By Victor Angula /
The National Youth Council of Namibia (NYC) came under heavy criticism from youthful members of the National Assembly for its failure to live up to its mandate of serving the interests of young people.
The criticism was today levelled at the NYC’s executive director Mrs Callista Swartz-Gowases at a stakeholder consultative workshop of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Youth, Civic Relations and Community Development.
The week-long workshop which started on Monday and ends on Friday brought together various stakeholders in the education, sport, and community development sectors, but mostly it is state-owned entities based in Windhoek who turned up for the stakeholder engagement workshop taking place at Oshakati.
After Swartz-Gowases finished with her presentation, which focused mostly on the mandate of the NYC and the challenges the institution has faced in recent years, young members of the Standing Committee wasted no time in expressing their dismay at the dysfunctional nature of the institution.
“The constituencies chairpersons [of regional youth forums] are very dormant. I’m from a constituency where I know who is the chairperson, but I don’t know the role of NYC in the constituency,” said MP Fenny Tutjavi.
“First and foremost they don’t attend CDC meetings, they don’t hold any events in the constituency, let alone in the region; the ones that they have, the few events that they hold do not touch the grassroots or they young people within those regions and the constituencies.
“The founding principles of NYC, I am sure the founding people had a greater vision for what NYC should be and what it should become. However I am sure the young people do not know what is NYC. I am sure they have just come to know about NYC from the headlines, the horrible news as of recently.”
Tutjavi also said that the patronage network associated with NYC must come to an end. “NYC has gotten off the road. I want us to craft a strategy to revive NYC in a manner that genuinely makes it to represent the aspirations of the young people.”
MP Willem Amutenya said that if it were up to him, the NYC would not have gotten a cent this year from the national budget, until the institution has gotten its house in order.
“It’s disturbing to observe that an institution established a long time ago to serve the young people of this country, it is not taking care of them, despite the budgets,” Amutenya said. “I don’t even want us to speak about the shortage of the budget, because even if we give you so much money, there would still be problems.”
Another member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee, MP Tuhafeni Kalola, wanted to know about a company of the NYC known as Bridgehead, as to who runs it and to whom is it accountable.
Swartz-Gowases, who just recently returned to office after a lengthy period of suspension, admitted the failings at the NYC, saying that NYC has not been in this abysmal state until 2019.
She attributed the problems at the NYC to the power struggle between the institution’s executive chairperson of the board and the institution’s executive director.
“The structures of NYC make the chairperson powerful than the executive director, but the NYC’s Act gives more power to the executive director,” she said. “This creates a power struggle. There is a need to amend the Act; otherwise you don’t have autonomy. Even the staff know this.”
She also said that there is a need to make the NYC not continue to serve political interests or be used as a springboard to a political career.
“Apart from Kaapama (Phanuel), other previous executive directors, from Pohamba (Shifeta), Juliet (Kavetuna), the late Mandela (Kapere), and Sharonice (Busch) all went on to become members of parliament,” Swartz-Gowases said.
While admitting that there is a problem of governance at the NYC, she also stated that the dwindle in donor funding has affected the activities of the NYC.
In the photo: NYC director Callista Swartz-Gowases. In another image is MP Willem Amutenya and MP Fenny Tutjavi.
