By Anadolu staff
ISTANBUL (AA) - A Namibian politician named Adolf Hitler Uunona, who first drew international attention after winning his Ompundja seat in 2020, is seeking another term in local office, according to the SA People news website.
Uunona, a longtime representative of Namibia's ruling SWAPO party, first gained international attention in 2020 when he won the seat from the Ompundja town constituency in the Oshana Region.
Having held the post since 2004 and last securing it with nearly 85% of the vote, he confirmed to German media outlet Bild that he is seeking a fifth term in the Nov. 26 regional election in northern Namibia.
In a 2020 interview with Bild, Uunona said his father gave him the dictator’s name, but “he probably didn’t even understand what Adolf Hitler stood for.”
Although he omits his middle name in public, it still appears on official documents and ballot papers.
He said that as a child, "it was a perfectly normal name," but that as he grew older, he realized that "this man wanted to conquer the whole world." He insisted that he has "nothing to do with any of these things."
The South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), a former liberation movement that led the fight against South African apartheid and has ruled Namibia since its independence on March 21, 1990, includes Uunona among its members and has won every national election since then.
The party’s struggle emerged in the shadow of Namibia’s brutal colonial past, when German forces carried out a genocide against the indigenous Herero and Nama peoples between 1904 and 1908, killing at least 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama and reducing their populations by at least 70% and 50%, respectively.
In 2021, after over five years of negotiations, Germany formally recognized its actions as a “genocide,” agreeing to fund projects in Namibia worth €1.1 billion (nearly $1.3 billion) over 30 years for its role in mass killings and property seizures in its former colony over a century ago.