Former agriculture minister Calle Schlettwein has warned against the reappointment of Mwilima Mushokabanji as chief executive of the Meat Corporation of Namibia (Meatco).
The parastatal splashed about N$1 billion in taxpayers’ money during his five-year tenure.
Schlettwein said this after it emerged that the Cabinet, president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, and Swapo secretary general Sophia Shaningwa are pushing for Meatco to retain Mushokabanji.
“Meatco has a task to reform and it must reform drastically. Whether the incumbent or former chief executive officer (CEO) is able to do that, we will learn with time.
“What I can say is that the team, with that CEO, did not manage Meatco for the last five years,” Schlettwein said yesterday.
Mushokabanji oversaw a period of continuous bailouts at Meatco, which prompted former finance minister Iipumbu Shiimi to block attempts to give him an extra five years.
Nandi-Ndaitwah declined to retain Shiimi, allowing Shaningwa and her ally, Joseph Andreas, to place their man back in the Meatco hot seat.
The number of bailouts given to Meatco over the years have, however, exposed Mushokabanji’s management style.
For instance, the government pumped N$700 million into Meatco from 2021 to 2023.
Between last year and this year, the government pumped in another N$312 million. This totals over one billion.
To Schlettwein, those figures are proof of wasteful spending.
The former agriculture minister yesterday told The Namibian that Mushokabanji’s reappointment casts a shadow of doubt over his ability to turn around the fortunes of the perennially loss-making entity.
“The government is yet again to budget N$100 million or N$150 million to bail it out, so whoever is the board or CEO, that is what they must do [reform], but if we retain the same person, the chances that we achieve our goals are getting slimmer,” he said.
Schlettwein accused Meatco’s board and Mushokabanji of getting advice to reform Meatco, but not managing to do so.
The former minister said the cost of slaughtering animals under Meatco’s current management model is unsustainably high, contributing to the company’s losses and weakening its competitiveness.
That model drove Meatco into a wall, he said.
“It became completely uncompetitive and unsustainable. Instead of addressing the core issues, management kept turning to the government for bailouts.”
Schlettwein said Meatco urgently needs a structural overhaul of its business model, including a new approach to operational capacity.
The former minister said in the past five years, Meatco, which was designed to slaughter 120 000 animals a year, only managed to slaughter around 30 000.
“That made it very unprofitable, but little was done to correct that, although they maintained their standard on being an export abattoir.
“The cost went up more and more and it became less profitable.
There was serious loss-making and the government had to bail it out because of the public interest,” he said.
Meatco has struggled due to its failure to pay farmers on time, leading to job losses and cash flow problems.
Despite this, a group of ministers and senior government officials seem determined to bring Mushokabanji back to the company.
The Namibian has been informed that former home affairs minister Albert Kawana also led the campaign for the former CEO’s unilateral appointment, with Cabinet secretary George Simataa allegedly insisting on the item staying on the Cabinet’s agenda.
Kawana yesterday said he is a man of principle, and he cannot divulge what he did in his official capacity as a minister as he took an oath not to do so.
“Even those who told you those stories about what happened in the Cabinet . . . I feel pity for them because they are violating the principles of corrective responsibility in terms of Article 40 of the Namibian Constitution,” he said.
Kawana said lifting the lid on the matter is equivalent to destroying “this government or participants of this government”.
“I cannot be associated with somebody who wants to undermine the current government, the current president, as a member of Swapo.
“I will never do that. Anybody who threatens to destroy or undermine this government, I will be among those at the forefront to protect it,” he said.
The Meatco affair has been a hot political topic in the corridors of power.
The Namibian understands that Shaningwa allegedly attacked Shiimi in the Cabinet over the Meatco saga last year.
She was an invited guest to the Cabinet, yet she is said to have attacked the former finance minister in front of others.
Shaningwa accused Shiimi of defying a Cabinet directive, warning that the Mushokabanji saga could cost the party votes in the Zambezi region.
Then vice president Nandi-Ndaitwah backed both Shaningwa and Mushokabanji.
Although not a Cabinet member, Shaningwa was invited to the meeting as part of efforts to align Swapo’s position with Cabinet decisions.
Shiimi declined to comment when approached yesterday.
He said by law, the renewal of Meatco’s CEO is the responsibility of the board.
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