Students who live in the University of Namibia’s hostels were allegedly told they are ineligible to register for the local authority elections.
Registration officials are said to have told students at Unam’s main campus in Windhoek that the campus hostels are not their residence for 12 consecutive months.
The students argued that they are based in Windhoek for the most part of the year and thus they are also ineligible to vote back in their hometowns. If this is true, and the same rule is applied to other campuses, then thousands of students will be left out of the local authority elections later this year.
Director of Elections Paul Isaak described this as a “grey area” and said that senior students who have lived in the hostels since January last year and will be living there again this year should be allowed to register for the local authority election in that particular constituency.
He said he understands that such students don’t have any municipal or telephone bills to prove residency for 12 consecutive months.
Isaak urged such students to make use of a registered voter in their constituency to make a sworn statement that he or she knows that the student has lived there for 12 consecutive months.
Unam is based in the Windhoek West Constituency.
Asked about the fact that students live outside that constituency for about three months of the year when they are required to vacate the hostels during school holidays, Isaak said the situation is the same as a person who is in hospital for two months.
“That doesn’t mean they should be excluded from the local authority elections. That is just a grey area,” he said.
Isaak said first-year students will most likely not be able to take part in the local authority elections unless they have registered in their hometowns and go and vote there. When the elections take place, they will not have lived in the Windhoek West Constituency for one year.
It’s not clear whether senior students will be willing and able to find witnesses to take along to registration points for sworn statements. Indications last week were that many Namibians were not prepared to go to such lengths.
WINDHOEK GORDON JOSEPH
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