of the November 2007 SWAPO congress, some in the party wanted Ekandjo to become the party's vice president, although at the congress Hage Geingob was elected to the post without opposition. Ekandjo is widely considered to be a hardliner in the party. He received the highest number of votes in the election for the SWAPO central committee at the November 2007 congress. On January 27, 2008, he was elected as SWAPO's secretary for information and publicity at a central committee meeting, a move that was considered surprising given Ekandjo's reputation for having a harsh attitude toward the media. Ekandjo was moved from his post as Minister of Lands and Resettlement to that of Minister of Regional and Local Government, Housing and Rural Development in a cabinet reshuffle on 8 April 2008. At SWAPO's 2012 party congress, Ekandjo stood as a candidate for SWAPO vice president, but he was defeated by Hage Geingob in the vote held on 2 December 2012. Geingob received 312 votes from the delegates, while Ekandjo received 220 votes and Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana received 64 votes. In the wake of the congress, Ekandjo was moved to the post of Minister of Youth, National Service, Sport and Culture as part of a cabinet reshuffle on 4 December 2012. In late August 2014, when SWAPO chose its list of parliamentary candidates for the November 2014 general election, Ekandjo only managed to obtain the 81st spot on the list, a poor performance that made it seem unlikely that he would be elected to the National Assembly. Although he failed to make it into parliament in the election, he was subsequently chosen by President Hage Geingob as one of his eight presidential appointees to the National Assembly. Geingob also retained Ekandjo as Minister of Sport, Youth and National Service when he named his cabinet in March 2015. For the 2017 SWAPO electoral congress Ekandjo campaigned against president Geingob, calling the leadership of government and ruling party "weak". He was dismissed from his minister position on 1 February 2018, along with fellow critic and minister Iivula-Ithana. Erastus Uutoni took over the youth, sport and culture portfolio from him. Ekandjo is still a member of parliament. Views and controversies In 2000, Ekandjo, as home affairs minister, urged police to eliminate homosexuals from Namibia. This caused great controversy in Namibia. The opposition Democratic Turnhalle Alliance and United Democratic Front put forward a motion of no-confidence