By the President’s own admission in her 36th Independence Anniversary statement and speech, Namibia is facing poverty and inequality. That is a fact! However, what is not clear and what the country must come to terms with through a national dialogue is what these socio-economic evils, for a lack of a better term, represent.
Challenges as Her Excellency maintains. Or are they fundamental factors of the capitalist system? Because unless the country addresses these varying interpretations and understandings as they seem between and among those, like Her Excellency, who think poverty and inequality are just challenges, and those who think they are more than challenges but inherent and intrinsic to the pertaining production system, it is difficult to see how the country can with “One Heart and One Mind” commit itself to “building a better future”. Whatever and however, for that matter, one may define and perceive this better future.
It is Yours Truly Ideologically’s profound belief and conviction that until the day Namibia revisits, interrogates, and seriously and purposefully introspects herself ideologically, thereby dissecting and positing the socio-economic problems that she is facing and grappling with currently in their proper ideological context, what she sees as but mere challenges shall persist in eternity.
Because the country is not trying to let alone identify them in their true and rightful context, which may be and is the system in which they are and may be rooted. In this regard, the prevailing and attaining socio-economic system. Needless to mention, that is the capitalist system.
Yours Truly Ideologically cannot but note Her Excellency’s reference in her 36th Independence Anniversary statement and speech to the Namibian Revolution. Led, among others, by His Excellency the late Dr Sam Shafiishuna Nujoma.
Her Excellency’s mention and reference to the Namibian Revolution cannot but invoke the pertinent question of if it was a matter of it having been led by Comrade Nujoma, if it has ended or not and if it has ended on what note, and if not, likewise, where today it is and in what form and manner it is being continued. By whom is it being led, for that matter?
These are not the only vexed questions in this regard, but attendant is what the Namibian Revolution actually meant, if it has ended, and/or means if it is still continuing? “The Namibian Nation…witnessed the collapse of the apartheid racist South African regime and the triumphant hoisting of the Namibian flag,” says Her Excellency President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah in the speech alluded to. Is this what the Namibian Revolution being referred to was all about? “End of the colonial apartheid rule and the birth of a sovereign Namibia?”
Not really, given the theme of Namibia’s 36th Independence Anniversary: “Beyond 36: For a Prosperous Future”. “To build a Namibia that is prosperous, inclusive and united for generations to come,” expounds and amplifies Her Excellency.
But what does “prosperous” actually mean, and is such prosperity meant for all, and can these be deduced from the word “inclusive”? But more pertinent is the question of if prosperity can be interpreted to mean, equalled and/or compared to egalitarianism.
This question further invokes another, which is whether such ideals like prosperity, which can be interpreted to mean prosperity for all, if not only for most, are in all honesty attainable under not only the prevailing productive system but also given the attainment, if not complete lack, of an ideological disposition of the political leadership corp? Of whatever political persuasion as it may be.
Granted, Namibia has seen some measure of peace and stability. That, for that matter, she has been preserving all these years. Which is what Her Excellency implores her fellow citizens must protect and safeguard at all times. As, indeed, such national achievements are as they are billed and cannot be an end in themselves but a means to an end. The prosperity alluded to already by Her Excellency, which in itself for that matter not only needs definition and refinement but also given full practical meaning and substance instead of remaining mere rhetoric.
As much as there’s no way any Namibian can adopt and assume a Namibian identity, if such a thing exists and shall ever be fostered, as a matter of pure aesthetics. Rather than a matter of practicality and substance. Those from the pedestals of political vantage cannot hope and/or dream that fellows who are not similarly vintaged as them can perceive and accept, let alone embrace, national identity and pride equally like them. Their everyday struggles to eke out a living have no room for political abstracts like national identity and pride.
Nor can they have the same outlook as Her Excellency and women and men, preoccupied with macroeconomics, which have no meaning to the ordinary person where she/he finds herself or himself, be it in our inner cities/towns and/or rural backyards. This begs the question of if Her Excellency’s macroeconomics can be reconciled, let alone ever be synonymous if not consonant with the dream for and of prosperity for the future, if only the prosperity of many in our mushrooming informal settlements, a euphemism for ghettos.
Some of those today occupying, if not predominantly or significantly, are none other than workers. As Namibia is not a fully industrialised economy yet, she cannot and may not be speaking of workers in the same vogue as industrialised economies; nevertheless, she has a working corp that can be described as workers. Whoever this class may encompass. “Workers still bleeding 36 years later,” read a headline of a local English weekly on the eve of the independence anniversary.
Despite the legislative framework in favour of the workers as per the Labour Act, its provisions as it pertains to workers are and have been far from enabling the workers to fully enjoy the fruits of independence. Part of the reason is because the unbearable conditions of the workers have little to do with whether there is a legislative framework in their favour or not, and it is purely a matter of implementation. What the workers are facing is rooted in the structural nature of Namibia’s capitalist economy. Its essence is the continued extraction of the country’s raw natural resources and thereby the perpetuation of the exploitation of the country and her workers.
How the Namibian government disposes herself towards this ideological reality is defined by its pretentious realpolitik accentuated, among others, by a mixed economic system as enshrined in the Constitution. Which in reality is nothing but a continuation of capitalism. But the country hardly dialogues on these and other issues as a matter of ideological refinement, clarity and compass.
