• By Staff Reporter

Swapo’s secretary general (SG), Sophia Shaningwa, has rubbished former member Reinhold Shipwikineni’s resignation from the party, as a ploy to destabilise the organization from within.

Shaningwa’s statement was preceded by Shipwikineni’s purported resignation from the party, which the Swapo chief administrator says, was widely circulated on social before it was delivered at the party’s headquarters.  She maintained that following Shipwikineni’s public backing of the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) presidential candidate, Panduleni Itula in 2024, the SWAPO distanced itself from him. 

“In fact, if there was any doubt that you had long lost your membership of the SWAPO party, your loss of membership was unequivocally confirmed last year when you publicly supported a political party and its presidential candidate whose aims and objectives are contrary to that of the [SWAPO] party.”

According to the SWAPO SG, Shipwikineni’s exit was a relief, arguing that his actions exposed him as someone who attempted to destroy the organisation from within, a mission she claims was unsuccessful. “We, at all material times, took it that you would not have been so naïve to still think that notwithstanding your activities and in particular, your open support of another political party you somehow remained a SWAPO party member,” she wrote.

“Swapo reminds you that, notwithstanding you losing its membership, you awkwardly continue pursuing a civil case in the High Court in which you claim to have locus standi as a SWAPO member,” Shaningwa added. Shipwikineni last year took the party to court for not holding an extraordinary congress after the death of former president Hage Geingob. Reports has it that he has since filed to withdraw the case.

 The withdrawal however did not exonerate him from paying SWAPO’s legal fees amounting to N$400,000. In his resignation letter, Shipwikineni criticises the party for deep-rooted corruption and a lack of internal renewal.  He particularly pointed out the party’s failure to hold a congress after the death of President Hage Geingob as worrisome.

“The Swapo Party did not invent corruption. It inherited it. But we had the moral responsibility to dismantle the old boys and new boys’ networks that later gave rise to the Fishrot corruption saga,” he said. Shipwikineni further explained that the party had failed to address entrenched patronage systems and racial inequality. 

He also claimed that Swapo has ceased to live up to the values it “once claimed to uphold.”