Elma Dienda

Elma Dienda
Dienda at the opening of the Namibian Parliament in 2019
Member of Parliament of Namibia
Incumbent
Assumed office 27 November 2014
Personal details
Born	South West Africa

Elma Jane Dienda (born 16 November 1964 in Upington, Northern Cape, South Africa) is a Namibian politician and teacher. Currently a member Democratic Turnhalle Alliance which she joined four years after she resigned from the CoD,^[1] Dienda was a member of the National Assembly of Namibia from taking the CoD's final spot in 2004 until the CoD did not receive enough votes for her re-election in 2009.^[2] She is of South African and Malawian descent.^[3]

Career

Dienda is a teacher by profession, having earned an education diploma at the Windhoek College of Education and worked at Eldorado High School in Khomasdal. She also has a paralegal diploma from the Legal Assistance Centre.^[4] She received training as a counselor at Catholic AIDS Action. She is currently serving as the Popular Democratic Movement's Chief Whip in parliament.^[5][6]

Political positions

Dienda joined the Congress of Democrats in 1999, the year of its foundation. She also held the position of the secretary of the Women Democrats Party. In 2007, she opposed the election of Ben Ulenga as party president.^[7]

Dienda led a drive in the National Assembly which called for the distribution of condoms to prison inmates as a means of preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. Dienda and other opposition politicians were shouted down, with Utoni Nujoma and Petrus Iilonga vocally opposing the idea. Several SWAPO members denied that sexual activities ever occurred in prisons.^[8]

The PDM legislator said she does not support husbands and wives claiming rape in marriage. Dienda was responding to a point raised by the minister of home affairs, immigration, safety and security Albert Kawana, who asked whether there would be a conviction if boyfriends and girlfriends, or husbands and wives, claim rape when there is no semen and bodily fluids as part of the court evidence, during a parliament session in April 2022.^[9]

References

1. "Namibian Sun - Tells it All - - Namibian Sun".
2. Who’s in, who’s out The Namibian, 7 December 2009
3. Profile Archived 2011-06-11 at the Wayback Machine at the Namibia Institute for Democracy
4. Corporation, New Era Publication. "Honorable Dienda, Elma Jane - Profile". classifieds.newera.com.na. Archived from the original on 2018-01-03. Retrieved 2018-01-02.
5. "Dienda, Elma Jane". Namibian Parliament. Retrieved 2024-05-17.
6. "Chief whip chides Swapo MPs for absconding parly". Truth, for its own sake. Retrieved 2024-05-17.
7. Tonchi, Victor; Lindeke, William A.; Grotpeter, John J. (2012). Historical Dictionary of Namibia. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810853980.
8. 'Sex and the Prisons' get a rise out of MPs The Namibian, 19 June 2008
9. Namibian, The. "'Rape doesn't exist in marriage'". The Namibian. Retrieved 2022-07-28.