Opinions

Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro ANOTHER Workers’ Day has come and gone. Without much to write home about. This is despite the downward spiral trade unionism in Namibia has been seeing since independence. Year by year the trade union movement is losing its momentum, let alone its radicalism.  It is not as if workers by any measure have, since independence, gained much ground. That is if gaining any ground and/or hold in an independent Namibia was and has been by any means the reason for the continued existence of the unions. This is exactly the problem of the union movement in the country.…

Paul T. Shipale (with inputs by Folito Nghitongovali Diawara Gaspar) Education as the foundation of sovereignty Well before independence, the founding father Dr Sam Nujoma understood that education was not a peripheral social service but the structural backbone of statehood. Acting on this conviction, he entrusted Hon. Nahas Angula with a mission that, at the time, few fully grasped to design and later reconstruct an education system capable of sustaining a sovereign nation. With historical distance and in hindsight the strategic clarity of that decision is unmistakable. The durability of independence would not rest on political control alone but on…

Paul T. Shipale (with inputs by Folito Nghitongovali Diawara Gaspar) At a moment of visible internal strain, the appeal for unity by President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah on the occasion of the inauguration of the new building for the Swapo party national headquarters is not routine rhetoric. It was a diagnosis and, signals more importantly, exposure. Unity, once embedded in the ruling party’s historical DNA, must now be actively produced, defended, and, crucially, legitimated. The significance of the crossroads of 2026 lies precisely here. It is a threshold. It will test whether the ruling party can complete a transformation that has eluded…

Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro Since the discovery of oil in Namibia, the country, for better or worse, has been of particular interest to many developed countries and their so-called investors or explorers – you can call them what you wish.  Only then do they know what and who they are and what their interests in Namibia are. But does Namibia actually know what the various interests of these countries and their citizens, foremost the so-called explorers and investors and what-have-you, are with regard to Namibia other than what they are pretending to be and which we as a country have been tempted…

Paul T. Shipale (with inputs by Folito Nghitongovali Diawara Gaspar) The Namibia-Cuba Solidarity Committee has recently joined growing global calls for solidarity as the island nation continues to feel the impact of US policies and launched the Namibians in Solidarity with Cuba campaign, which seeks to raise essential supplies and financial contributions to support Cuban nationals, especially with energy and medical equipment. Indeed, this is a highly commendable and noble initiative. Conversely, any serious engagement of solidarity between Cuba and Africa must begin by stripping it of sentimentality. This is not a relationship built on diplomatic courtesy or abstract moral…

Kae Matundu - Tjiparuro THROUGH a recent report in a local English daily, headlined "Govt hospital’s ‘elite wing’ raises eyebrows", Namibia was and has been awakened to the harsh fact that the ideal of a classless society upon the attainment of independence, which has been seeming remote, shall never be. Not to mention if it ever was genuinely meant. That a classless society in an independent Namibia shall never be may not come from the Swapo of Namibia itself. Indeed, it has long been coming since independence: all talks about a classless society upon independence, or after, and it has…

Paul T. Shipale (with inputs by Folito Nghitongovali Diawara Gaspar) A crisis not of power, but of thought. After the thought-provoking editorial penned down by the Windhoek Observer on the occasion of the 66th anniversary of Swapo, one could not help but admire the accuracy of the analysis, especially when it refers to a drift and a loss of intellectual compass, ideological clarity, and, perhaps most dangerously, its sense of purpose, said the editorial. Indeed, for a party that once embodied ideological clarity, rooted in anti-colonial struggle, social justice, and a defined vision of economic transformation, it now appears ideologically…