SPYL wants Bismarck Street renamed

The Swapo Party Youth League (SPYL) has written a letter to City of Windhoek chief executive officer Niilo Taapopi requesting that Bismarck Street be renamed after legendary liberation fighter Simeon Kambo Shixungileni Street. Shixungileni was second-in-command when Swapo guerrillas engaged apartheid South African forces at Omugulugwombashe on August 26, 1966, thereby unleashing the protracted armed liberation struggle that ended in 1989. SPYL spokesperson Job Amupanda said in the letter to the City - dated March 19 - that Bismarck does not deserve a street named after him in Namibia. “Otto Bismarck was a German thief who dominated German and European affairs from the 1860s to 1890. He served as German chancellor between 1871 and 1890. This man organised the Berlin Conference of 1884 to 1885. The conference divided and distributed parts of Africa among European States, as if African countries were sweets distributable among friends,” Amupanda wrote. He said the Berlin Conference devastated Africans in general, and Namibians in particular, and what followed was “more than 100 years of brutality, oppression, subjugation, loss of life, loss of land, loss of culture, loss of dignity”. “It is therefore incredible to see that this man is honoured with a street in an independent Namibia...” Amupanda said Shixungileni was among the “fearless upright sons of the land who travelled by foot from as far as Tanzania to come and intensify the struggle against colonialism”. Amupanda also reminded Taapopi that in 2006, SPYL secretary Elijah Ngurare wrote a letter to the city council in which he motivated that a street in Windhoek be named after Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.