Swartbooi hits out at Swapo

SWAPO parliamentarian Bernadus Swartbooi has lashed out at the ruling party's governance style.

Speaking at a Landless People's Movement (LPM) gala dinner on Saturday at Keetmanshoop, Swartbooi said it has taken Swapo 27 years to bankrupt state coffers without any significant industrialisation and job creation programme. When the balance of forces tilted towards change at independence, he said, the elite compromised the people's hope for their self-help programme of corruption. “With youth unemployment and unemployment in general very high; with rural areas disintegrating; with housing backlogs in urban areas not being addressed adequately; with no industrialisation occurring; with state capacity very weak; with ethnic domination and exclusion openly exercised, and majoritarianism rather than genuine democracy being exercised; with greed and materialism driving the elites' interest at all and any cost, society is beginning to readjust towards an alternative reality capable of a fresh and genuine transformation mode,” he stated. Swartbooi added that “the one-party state is no longer viable nor right”.