Officials in the employ of town and regional councils are supposed to serve the public without expecting to have their palms greased in one way or another.
Traditional authorities are also in existence to serve the people without any pre-conditions or bias, particularly when they apportion land to their communities.
But of late it seems some individuals are under the mistaken notion that their sole purpose should be self-enrichment or that they should only be serving their cronies and clans.
There has been a proliferation of cases of injustice when it comes to the allocation of land in some communal areas and also in some towns, with crooked and vampiric individuals trying underhandedly to enrich themselves.
In other cases that border on criminality unscrupulous municipal officials buy land for next to nothing and resell this land at outrageous prices.
Often we hear of councillors or members of one or another traditional authority giving each other land at the expense of the poor.
Officials serving in towns and traditional authorities should be put under the microscope because some of them sit with criminal records, having previously been kicked out of their jobs and even convicted before a court of law. These ex-convicts are wicked men whose hearts perpetually plot misdeed at the expense of the masses, who deserve much better and not the present disservice.
And how they got to head institutions where they are responsible for budgets running into millions of dollars and even have the final say over lucrative tenders defies logic. Very often reports resurface about how some of these crooked individuals are amassing unexplained wealth beyond their means.
One in fact needs a bit of luck to acquire land hassle-free without being subjected to a lengthy period of being put on a never-ending waiting list. And even when you have been allocated that land there is no guarantee some people will not launch a counterclaim on the same piece of land by invoking ancestral rights.
Individuals who give land to friends and their praise-singing and bootlicking lackeys should be reminded that the masses have a right to land.
Self-gratification is a serious crime and law enforcers should vigorously, and without fear or favour, aggressively pursue these crooks dishing out residential and communal plots to each other and to their sidekicks who are guilty as hell.
Officials must serve with dedication and nothing less – period. We reiterate that all Namibians should be treated fairly and the culprits perpetrating such dishonesty have a contract to serve all Namibians regardless of whether they are their kith and kin or not. The politics of patronage that have become endemic in some local and traditional authorities are simply primitive and have no place in an independent Namibia.
We want to emphasise again that service in whatever form should be above board or else officials lose credibility and more importantly the support of the people they purport to represent, as these people will fight back and become antagonistic.
There is a saying that he who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth or unfairly gives to the rich will only come to poverty and the same will happen to individuals involved in their various shenanigans.