SWAPO-Democrats (SWAPO-D) were a breakaway  group from SWAPO. In the mid-1970s Shipanga and some others had complained about the corruption and misuse of funds by the SWAPO executive. And they had called for a change in leadership. This incident is known as the ‘Shipanga Affair’ or the ‘Shipanga Rebellion’: For their ‘dissent’ Shipangas group was imprisoned by the party for two years without trial. SWAPO-D was founded in Sweden in 1978 after their release. It was a small group of ex-SWAPO members who believed in the party’s vision and principles but were critical of its undemocratic practices. Shipanga expelled both the Abrahams in 1980 on the grounds that they had “betrayed their positions of trust by indulging in acts prejudicial to the interests of the party.” In 1983 SWAPO-D joined the “South African supported Multi-Party Conference and in 1985 [went] into the so called Transitional Government of National Unity.” For these reasons SWAPO-D were seen by many as collaborators with the apartheid regime. Ottilie, SWAPO-D’s first Secretary-General, later said that “The formation of SWAPO-D was a mistake. But the feeling behind it was not a mistake. We did not want to leave SWAPO but we wanted the accent to be on democracy.”