Africa-Press – Namibia. FORMER Windhoek mayor Job Amupanda says Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) leader Panduleni Itula had plans to recruit a new City of Windhoek chief executive officer.
Itula told him and two opposition leaders he had a discussion with an individual who was willing to be Windhoek’s CEO without being remunerated monthly, Amupanda says.
One of the opposition leaders, however, denies being present at the meeting, and the other declines to comment on “in-house matters”.
Amupanda yesterday told The Namibian Itula revealed this possibility to him at a “progressive forces” meeting at Arebbusch Travel Lodge in Windhoek last year.
According to Amupanda, National Unity Democratic Organisation (Nudo) parliamentarian Joseph Kauandenge and Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) leader McHenry Venaani also attended the meeting.
He says Itula told them he had spoken to a “white man” from the coast who was willing to take up the trophy job “without getting a salary”.
Amupanda says none of the leaders commented on Itula’s suggestion.
In his submission at a City of Windhoek council meeting on Tuesday afternoon, Amupanda said as mayor of the city, he encountered attempts to capture councillors to take certain decisions which would benefit Windhoek’s business elite.
“During several sessions of the coalition, it became clear the stakes are high and there is a serious interest in delivering a chief executive officer, not through a meritocratic and transparent process, but through underhand and rehearsed machinations bordering on corruption,” he said.
“We were categorically informed that one of the coalition partners had already discussed with a ‘white man’ from the coast who has agreed to become a chief executive officer and is ostensibly willing to do so without a salary. This concerned me as an activist of the movement that is resolute and committed to the fight against corruption,” Amupanda said.
Contacted for comment, Venaani said he is “from a class of maturity” and does not discuss “in-camera matters”.
“Hence my reluctance to comment on the matter. Maturity in leadership is to distinguish between public debates and in-house matters,” he said.
Kauandenge denied being part of the meeting.
“Pure lies. I was not even at the Arebbusch meeting with the likes of Venaani or Itula to start with. So I don’t know nothing of what was discussed there by the three leaders. Only they themselves know what they discussed there,” he said.
He said the drama currently unfolding at the City of Windhoek should be a wake-up call to some of the leaders who are in charge, and does nothing to speed up the appointment of a new CEO.
Kauandenge said leaders should own up to what they resolved and stick to those resolutions.
“It paints a disturbing picture bordering on egotism, self-induced importance to scream corruption or favouritism, while you were at one point navigating the same ship and you did absolutely nothing to steer through the storms into the right direction,” he said.
He said even those claiming current opposition leaders have their own earmarked candidates for the CEO position have their own preferred candidates too.
“Pure hypocrisy on their part. Issues were brought to the fore that were substantive, that proved irregularities in the selection of the new CEO, but some who are claiming favouritism today were dead silent on those irregularities. Why did they not reopen the process then and start afresh while they were in charge?” Kauandenge asked.
Meanwhile, Itula said he does not have authority over local authority decisions.
“Panduleni Itula does not engage in hearsay, nor is the current immature frantic attempts at a smear campaign of any significance or consequence to fight against the giants of social welfare needs of our people,” he said.
Itula said the City of Windhoek is in an extremely dangerous, precarious historical financial position that requires people centred on solutions rather than the “schoolboy approach of self-gratification”.
He said Windhoek residents should brace themselves for the possible “sinking of the Titanic of local authorities under the watch of bickering councillors”.
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