Two decades after Namibian independence, scholar, activist and longstanding Swapo (South West Africa People’s Organisation) member Henning Melber pulls no punches in his judgement of the party’s moral failures, power struggles and willingness to trade on its liberation legacy, in an interview with Khadija Sharife.

Namibia’s opposition parties have taken issue with government once again, this time over what they termed as the ruling Swapo party’s unfair rubberstamping of laws without adequate deliberations in the country’s legislative chambers. Swapo used its two-thirds majority in the legislative chambers last December to rush through a bill that gave optimum power to the President to appoint regional governors, as opposed to the former system where governors were selected from among regional councillors.

Namibia is set to develop its rich uranium resources and intends to pursue uranium enrichment locally. It also plans to build its own nuclear electricity plant. Nuclear energy experts from Finland’s Nuclear and Radiation Authority are currently helping the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME) to draft Namibia’s first ever nuclear policy, which is to be completed mid-2011, together with relevant laws. Namibia plans to generate electricity from its own nuclear reactor by 2018.