Africa-Press – Namibia. The Landless People’s Movement party (LPM) wants more interventions in the fight against resource inequalities in Namibia.
This was said by the party’s national youth command element leader, Duminga Ndala, during an election campaign meeting at Kalkrand in the Hardap region on Saturday.
The party took to the streets of Kalkrand ahead of the looming regional council and local authority elections on Wednesday.
“Our existence as a political party is not just for electioneering. It is a commitment to the struggles of our people and a reminder that political parties must serve the people, not the elite few,” Ndala said.
For the past 35 years, Ndala said, the socio-economic condition of the people has remained unchanged.
“Our lived experiences have been marked by landlessness, joblessness, hunger, inequality, poverty and the collapse of quality education,” she said.
Despite these painful conditions, Ndala said, people remained loyal to the incumbent government (Swapo), which she said has failed the country’s people time and again.
She said her party needs to take full political power to emancipate the people from the shackles of poverty, injustice and growing political oppression, which she said is enforced by the Swapo administration.
She added that the struggle for liberation did not end in 1990, but simply changed shape.
She said it multiplied in different forms – forms of poverty, hopelessness, landlessness and inequality.
Ndala said the reality faced by communities is that approximately 1.6 million Namibians, or 65% of the population, live in absolute poverty.
“This means that if you gather ten people here at Kalkrand, more than six of them are living in extreme poverty. Meaning, no food on the table,” she said.
She said this is not just a statistic, but a daily lived experience of mothers, youth, elders, children and communities across the region.
The Hardap region, she said, despite being one of the economic hubs of the country, remains underdeveloped, underfunded and engulfed with the highest poverty rate in the country.
“We did not inherit a functional system; we inherited a crisis. But we did not complain. We rolled up our sleeves and got to work,” she said.
She said the LPM was given a mandate to govern and to change the material conditions of the people.
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