Ekandjo was born on 17 March 1947 in
Windhoek,
South-West Africa. He was a member of the
SWAPO Party Youth League from 1969 to 1973 and served as chairman of its
Windhoek branch. In August 1973 he was arrested, and in November 1973 he was put on trial for incitement of violence. He was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison, which he spent on
Robben Island in
South Africa. Following his release in 1981, he was a teacher from 1982 to 1987, and in 1989, he was the deputy head of
SWAPO voter registration. After nearly ten years as
Minister of Home Affairs, Ekandjo was moved to the post of
Minister of Lands and Resettlement on March 21, 2005. It was reported that at the time 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 the 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 resigned his seat in parliament in late 2019. ==Views and controversies==