Politician named Adolf Hitler re-elected in southern African country

Adolf Hitler Uunona, a Namibian politician who shares his name with the infamous Nazi dictator, won re-election for his local seat for the fifth time in a row, according to Euro News.

The 59-year-old cruised to re-election despite his unfortunate name and has no plan to change it.

The local pol said he usually goes by Adolf Uunona in daily life and argued it’s too late to formally change his name.

“It’s in all official documents. It’s too late for that,” he told German newspaper Bild in 2020.

Uunona, a member of the ruling SWAPO party, kept his seat as regional councilor for the tiny Ompundja constituency in northern Namibia, reportedly winning by a landslide, though Namibia’s Electoral Commission has yet to release the official vote count.

Uunona snagged around 85% of the vote in 2020, according to the report. 

Locals credit his long record in the fight against apartheid, according to the report. 

In the same interview with the German paper, Uunona said his father gave him the name without understanding its dark history. 

“As a child I saw it as a totally normal name,” Uunona said.

Uunona insisted he rejects Nazi ideology and any dreams of world domination.

“It wasn’t until I was growing up that I realised: This man wanted to subjugate the whole world,” Uunona said. “I have nothing to do with any of these things.”

The SWAPO party grew out of Namibia’s anti-colonial movement and still campaigns on those themes. 

But Germanic names such as Adolf are still common in Namibia, which was once a German colony before passing to South African control and finally gaining independence in 1990.