Chief Maharero has been defiled – supporters

THE Maharero Royal House has said the recent actions by the Ovaherero Traditional Authority to bar their clan from chief Samuel Maharero’s burial site at Okahandja have disgraced the memory of the late paramount chief.

The royal house was forced to call off their planned red flag day commemorations to honour the late chief at the last minute on 27 August after the OTA, headed by paramount chief Vekuii Rukoro, threatened “to fight” for erf 1755 which they claim to have bought from the municipality of Okahandja.

Urban and rural development minister Sophia Shaningwa was also forced to withdraw her statement of granting the royal house the right of usage to the plot for their commemorations after Rukoro threatened court action. The OTA has since fenced off the plot to keep out the Maharero clan, who have questioned why the municipality sold the land to OTA when it should be for all the Ovaherero people.

“It is stranger than fiction for a leader (Rukoro) to engage in the cheap kindergarten politics of insulting and denigrating the distinguished and heroic accomplishments of late paramount chief Samuel Katjiikumbua Maharero,” said a representative of the Maharero Royal House, Hirukevi Kaapama. The commemoration of the red flag regiment started in 1923, following the reburial of the remains of late paramount chief Samuel Maharero at Okahandja, where the Ovaherero have gathered annually to remember him and other fallen chiefs.

The ceremony is marked by the lighting of a sacred fire. The Maharero clan appealed for government to support their claim of the right of usage to the site where they have been gathering to remember all their fallen chiefs.

Kaapama last week said the notion that the commando only belongs to any individual or group of Ovaherero and not all Ovaherero collectively is devoid of any truth. He said over the years, the Ovaherero have been coming to the site to remember their fallen chiefs, regardless of what commando they belonged to.

Meanwhile, a self-styled group calling itself the Ovaherero Cultural Youth League (OCYL) has criticised the Swapo Party Youth League for demanding that Rukoro apologises to President Hage Geingob and the nation for his statement against government, or face expulsion from the party.

Rukoro drew sharp criticism when he referred to government as an “Owambo government”. SPYL secretary for information Neville Andre Itope last week condemned what he termed tribalist remarks from the paramount chief, asking him to apologise.

OCYL secretary general Veneruru Korumbo in a statement last week lashed out at Itope, saying that the SPYL leadership was “asleep for four months” when the governor of Omaheke Festus Ueitele made “derogatrory and tribalist remarks against the Ovaherero”, but the youth wing is now demanding an apology from Rukoro.

The OCYL said there is a conspiracy theory to pit the Ovaherero against each other.

“Instead of calling our chief a tribalist, they should have asked why he made such remarks,” he said.