Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
At last Namibia has been reclassified as a lower-middle-income economy from an upper-middle one. A reclassification that the country, especially its late third president, Dr Hage Geingob, hardly missed any international financial and economic platform to plead with players on this platform, especially the World Bank, that the country has wrongly been classified as an upper-middle economy. Late President Geingob may have had his reasons why he very much and untiringly pleaded for a re-classification. Which no doubt had anything to do with what he thought the country at large could benefit from such a re-classification. Foremost, the fact that she could thereby obtain easy borrowing terms on the international financial borrowing market. Eventually his dreams in this regard have been and/or are being realised. Whether it is in the best interests of the country is yet to be determined, as the re-classification having just been made known; it is indeed early days to tell. Already the debate has ensued within the country if the various comments by financial experts and analysts as in the local media are anything to go by. Ranging from the ease of borrowing to late president Geingob’s case for the global financial/borrowing market to see the Namibian economy for what it actually is. A developing country, if not altogether an underdeveloped one, if you wish. As opposed to the one she has been made to be, which is an affluent, high-earning economy. Oblivious to the skewedness of her economy and the wide gap between high earners and those at the bottom of the income scale. Namibia’s economic and financial experts and analysts may and indeed can have their take on what this re-classification means and may mean. But to Yours Truly Ideologically it can mean only one thing. The reality of Namibia’s income gap. Which in turn is reflected in high inequality and rampant poverty. Poverty, axiomatically, is not general among the populace but is as much prevalent among the majority of the Namibian population and extremely predominant among the indigenous African Black populations and their respective regions, with some regions more privileged than others.
Which is a legacy of colonialism and capitalism. That, for that matter, with independence has not subsided and narrowed but entrenched and widened. To the extent that even there is now between the affluent Africans and/or indigenous bourgeoisie, a wide divide based on ethnic, language and regional origins. To the extent that these social and economic classes, unlike during the days of the struggle for national liberation, are and can no longer be seen as one and the same but with only minor contradictions. But instead, two diametrically opposed classes.
As much as it could and may be argued that with freedoms and rights guaranteed by the Namibian Constitution, which include that of economic opportunities, not all are equal before the Constitution. As per George Orwell’s book, Animal Farm, some animals are more equal than others. Likewise, in an independent and free Namibia, born out of the quest for socio-economic justice, it has been becoming apparent and is obvious that socio-economic justice, as long as it is in the context of entrenched capitalism, some citizens, whether based on their language or/and ethnicity, as well as regional origin, shall be privileged to being more equal than others and not part of each other.
Indeed, the crucial and critical question, now that Namibia has been reclassified as a lower-middle-income country, is not so much about the ease or lack thereof of borrowing and/or accessing grants and/or attracting investments. But if any capital inflow in whatever form and content shall go and how long it shall go to address the elephant in the room. This elephant in the room being the one that, in the first instance, was given and continues to be given the wrong picture for the classification of Namibia as an upper-middle-income country and/or economy. Giving rise to the “misdiagnosis“ informing Namibia’s classification as an upper-middle-income country, as some economic and/or financial experts and/or academics would characterise it. But is it so much a question of “misdiagnosis” than one of the hidden and/or little spoken about skewedness of the Namibian economy? Because there are few economic experts and/or analysts calling the Namibian economy what it is. A capitalist one with its inherent contradictions of the filthy rich and cripplingly poor.
All the factors of the exploitative capitalist system, which condemns the working class to poverty, notwithstanding the wealth they create with their country’s natural resources, and not least their physical labour through toiling. In unending and unbroken shifts to produce the wealth of the country, which at the end of the day they share, if anything, but crumbs.
Talking about “misdiagnosis” is nothing but an intellectual betrayal by our economic/financial experts and analysts. Hiding the inherent structuralisation and mechanisation of capitalism. Whereby the extraction of a country’s natural resources, through the exploitation of indigenous labour, and the alienation of the country’s people, including the workers, from these natural resources, which are appropriated by foreign multinationals.
Following and living in the throes of such exploitation, appropriation and expropriation is inequality, poverty and squalor. All rationalised by classifying the country as an upper-middle-income one. Which belies the gross exploitation and plunder of the country’s natural resources and the classification of the country as middle income.
But after everything has been said and done, it remains to be seen if such a re-classification would cut to the bone of the reality of capitalism in Namibia. If any resultant capital inflow, however, capitalism and its masterminds and fixers, the economists, analysts and all the whole coterie of aspiring capitalists, the comprador class, may rationalise and spin the re-classification. If it ever shall translate into an economic transformation benefitting those at the lower end of the country’s economic system. In which the working class is and has always been at its sharper end. Suffering from it with the usual excuses of economic headwinds. On the contrary, it has always been the workers who have been hard hit, if not only them, by unfavourable economic climates as they have been variously described.
Whether in the so-called good and bad economic times, an equal redistribution has been non-existent. Of course, how could any ideologue in his right frame of mind, except the adherents of capitalism itself and its exploitative nature in the capitalist parlance of the growth of the economy, be expected to ever take care of the workers in terms of equal redistribution of natural resources?
Not as long as the foundation of such redistribution is capitalism. For capitalism is inherently for amassing profits for those who have appropriated and expropriated Namibia’s natural resources under the guise of investments. In the final analysis, if there’s anything that Namibia can and should have had from this re-classification, it is laying bare the factors and functions of the structures of capitalist exploitation. Whereby the invisible hand of capitalism is blinding the unsuspecting working class of the world, with the connivance of its political allies.
