Activist Ulli Eins passes away

A FORMER Managing Director of the Hartlief meat processing company and active member of the Windhoek community, Ulli Eins, died in the capital on Tuesday.

Eins passed away after a long illness. He was 65 years old.Born in the eastern part of Germany during World War II, Eins first moved to South Africa as a young boy in 1953 before he moved to Namibia in 1973.He was actively involved in business, political and environmental affairs in Namibia.Before Independence, he first became an active member of a liberal, anti-discriminatory organisation representing the interests of German-speaking Namibians, the Interessengemeinschaft (IG), in the early 1980s.By 1986 he had became a leading member of Namibia Peace Plan 435, a progressive grouping of people who, in an era of Namibia’s history when the war for the country’s independence went through some if its fiercest stages, promoted United Nations Security Council’s Resolution 435 as the only feasible and acceptable route through which Namibia could attain its Independence.Also in 1986, Eins sued the Cabinet of the then Transitional Government of South West Africa to attack the constitutionality of a section of a law that gave the Cabinet the power to throw people that it considered to be a threat to the country’s security out of the country.He won that case in the then SWA Supreme Court, but later lost it on a technical point when the Cabinet took the case on appeal to the South African Appellate Division in Bloemfontein.In later years, Eins was a founding member of the Congress of Democrats (CoD) when that party was formed in 1999.In the 2004 Regional Council elections he was the CoD candidate in the Khomas Region’s Windhoek East constituency.He polled the second largest number of votes, behind the winning Swapo Party candidate, in a constituency in which the combined tally of opposition candidates’ votes was only 17 fewer than the winning candidate’s.Eins worked at Hartlief Continental Meat Products from the early 1980s.He started out as a General Manager at the company, and later became its Managing Director and a shareholder.He was also a leading member of the environmental group Earthlife Namibia.In this capacity he became the target of personal attacks from then President Sam Nujoma in early 2002 as a result of doubts that Earthlife had expressed about the environmental standards of the Ramatex textile factory in Windhoek.Eins was married to Annaleen Eins, the former Curator and Director of the National Art Gallery of Namibia, and also leaves behind two sons.He was 65 years old.Born in the eastern part of Germany during World War II, Eins first moved to South Africa as a young boy in 1953 before he moved to Namibia in 1973.He was actively involved in business, political and environmental affairs in Namibia.Before Independence, he first became an active member of a liberal, anti-discriminatory organisation representing the interests of German-speaking Namibians, the Interessengemeinschaft (IG), in the early 1980s.By 1986 he had became a leading member of Namibia Peace Plan 435, a progressive grouping of people who, in an era of Namibia’s history when the war for the country’s independence went through some if its fiercest stages, promoted United Nations Security Council’s Resolution 435 as the only feasible and acceptable route through which Namibia could attain its Independence.Also in 1986, Eins sued the Cabinet of the then Transitional Government of South West Africa to attack the constitutionality of a section of a law that gave the Cabinet the power to throw people that it considered to be a threat to the country’s security out of the country.He won that case in the then SWA Supreme Court, but later lost it on a technical point when the Cabinet took the case on appeal to the South African Appellate Division in Bloemfontein.In later years, Eins was a founding member of the Congress of Democrats (CoD) when that party was formed in 1999.In the 2004 Regional Council elections he was the CoD candidate in the Khomas Region’s Windhoek East constituency.He polled the second largest number of votes, behind the winning Swapo Party candidate, in a constituency in which the combined tally of opposition candidates’ votes was only 17 fewer than the winning candidate’s.Eins worked at Hartlief Continental Meat Products from the early 1980s.He started out as a General Manager at the company, and later became its Managing Director and a shareholder.He was also a leading member of the environmental group Earthlife Namibia.In this capacity he became the target of personal attacks from then President Sam Nujoma in early 2002 as a result of doubts that Earthlife had expressed about the environmental standards of the Ramatex textile factory in Windhoek.Eins was married to Annaleen Eins, the former Curator and Director of the National Art Gallery of Namibia, and also leaves behind two sons.