Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
FOR what it is worth! Yours Truly Ideologically could not but title this week’s column as such. Urging to join the ongoing debate pertaining to the dichotomy between the Minister of Urban and Rural Development and elected local authority councils. Thinking whether the debate is worth the time and energy that seems to be expended on it. As if there’s ever any unclarity between the functions of these councils and the central government, and thus ministers and/or Cabinet if you wish, let alone the Minister of Urban and Rural Development (MURD).
As far as Yours Truly is concerned, there is a seeming misunderstanding and/or lack of understanding between and among the various levels of authority, and indeed accountability, the central (ministers) and the local authorities or regional ones for that matter. But instead very much about power and what is perceived to be accompanied by such. Which is in Namibia and has been all about the usurping thereof for aggrandisement. Hence the aversion towards upright actions of MURD since assuming office. Which is ultimately intended to stop the rot so widespread at these levels of government without impunity. With many thus seeing the hands-on approach of the Honourable James Sankwasa just as he flexes his muscles for their own sake. Only to endear oneself to Big Sister and her mantra of “business unusual”.
Forgetting that for too long, government officials at these lower levels have been kings and/or queens to themselves with no oversight. Thus, more than serving the local and/or regional communities, they are serving and helping themselves instead without stopping and/or fearing detection of the meagre and scarce public budgetary allocations.
While kleptocracy has been playing itself out at these levels, like at the national level, the requisite delivery of services has been next to zero. This is not denying that some authorities have been living up to their promises of delivering outstanding services to their residents. But they have been few and far between. Primarily because they have been laws unto themselves without the necessary supervision and/or accountability. Something it seems Hon. Sankwasa is trying to rectify.
It is an undeniable fact that few of these authorities have the necessary sources or wherewithal to attend to the plethora of needs, even just the basic ones, of the residents. Because few of them have the necessary revenue bases some of the big metropoles, like Windhoek, may have. Even for the capital city itself, it has been a matter of touch and go to administer to the hordes of needs of its residents. Not to mention the revenue base having to squeeze revenue out of residents who are barely surviving.
Given the urban influx the City has to deal with annually, it is left to its own devices, with the central government assuming it is capable of fending for itself and its ever-growing populations. Thus receiving little if any allocation from the national budget in this regard. In fact, the sad state of finances/revenue under which the City of Windhoek has been operating for years, time and again, has been revealed by some of its councillors. With the central government virtually doing little about the situation, urban influxes from the rural areas is not a problem akin to Windhoek only but are experienced practically by every city and town in Namibia. A factor is the stagnated development of rural areas in the country. The blame thereof, which, for that matter, can be laid squarely at the door of central government. With regional governments and/or regional councils, because speaking of them as governments is an exaggeration in view of them being mere functional extensions of central government. Despite the avowed decentralisation of duties and obligations, as you would put it, local and regional administrations have been in the unenviable positions of near-zero budgets. Having to rely on and wait on the central government for handouts. Even on the regional level, with regard to regional councils, the situation may be more of a catch-22 situation than meets the eye. Given the natural unease, if not total dichotomy and/or misfunction and malfunction between elected councils and an imposed authority in the person of the governor or office of the governor.
It is not hard to see that some of the regional councils have not been functioning as well as they ought to be because of the unease and/or total lack of cooperation between the governor and the regional council. Likewise, given this cold war, it is, for that matter, not unrealistic to suspect the central government deliberately underbudgeting some regional councils just because they are not dominated by the ruling party. A case in point is the regional councils of the regions of Hardap and /Karas, which have been dominated, if not run exclusively, by the Landless Peoples Movement (LPM), while the governors are and have been appointees of any incumbent Swapo President. A situation bound to continue under the current president, Her Excellency Netumbo Nandi-Ndeitwah (NNN), unless Swapo regains the two regions during this November’s Regional and Local Authority Elections.
Thus, it may have been the genuine wish and intent of Hon. Sankwasa to hit the ground running. But his good intent notwithstanding seemed to run against a fortified brick wall of entrenched maladministrations, if not total sabotage, underpinned by a culture of nepotism, cronyism and self-enrichment at the expense of the inhabitants and residents of the respective regions and local authorities. Whereby the attendant self-enrichment schemes are not combatted and/or halted and reversed but further entrenched. Because from the looks of things, the desire to run either for regional councils or local authorities is not so much service-driven and eventually to improve the living standards and conditions of the inhabitants and residents but to continue and entrench the rot of capitalism and thereby further open the floodgates of aggrandisement and the plunder of the assumed natural richness at these levels. While and when in fact there are hardly any. Assumed riches because there are few, if any, of Namibia’s regions and local authorities that can claim to be well endowed enough to feed for themselves and their inhabitants and residents. If there’s anything to be plundered, it is the meagre allotments that the regions and local authorities can hardly scrape by with to fulfil even the most basic needs of the inhabitants and residents.
But the big and pertinent question is whether the Hon. Sankwasa’s escapades shall ever make any difference to the rot rooted in the capitalist system inherited from decades of colonialism and entrenched instead of being if only halted and eventually reversed for the last 35 years that Namibia has been independent. No. Simply because neither the ruling party, Swapo, nor any aspirant has the necessary ideological disposition to ring in the necessary beginning towards what Hon. Sankwasa is trying to take a lead on.
