy when asked about his mooted return to Swapo. “I am in a liberated zone right now, so let me enjoy my freedom,” he said.

Isaacks told Namibian Sun that it became unbearable to be in LPM, where he and Seibeb were mistreated and suspected for no reason.

"[My resignation was] a conscious decision. We have been separated for a while now. I have been accused of a lot of things that were never proven to be true. Fairness does not exist in that party and there is no administrative justice,” he said.

“I gave them a chance to afford me an opportunity to clear [my name] and I stopped going to party offices, and for about three years we have not had any communication. The party is just a one-man show.”

He added: “I was never invited to any party processes, so for me, I had to make a determination. There are no discussions to find amicable solutions. There was no babysitting, he [Swartbooi] just does not acknowledge what other people bring to the table. A team should consist of different skills and not just one person. You can see [he is a] delusional, pathological liar," Isaacks fumed.

Completely broken down

Elated at the resignations, Swartbooi was like a kid in a candy store when Namibian Sun found him outside the chambers.

“They were impossible to work with. We had to carry difficult burdens for five years. We had to babysit the person. We could not speak about those things, the person was with us,” he said in reference to Seibeb.

Swartbooi added that they will, in fact, celebrate the two members’ departure.

"We had difficult days with these people. In the nature of leadership of an organisation, we normally do not talk about those internal issues outside. You would find that I remained absolutely quiet in the face of allegations. What we have done is to provide platform after platform to say ‘let us talk’. From January until now, the only place we as LPM would see these individuals was here at parliament,” he said.

He added: “The relationship the party and every other person in the party [have with] to those two people has completely broken down."

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