Letters

Residents of Windhoek have increasingly found themselves in a precarious situation despite diligently paying for their prepaid electricity, their power supply is being blocked due to outstanding balances on other municipal services such as water, rates and taxes.  This practice, implemented by the City of Windhoek, raises serious legal questions and appears to stand in...

On a typical morning in Windhoek, a 16-year-old girl scrolls through Instagram before getting out of bed. She’s not looking for news or inspiration, but she’s already comparing her life to influencers she’s never met.  In Namibia, where much of the population is young, social media is not just a tool, it’s a mirror, a...

The 1904 uprising took place in the central highlands where Ovaherero people traditionally lived. Colonizers had seized Herero lands for settlers, provoking conflict.   By January 1904, Herero chief Samuel Maharero and Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi led a revolt. They attacked the German garrison at Okahandja on 12 January 1904, killing over 100 settlers and soldiers...

Like the oppressed fighting for liberation, death permeates our waking dreams. Death selectively chooses women and children.  Death walks the streets boldly, casually, intentionally, waving at neighbours as an active responsible member of society, masking his thirst for blood. The undisclosed nature of death. Our parasympathetic nervous systems are permanently switched on and we live...

In the intricate ecosystem of pension fund governance, numerous players operate with distinct but interconnected responsibilities. Trustees provide strategic oversight, principal officers steer daily operations, asset managers grow the fund’s wealth, and the regulator ensures legal compliance. Amidst all this, one key actor often goes unnoticed, the pension fund administrator. Though they may not attract...

In Part 1, I mentioned that the process of the allocation of supervisors and students’ doctoral research proposals in most universities usually takes undue time, running to months and months on end. Once this frustrating process is complete, and you have your supervisors and proposal approved, introduce yourself to your supervisors and prove to them...

Part 1  So you have decided to embark on the highest academic journey, the doctoral journey? You have either registered for your doctorate, or doctor of philosophy, PhD (whatever other name it is called, as long as it is a doctorate), or you are at proposal stage or data-collection stage of your study. You want...

As the global push for decarbonisation accelerates, the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is emerging as a key policy shaping international trade.  The CBAM imposes carbon tariffs on high-emission imports to ensure they meet the EU’s climate standards and to discourage carbon leakage, the practice of outsourcing manufacturing and its associated emissions to...

In his classic book ‘Servant Leadership: Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness’, Robert K. Greenleaf suggests that the concept of the servant as leader emerged from reading Hermann Hesse’s ‘Journey to the East’.  In that story, Leo accompanies a party on a journey as the servant who does their menial chores, and...