Kae MatunduÂ
INCREASINGLY Yours Truly Ideologically is starting to doubt and question the meaning and essence of the yearly State of the Nation Addresses (SONAs) and same as well as that of State of the Region Addresses (SORAs) as has become the political tradition since independence.
Especially doubting if the said addresses are true reflections of the real socio-economic conditions of the people on the ground, rather than just a public relations exercise by the powers that be.
To make the country believe that the administration is and has been doing something to better the lives of the country and regions’ peoples in any particular year, and during the tenure of the administrations. While many such a SONAs and SORAs have been at the backdrop of glaring poverty and deteriorations and regressions, if not total decays of the socio-economic conditions of many if not most.
The pictures often painted by the spinners of SONAs and SORAs, and so delivered by their masters’ and mistresses’ voices and/or big brothers and sisters, the presidents and governors, as it would be respectively, has more often than not left one, especially Yours Truly in disbelieve if such are speaking about the same state of the same nation and/or country, in which he is part of.
As what he has been hearing, seeing and observing with his perhaps wax cluttered ears, and seeing and observing with his naked eyes on a daily basis, many a times a far cry from what his ears been hearing and naked eyes seeing on the ground in many of our impoverished societal slums, many of them if any at all not worth at all to be called residential areas and/or neighbourhoods. This cannot but have been leaving one to wonder what the SONAs and SORAs speak to year in and year out.
As the would-be champions of SONAs and SORAs would preach their gospel of glorification around the years, many a citizen and/or inhabitants would be scavenging many of the dumbs of opulence for what they could salvage from such, even if it is for that all-important meal of the day. Which for the wretched of the Namibian earth, shall even be the first and last meal of the day. Or even week or a month. This makes one wonder what the SONAs and SORAs actually speak to and mean by the state of the nation and regions. In the face of the practical livelihoods realities many face and experience every day of their lives, Yours Truly Ideologically cannot but pose the question if those thrown to the dogs by Capitalism subjugated to squalor and misery by our Capitalist society, ever cross the minds of the masterminds of SONAs and SORAs? If, how and in what way do the SONAs and SORAs ever speak to them with these fellow citizens finding themselves ever in the same unbearable, denigrating and dehumanising situations they are subjugated and condemned to? With the SONAs and SORAs being about glory, at best, and in the least the achievements of the administrations. Making one wonders how these achievements are measured in the face of naked miseries as a result of exploitation, marginalisation and alienation, if not totally outcast by society.
To make the SONAs and SORAs less of a glory that they are and having been seem to be, problems and challenges faced are thrown in here and there. The effect thereof, which at the end of the day is and has not been not about a true appreciation of these challenges but more of an excuse and placation of the non-delivery of the administrations is. A concoction and semblance, more than anything, of their inability and lack of political and ideological will to ever deliver
Yours Truly Ideologically cannot but recall an instance of one SONA, when while sitting in the car in one of the City’s parking, while listening to a SONA. Being joined by a fellow resident of the City. One does not know the situation in which he was, and surely no doubt the SONA notwithstanding he is still in after, if one can really be seen as a worthy resident of the City just like any another. Or should one accept like on the animal farm, some animals being more equal than others. Is this the true meaning of inequality? For some to be in affluence, abundance and decadence while others literally have nothing. Not even anything to eat. For days if not months for that matter?
Be that as it may be my fellow resident, evidently ravaged by many times of the SONAs, interest was not also listen to the SONA but to share a sandwich. Certainly Your Truly could not but share. Unknown and oblivious to the SONA big boss that out there are many to whom the SONAs and SORAs are meaningless. Yet proceeding unhindered and unconcerned ever if not temporarily and transiently so for the moment of the SONA when may have mentioned something about inequality and poverty.
Because to the many wretched of our neighbourhood, communities and societies, SONAs and SORAs are anything but meaningless. For they are craft in abstractionism with little, if any knowledge, of the many lives rendered useless by capitalism. For that is what capitalism is all about. Use and discard. Because what may seem to many of us today as useless vagrants, were once productive people that capitalism has been done with. True to itself of using productively, exploiting and discarding.
The fallacy of SONAs and SORAs and what-have-you as it may be, has lately no more than apparent in Namibia than in the SORAs delivered by governors, against and above, the real owners of SORAs the regional councils, and their chairpersons. Who ordinarily are democratically, as elected personas and institutions, accountable to the people of the regions.Thus also axiomatically who should also be assessing and evaluating the state of wellness and wellbeing of the regions. And by extension also thus reporting to the sovereigns in the regions rather the appointees of the President, the governors whose affinity to such regions, if any is at best remote, by the way and a matter of political allegiance to the appointee, the President. As opposed to being rooted in regional patriotism and affinity and commitment to the interests of the regions. More occupied with Big Brother/Sister watching you. For in the final analysis this is what the governors are for than for the regions in flesh and by heart and soul.
