Dubbed ‘Economic Revival and Caring for the Poor’, the N$84.6 billion 2023-2024 budget has drawn the ire of some and brought joy to others, with some parliamentarians asking President Hage Geingob to remove “deadwood” ministers from his Cabinet if achieving meaningful results is his goal.
Adding his voice to the budget debate this week, Landless People’s Movement (LPM) second-in-command Henny Seibeb said it leaves much to be desired for as long as no serious investment is made in agriculture.
“We use agriculture as a basis for wiping off rural inequality, wiping off rural-urban women’s divide, and as a mechanism to fight rural poverty and improve rural economic development,” he said on Tuesday.
The agriculture and land reform ministry received N$1.7 billion for the current fiscal year.
This is a drop in the ocean, Seibeb asserted.
“How do we achieve food security, food sovereignty with such an allocation? I thought that you would once and for all allocate over N$10 billion over the MTEF period so that we can enter into solving the land and agrarian question,” he added.
Seibeb then urged finance minister Iipumbu Shiimi to study how the development of capitalist agriculture led to industrialisation.
He went on to address the recent oil discoveries in Namibia’s Orange Basin that the energy ministry is bullish about.
What worries Seibeb is the //Kharas regional management’s exclusion of discoveries in its own backyard.
“We bemoan the fact that the regional council and local authorities in southern Namibia continue to be isolated from such oil talks and deal-making,” he lamented.
The LPM rules these two southern regions.
He also addressed Geingob.
“We hope that President Geingob would remove some of the deadwood from Cabinet in Namibia, and at least achieve something good in his remaining 24 months in office. Otherwise, he would go down in history as the most talkative yet toothless man. There are many Cabinet ministers sitting here today who do not even deserve to be in parliament, much less in Cabinet,” he charged.
The political strategist furthermore addressed issues around the Meat Corporation of Namibia (Meatco), which has in recent times enjoyed the limelight for all the wrong reasons.
The politicisation of the entity at the expense of competency led to its demise, he reasoned.
“We all know what killed Meatco. We all know how wrong political appointments led to the demise of many public enterprises. I mean, you were doomed for failure the day you brought in a hotel chain business person [Namundjebo-Tilahun] to the meat industry, with no industry knowledge and record. You were doomed from day one already. Perhaps the line minister was supposed to appoint her at Windhoek Country Club, and not at Meatco,” he said.
Property mogul Martha Namundjebo-Tilahun was appointed as Meatco board chairperson in 2013 by then agriculture minister John Mutorwa. She resigned in 2020.
“Nonetheless, I wish to thank AgriBank for the N$25.6 million that they have committed to women and youth to promote their empowerment programmes and business ideas,” the politician continued.
On his part, Swapo parliamentarian Tobbie Aupindi took issue with the ballooning public debt.
“Parliament, which is the authentic representative of the Namibian people, should have been provided with a full disclosure. The lack of a full disclosure could mean that there is no transparency in the reporting of the public debt,” he said.
The outspoken politician was “appreciative of the common concern that the public debt is a ‘clear and present danger’ for the country and its economy, going forward, as we are fast running out of fiscal space.”
He then called for the diversification of the economy, saying as a mineral exporter, Namibia remains vulnerable to any negative price fluctuation.
Information minister Peya Mushelenga’s eyes were fixated on the budgetary allocation to the education sector, and challenges confronting it.
He chose to avoid the blame-game, instead focusing on solutions to awaken the sector from its slumber and lacklustre performance.
“Education is central to the functioning of any society, and when there are problems, they should not be dumped at the doorsteps of individuals in the teaching fraternity. All of us have a responsibility towards finding solutions, assessing aspects related to school environments, learners’ attitude towards learning, teachers’ attitude towards teaching, curriculum design and teacher education, amongst others,” Mushelenga said.
The education ministry and higher education ministries were allocated N$16.7 billion and N3.8 billion, respectively.
“I support the allocation of N$4.1 billion in the 2023/24 budget, aimed at improving the quality of secondary education through a responsive and appropriate national curriculum, its support materials, capacity-building and the professionalisation of educators,” he added.
On the higher education front, the minister welcomed the appointment of Anicia Peters as CEO of the National Commission on Research, Science and Technology (NCRST).
She previously chaired the 4th Industrial Revolution Task Force, and served as pro-vice chancellor for research, innovation and development at the University of Namibia (Unam).
Meanwhile, for shadow finance minister and Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) MP Nico Smit, there is nothing to write home about in the budget.
“The budget is neither pro-sustainability nor pro-poor, and definitely not pro-growth. These are all just various forms of the same rhetoric, and it has not achieved anything or accomplished any meaningful objective for as long as I have been following budgets.
Namibians remain poor, and “nothing the government does changes the painful fact of their pervasive poverty and the pain that comes from living in a ghetto, which we softly call an informal settlement, and eating from the garbage dump,” Smit emphasised.
According to him, the almost N$ 10 billion derived from the Southern African Customs Union should have been used “to wipe out the deficit, stabilise our debt, bring the debt metrics back to the prescribed levels, and use the money to be truly pro-poor.”
-emumbuu@nepc.com.na
Caption: