Featured Image Credit: Oshana Regional Council
Topics: News, World News, Africa, Politics
Kit Roberts
When it comes to politics there are any number of factors which might impact how people perceive you,
Unfortunately for one politician from Namibia, his name is less than ideal when it comes to getting involved in politics.
That's because his name is Adolf Hitler, which is not ideal at the best of the times but especially not when you're a politician.
To be clear, his full name is Adolf Hitler Uunona, and he usually goes by Adolf Uunona.
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Still, his name has not proven an obstacle as the politician, who is with the ruling SWAPO party, has reportedly won a landslide to keep his seat as a regional councillor in the Ompundja constituency in north Namibia, though an official count has not yet been released.
The politician has also addressed one rather obvious question.
This is, of course, why does he not just change his name?
In an interview with German newspaper Bild, Uunona said: “It’s in all official documents. It’s too late for that."
He went on to explain that his father had given him the name but hadn't understood its extremely dark history, saying: “As a child I saw it as a totally normal name."
But as he grew up, Uunona came to realise that there was a really unfortunate connotation for his name.
“It wasn’t until I was growing up that I realised: This man wanted to subjugate the whole world,” he said, but strongly emphasized: “I have nothing to do with any of these things.”
It certainly hasn't held him back from success in the past either, with Uunona receiving about 85% of the vote in 2020.
German names are still fairly common in Namibia as a hangover from when it was occupied by Germany as a colony, being called 'German South West Africa'.
After this, it came under South African control, before becoming an independent country in 1990.
The SWAPO party, which stands for the South West Africa People's Organisation, has built itself as an anti-colonial party, still running its campaigns on Namibian independence.
It was founded back in 1960 as a movement for independence in Namibia, and has been in power since the country became independent.
People from Uunona's constituency put his success down to his record campaigning against apartheid.
He first won the role in the constituency back in 2004, and has held the seat in the constituency, a stronghold for the SWAPO party, since then.