The National Assembly descended into chaos on Tuesday after the Minister of Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment Creation, Utoni Nujoma, made a statement referring to some people as ‘lazy’ for not building toilets.

Speaker Peter Katjavivi lost control of the House for several minutes after several members objected to the tribal remarks made by the Swapo Party lawmaker.

‘The problem is that we Namibians don’t want to construct toilets. I know. Go to the north; in Ovamboland, everybody tries to build their own toilets. Even if it’s a dry one, the pit latrine. But I know my people here; when I go to the Oresevate there, you have to wake up at night with diarrhoea running into the bush, because people are lazy, they don’t want to do something,’ Nujoma said.

‘Oresevate’ is a reference to the communal reserves created when local communities were segregated based on ethnicity during the South African colonial era.

This comparison did not sit well with some members, including opposition leader McHenry
Venaani, who termed Nujoma a ‘scientific tribalist’.

‘If you’re saying there are toilets in the north and there are no toilets in the oresevate, as you’re calling it, that’s scientific tribalism. You must do better,’ Venaani said.

The leader of the Landless People’s Movement, Bernadus Swarbooi, also condemned Utoni’s statement, stating that ‘it seems to be an inherent thinking of some of ethnic groups about others, at official level.’ He said this in reference to a previous National Planning Commission report which branded certain ethnic groups as lazy.

The statement also did not sit well with Swapo lawmaker Bernadette Jagger.

‘With all due respect, the words that he uttered here this afternoon on this floor indicate, as per my understanding, that people in Ovamboland build their own toilets and others are lazy. Which means if you’re not Oshiwambo, that means you’re lazy. He has withdrawn, but I want to put it on record that it was a wrong statement that has touched many of us,’ said Jagger.

In the end,
Minister Utoni was forced to withdraw his remarks. ‘Now I want to officially withdraw because of what I said. I withdraw, and I go further to apologise if I have hurt anybody,’ he said.

He made the statement while contributing to Venaani’s motion calling on Parliament to debate the provision of sanitation services to urban and rural areas.

According to Venaani, sanitation has stalled in recent years, and the various ministries tasked with improving sanitation have each failed to prioritise the sector.

‘For example, the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development has missed its toilet goals four out of the last five years. The ministry stated that it will build 10 000 new toilets in rural areas by the year 2021, but it only completed 980, before declaring that 1 000 was the initial goal and that the 10 000 target had been erroneously indicated,’ he said.

Source: Namibia Press Agency