A POLITICIAN called Adolf Hitler has won a landslide in the Namibian election – but promised he is not “striving for world domination”.
The councillor with the unfortunate name won 85 per cent of the vote as he claimed a seat in the former German colony in southern Africa.
Mr Hitler has assured he has “nothing to do with” the Nazi ideology despite sharing a name with the evil Fuhrer, who died in 1945.
Full name Adolf Hitler Uunona, he won the seat on the party ticket for the ruling South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo).
The party has been in power since winning independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990.
Namibia still has many streets, places and people sharing German names and used to be part of the colony German South West Africa.
“My father named me after this man. He probably didn’t understand what Adolf Hitler stood for,” Mr Hitler told Bild.
“As a child I saw it as a totally normal name.
“Only as a teenager did I understand that this man wanted to conquer the whole world.”
Mr Hitler said that his wife calls him Adolf, and that he normally goes by the name Adolf Uunona.
He bemoaned it is now “too late” to change his name as it appears on all his official documents.
He won 1,196 votes in the election over 213 for his opponent, handing him a seat on the regional council in Oshana.
Mr Hitler couldn’t be more different than his historic namesake, getting into politics as he joined anti-apartheid fighters with Swapo.
“That I have this name doesn’t mean that I want to subjugate Oshana now,” he assured.
Namibia still has communities of German-speaking people due to its colonial past and each year is visited by about 120,000 Germans.
Berlin still says it has a “special responsibility” to the country due to the two nation’s “shared colonial past”.
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