Since assuming office, President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah has continuously placed great emphasis on job creation through local beneficiation and targeted support programmes for the youth. This has earned Namibia some attention beyond our borders but it still remains to be seen which measures will actually be taken to change the neo-colonial nature of our economy.
The President has set an ambitious target of 500,000 new jobs within her first term in office and even if only half of that were achieved, it would make a visible dent in Namibia’s unemployment rate.
Government has taken a first step by banning the export of unprocessed lithium and through regulations for on-land processing of fish. However, this is not enough and we need similar legislative and policy changes governing our raw materials if we want to create the envisaged number of new jobs.
Our unemployment rate now stands at 54% if the discouraged unemployed job seekers are added to those who are still actively looking for work.
Starvation wages and minimum wages
Legislative and policy measures towards job creation alone will be insufficient to tackle the triple challenge of unemployment, poverty and inequality. Poverty and inequality cannot be addressed if starvation wages are allowed to persist alongside huge wage gaps between workers and management.
Likewise, the enormous gap in the share of the national income between capital and labour has to be addressed. We have a problem of the “working poor” as many employed workers are unable to meet their basic needs. The most recent data indicate that the majority of employed workers earn below N$5 000 per month, with 45% earning below N$3 000. On the other side of the spectrum, a mere 2.6% of the employed population earn above N$40 000 per month.
Workers’ lived realities of being squeezed between enormous levels of unemployment and starvation wages are worsened by employers who take advantage of workers’ desperation and do not even adhere to the legal requirements like paid leave, extra pay for overtime and minimum wages.
This was exemplified by the employers’ response to the national minimum wage.
After 35 years of independence and following lengthy national consultations, the first national minimum wage was set at N$ 18 per hour and introduced in January 2025. This translates to a monthly income of about N$3 400 for a person working 45 hours a week.
Instead of welcoming the minimum wage as a modest step forward, the Namibian Employers Federation (NEF) immediately called on government to halt its implementation, labelling it unaffordable. This sent a clear signal that employers were determined to maintain a low wage economy which locks workers into poverty.
Trade unions
Given the hardships that workers continue to endure, the role of trade unions as the collective voice of workers becomes absolutely crucial. They need to be at the forefront of taking up workers’ concerns and be the driving force behind a campaign for structural change to benefit working class interests.
It was therefore astonishing to see that our oldest trade union federation, the National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW), invited the employers’ federation to speak at its May Day rally in Oshakati last year. The very organisation which had just opposed the minimum wage was welcome as “comrades” at the event!
This exemplifies the deep crisis that our trade unions find themselves in today. Far from the ideal of achieving “one country-one union federation” and “one industry-one union”, Namibia has over 40 registered trade unions and 3 union federations today.
These unions hardly cooperate with each other, even on matters that affect all workers.
One of the dividing lines is the question of independence from political parties, as the NUNW is affiliated to the SWAPO party while the other two federations, the Trade Union Congress of Namibia (TUCNA) and the smaller Namibia National Labour Organisation (NANLO), reject such a link.
However, the union crisis goes beyond the issue of political affiliation.
In the 1980s, many trade unions stilled played the role of social movements and took up issues beyond the workplace by addressing political demands for independence alongside demands for better working and living conditions. After independence, the unions’ role was narrowed to that of a “social partner” within a narrowly defined tripartite arrangement. Government became the sole decision-maker while trade unions and employers were consulted within a “social dialogue” framework that looked at labour issues narrowly without addressing the broader constraints of a neo-colonial economy. Internally, many trade unions experienced increasing levels of bureaucratisation and a shift away from social movement unionism and the principle of workers’ control towards “business unionism” with hierarchical structures and little emphasis on workers’ mobilisation for social and economic changes. This also meant that unions hardly engaged with other community organisation to address common problems like the housing crisis.
What next?
Given this scenario, Namibian workers and their trade unions truly have a mountain to climb.
Their challenges today are linked to our neo-colonial economic structures and the accompanying by-products of massive levels of poverty and inequality.
Workers will have to once again turn their unions into struggle organisations that will confront injustices and exclusion head on. This will require significant changes in terms of trade unions’ orientation and practice but it can be done. Namibian workers have shown great resilience in the face of adversity before.
*Herbert Jauch is a labour researcher and author of the upcoming book ‘Workers, Trade Unions and Politics in Namibia: A Long Journey of Resistance’.These are his own views.