By Professor Joseph Diescho
The ancient Chinese art of war guru, Sun Tzu had an instructive dictum: “To win a war without fighting it is best”. This teaching is as true now as it was then. Human beings build and sustain civilizations by norms and values based upon a set of rules and precepts accepted by a critical mass of inhabitants of any given territory on this planet earth. Without these commonly accepted and as a guide, it is impossible to have a sense of a Bonum Commune, the common good and in the absence of this common good chaos, disorder, and lawlessness ensue with an unavoidable outcome: the survival of the fittest – a world wherein the most powerful, the most cunning, the most manipulative, survives better at the expense of the finest and all.
In the absence of clear and purposeful rules and guidelines, a civilization is bound to suffer an inherent inability to sustain itself over time, never mind get passed on to the next generations with a sense of self-worth, pride and a glue that holds together meaningful mutual relationships.
Clear guidelines assist members of any community to predict consequences, be it reward or punishment, of good and bad behaviour and such members are in a position to engage in meaningful interactions with others in ways that nurture the foundation for a better life for all.
Without a set of clear precepts to guide and mould positive human behaviour, the end result is an expansion of a collection of people without a memory, without a history and a culture to illuminate the road it has traversed.
Such a people are without a past, without a soul and are a dead nation without a compass to navigate its way into an unknown future.
This is one reality Nelson Mandela understood well as he tried to build the foundation for a non-racial, non-sexist South Africa.
One great foundation he laid was to rearrange the behaviour of the officials in the business of the state.
For instance, he refused to copy the typical African pompous so-called protocol of treating the President as King to be feared and celebrated above all.
Mandela never required his cabinet ministers to see him off at the airport when travelling and receive him upon his return.
His administration never required resident ambassadors to be at the airport for him either as he understood that the time that it would take for all these esteemed servants of their nations to travel to the airport and wait for him would be wasting of meagre resources needed for development projects.
Out of self-respect and the respect of his country men and women, Mandela never went to the airport to receive a visiting head of state, including the Queen of Great Britain and Pope John Paul ll when they visited South Africa.
His guests would be received by the Foreign Minister and one or two cabinet ministers at the airport who would deliver them to a proper official reception at the Presidential Guest House.
And there were photos of visiting Presidents or Kings on lamp posts along the streets of Pretoria, as Mandela understood that such cost money that would be better spent on assisting the vulnerable members of society rather than on his and his friends’ faces.
Needless to say, Mandela never paraded himself as Doctor Mandela even though by the time he passed on he had received more than 130 honorary doctoral degrees from universities around the world. With this he established an ethic of leadership that future generations can emulate as good, honourable and life giving things to do. No wonder the world came to respect him as an unusual leader in Africa where others are more concerned about themselves at the expense of the people they purport to lead.
One area wherein Mandela set the scene upon which to build is clarity about state funerals.
South Arica had its first state funeral in December 2013, when that nation and the world buried former President Nelson Mandela. Does this mean that no important people died in that country since the advent of democracy in 1994?
The answer is No. With all the shortcomings South Africans have, they managed to sort out one thing clearly, namely that state funerals are individuals who were a Head of State.
This makes it easier for all people to understand, accept and predict when a state funeral, which is a very costly affair, is possible only in certain rare circumstances, namely the death of a President.
Interestingly the first person to qualify for a state funeral in post-apartheid South Africa was former President P.W. Botha, who refused to lay under the new non-racial South African symbols and preferred to be left alone.
To honour that wish, he was not given a full-fledged state funeral even though the ANC-led Government offered it by virtue of protocol.
Consider how many state funerals there would have been if Mandela did not set clear rules and procedures governing government-related burials. Very senior ANC stalwarts died in the last 20 years without a state funeral: Walter Sisulu, the man who discovered and moulded Mandela into politics, his wife Albertina Sisulu, Adelaide Tambo, the wife of Oliver Tambo, Govan Mbeki, President Thabo Mbeki’s father and Mandela’s comrade in the underground movement and on Robben Island, ANC Youth League President Peter Mokaba, the first Foreign Affairs Minister Alfred Nzo, the first Defence minister Joe Modise, the first Sports Minister Steve Tshwete, the first Justice Minister Dulla Omar, the first Constitutional Court Justice Arthur Chaskalson, the second Constitutional court Justice Pius Langa, Mandela and Mbeki’s presidential spokesman Parks Mankahlana, the longest white liberal voice in apartheid parliament Helen Suzman, the Dutch Reformed anti-apartheid voice Beyers Naude, to mention a few. None of them got a state funeral because none of them was Head of State. They all received either a Government Funeral or an Official Funeral.
The case in Namibia is totally different as there is no clarity. Namibia had over 6 state funerals in the last 20 years without the death of a President.
What is the difference when the enemy of the liberation struggle in both countries was the same: apartheid colonialism? The difference lies in the clarity of purpose of a state funeral which are not meant for liberation struggle icons who, but who were never Head of State, and the determination of a who qualifies for a state funeral is not the function of one person who is likely to act arbitrarily depending on circumstances and prefers on a particular day.
For instance, in Namibia any person who is in good standing of the President at a given time is accorded a state funeral. The Namibian model of state funerals cannot be sustained because it is based upon a set of rules that can be countenanced even by the common man.
For example, it is not clear whether a decorated Plan fighter who would die this day as member of the RDP leadership would be given a state funeral.
That person would have been given if he died in 2003. In addition, the trend that has been set creates undue expectations that the state cannot meet, such as families either expecting or lobbying that their family member be given a state funeral. This is likely to get worse until the rules are clear, blind and fair!
It is equally important to fashion a culture of rules and that has the potential to guide future generations to do the right things and for the right purposes.
Here we all have a role to play, wherever we are in the life of the Republic. Institutions of higher learning must claim their fair share in fostering self-respecting culture as they are the moulders of young minds who are to carry forward a meaningful civilization.
For instance, Unam as the founding university in the life of a free Namibia must resist the temptation of dishing out honorary doctoral degrees to high government officials who use them as recognition of their intellectual or academic qualifications and in the process undermine the culture of learning for which the university was created.
In the very least, when these degrees are dispensed with, the recipients must be informed that they are meant to be used on a daily basis, but as an honour only by the granting university—it is not meant to be used as a title in official situations.
This brings me to the vexing issue of the 50/50 gender balance and zebra debate which is likely to be part of the political deliberations this year, and it not managed carefully, can pit families against one another in the context of who supports women for positions of power and who does not.
The ruling party’s resolution should be seen as a progressive invitation to the nation to pay careful attention to how we determine who is entrusted with the responsibility to represent others and take decisions in the name represented.
It would be wrong and far too dangerous to expect that every decision the ruling party and any other political party for that matter makes in its life when representing its members must be based upon man woman man woman equations.
This would essentially hamstring the leadership in finding capable leaders to cast their eyes over the horizon of the vast human resource base of the country in search of people who are connected to and respected by their constituencies. It would also be unfair to the next President if he is weakened along the lines of gender rather than strengthen him to execute the task along democratic and meritorious lines.
Imagine if the next President has to be forced to have female Prime Minister just because that person must be a woman when the evidence suggests that the most capable person for the task is a male. That is not what the conversation should be about and around. It ought to be about combating old practices, habits, traditions and those set attitudes that preclude women from having the opportunity to prove themselves to the voters as leaders and in the corporate world as capable people who can make strategic and executive decisions.
But women must wallow in a false consciousness that they are better leaders simply by virtue of being female. After all if the ultimate objectives are democracy with attendant attributes of justice, fairness and equality, it is up to the people to decide who their leaders must be. It cannot be a top down approach whereby the top few people shunt men out in order to wheelchair women in just for the fancy. LEADERS MUST DESERVE THEIR POSITION AND MUST DERIVE THEIR PPOWER FROM THE PEOPLE. We must not genderise democracy; we must strive to create the environment that creates opportunities for people to select their own representatives who they have the final right to recall when they are not satisfied. Blocking men who have the following of people and have the drive to serve others will be equally dangerous.
A few words on the so-called gender based violence. This state of affairs, unacceptable as it is, cannot be seen in isolation. It is one of the outcomes of our own history of dehumanization, indifference and disregard for one another’s pain. Our history prepared us to write one another off and simply not feel for others when it did not affect us directly. The culture of us versus them, wishing one another away as a solution to our problems created the low tolerance for disagreement of whatever nature that we all suffer from. The perpetrators of these gruesome and heinous crimes that cause is all to cringe are sons of the same parents of good and law-abiding citizens of this country. The fact that it is males killing females is neither here nor there. It could have been the other way around but the pain would be the same. The death of any of us at the hands of one of us is not acceptable.
The important thing is not to blame any gender, but the act of killing other members of the same community. It is the same body that is hurting.
Our history has ill prepared us for tolerating those who threaten our interests and/or our livelihoods. There is so much road rage. Now there is house rage. We are hurting!
Further, there appears to be a pattern which reveals that most of the victims are casual girlfriends, in certain communities of the countries. This pattern and other leads need to be studied carefully so that sustainable remedial interventions can be developed.
The response by senior members of the Namibian body politic that force similar to the force that was used to liberate this country is rather unfortunate as this is part of the knee-jerk reaction that cannot contain the solution to this terminal problem.
The call for a state of emergency is not the right response either. What is needed is rather deeper, more thought through, more far reaching and more redemptive approach. Certainly not the army. Not a curfew. For example, if at a political level national leaders are so intolerant so much so that they are heard calling those they disagree with cockroaches, Judas Iscariot and enemies, that is violence! The spin offs of this hate speech is what we see expressed at individual levels as my way or no way.
When political party leaders have nothing good to say about other political role players in the country, that is violence! When economic opportunities are withheld from normal citizens simply because they do not subscribe to that which one person cherishes, that is violence! When fellow Namibians of all colours and language groups are not given equal opportunity to contribute to the well-being of the nation, that is violence!
How can we expect followers to be normal and tolerant when their role models are not? It is important that we look into our hearts as the root cause of tis dis-ease.
• Professor Joseph Diescho is a Namibian academic, a writer and a political analyst