By Professor joseph diescho
THE elections campaigns of 2014 were more about change than continuity, people wanted to see as much as they wanted to retain peace and stability the country has enjoyed over the last 25 years. President Hage Geingob was seen by many as the only person who could bring about change, even though it was not clear what he was to change. Maybe it was too unfair to expect one person to change something that was not broken yet. History instructs us that only a few persons in history were able to effect real change and those individuals had to go against the orthodoxy of the time and risk a lot. The President is no such person as he is a man of systems. Also, continuity and change are a very difficult combination to juggle, and in Afrika it can be perilous.
The person who is responsible for Reformation in the history of the Christian Church, Father Martinus Luther, went against the grain and in defence of his conviction which he acquired from the teachings of the same church. Luther stood in defiance of the Roman Catholic Order which he found to be engaging in acts against the sacred promises of religious salvation. Pope Leo X introduced monetary malpractice policies to benefit his own agendas and that forced Luther to take an intellectual stance against the omnipotent papacy. In the end Luther was severely ostracized and in 1521 he was ex-communicated at the expense of his calling as a priest and church leader. Then Galileo Gallei who went against the traditional Copernicus wisdom that the sun moved around the earth, and produced a theory that fundamentally changed physics when he produced a scientific thesis that it was the earth that moved around the sun. In 1615 Galileo was severely punished by the existing orthodoxy based upon Christian beliefs that it took the Roman Catholic Church over 350 years to garner enough courage to apologize to this ‘clever fool’ who spoke the truth. Then came Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, who in his seminal epigram in the January 1849 issue of his journal Les Guêpes wrote: ’Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’, (the more things change the more they remain the same). Karr hit the nail on the head in so far as human history is concerned. We in Namibia might in this era right now: the era of change with no change.
In 1991 Basil Davidson in his seminal book ‘The Black Man’s Burden’ warned against the curse of the African state which Afrikan leaders inherited and use to exact heavy penalty from their citizens by imposing their weight upon the people who live in poverty and squalor and who are denied the right to express their views about what goes on around them. Davidson argued that the state and its ceremonies are a curse on post-independence Afrika. The state continues to require of subjects (not citizens) to sing and dance for the elite leadership as an expression of patriotism. Davidson further decried the inability of Afrikan leaders to adapt the state and what they have inherited to suit the circumstances of their time.
In 1997 came the fatalistic indictment by Keith Richburg, an African-American journalist who was caught in harm’s way in the genocide of Rwanda and upon his return to America wrote a book, ”Out of America” wherein he offered two painful opinions of the state of governance in Afrika. Richburg thanked history for having allowed his ancestors to have been taken as slaves across the Atlantic so that he would not end up like the Afrikans he saw butchering one another barbarically in modern Afrika. He concluded his indictment of Afrikan leaders and their followers that:’ In Africa, things stay the same until they fall apart’. Must we in Afrika always wait for things to fall apart?
The specter of the celebration of the self-versus the good for ALL, has been a central feature of Afrikan governance since the demise of colonialism. Scholars had hoped and prayed that Namibia and South Africa as the last to gain their political freedom would have learned enough from the older experiences such that they would not repeat the mistakes of the past. The evidence is clear: South Africa has fallen in the trap of African politics, and one is no longer certain that Namibia can escape this curse. After Mbeki was rudely removed from power by what Reuell Khoza described the post-Mbeki leadership in South Africa as a strange breed of leaders in the ANC, Mbeki remained disciplined about and loyal to the cause of fighting corruption and is still actively engaged as a mature Afrikan intellectual voice on the affairs of the continent whose future remains on a rickety boat sailing nowhere very slowly.
It would appear that the cardinal error of Afrikan leaders lies in their lack of understanding of the business of the state – as a commonplace for all, not only the members of a particular party or ethnic group, but a space for the Gemeinwohl, the wellbeing of all. Afrikan leaders tend to focus on what is safe for themselves at the expense of the good for all. This is why they are dispensed off once they are no longer in power, or their successors tend to undo whatever was left by the predecessor. To populate the executive of the state with members of only one party, understandable though it might be, is devoid of the wisdom that previous leaders who built their nations possessed.
One feels for the new President. One is almost convinced that the new President is as concerned about this state of affairs as most thinking Namibians. Things could have been done differently in the interests of the nation, not just a few. One can equally understand the dilemma the President is in when trying to run a country which has two centres of power. He is the duly elected President of the country when he is not the President of the party in a country wherein the ruling party is seen to be bigger than the government and bigger than the state! This is the sort of conundrum that led to the recall of Thabo Mbeki in South Africa in September 2008 when there was consternation because of the two centres of power. In 2005 this same conundrum of two centres of power led to Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika‘s resignation from the party, the United Democratic Front (UDF) that secured his victory and in frustration formed his own Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and continued to rule as Head of State without the shackling of the ruling party.
Let us hope and pray that we in Namibia will escape this curse of Afrikan politics. In this context, one feels for President Geingob. In the first place, the Swapo leadership’s choice of him as the third President could not have been better. He has the right educational background, the appropriate international exposure and experience, has demonstrated possession of the required key performance indicators to lead Namibia out of the perpetual transition, and has said the proper things to lift him up as one who understands what the country, not just the party, needs as to move towards its Grand Vision 2030. We know our leaders well enough to believe that he knows in his heart that his cabinet is not what his heart desired, but came as a result of a very delicate balancing act within the context of the needs of the party politics rather national needs and national interests.
In the last 25 years Namibia has done better than most Afrikan states in navigating the course towards a Namibia that is better for all. One has to say that one is not altogether confident any more in the light of what we have begun to witness with the new administration. Whether one is an opponent or blind loyalist of the governing party, the facts in one’s face are clear, namely that something is not right. Starting with the constitutional amendments by which promises of inclusivity, and meritorious appointments, and better service delivery and combating poverty and that no Namibian should be left out, were made, the appointments indicate the exact opposite of these promises. In light of the crushing poverty across the land, the failing education system which forces Namibian children to learn under trees and force pregnant mothers to take their own linen to dilapidated health facilities and even give birth on the hospital stoeps, the enlargement of the Executive cannot be validated as right. In a population of the size of Namibia, it is not value for money to have an Executive President, an Executive Vice-President, a Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister with over 25 full Ministers and 32 Deputy Ministers and not see it as jobs for comrades, some of whom will sit in their offices with very little to do.
The strength of the arguments for last year’s constitutional amendments rested partly on the logic that it would allow for more inclusivity in the process of nation-building. Yet the mathematics of the cabinet also does not tally with the philosophy of inclusivity in today’s Namibia. No one can explain that the two Kavango regions (Kavangos being the second largest ethnic group in the country) to be given only two ministerial posts with not a single deputy and one and a half ambassadors in the make-up of the executive is anything inclusive. One does not have to be a Kavango to see this shortcoming in the thinking of the state. Democracy is about representation and representation is about numbers. As a matter of fact the two Kavango ministers are both from Kavango East which tells the story that Kavango West is completely LEFT OUT! How would any one feel if s/he was on the outside of this ‘inclusivity’ calculus? Given the President’s sophistication and commitment to building a reconciled Namibia, one would have expected him to reach out even more than his predecessors towards the opposition. There is also an odd Verwoerdian logic in creating a ministerial portfolio for the San community manned by a San member, a portfolio for people with disabilities headed by a person in a wheelchair, not to mention a portfolio for poverty eradication headed by priests. This was the whole philosophy of Separate Development which assigned leadership to people who had to go and fix problems of their own people along the lines of ‘eie sake’. The intentions might be very noble, but the imagery of this thinking is not helpful at all!
It really does not matter from what angle one looks at the state bureaucracy. The fact is that it is unsustainable and does not speak well of us as a nation in the eyes of goodwill nations that wish to support us when they see that most of the assistance goes to sustaining government officials who add very little value to the lives of the citizens who deserve more. Only those whose names are on the list of driven and guarded honourables can say this is good for the country. Therein is the problem with our sacred values of peace and stability. Any measure of right thinking suggests that the President will cut down the size of the executive at some point. Now it is too big and has to be trimmed. The trouble is who will be dropped and why? Better if they were not appointed and govern the state of largesse and the trappings of power. If they are dropped, they will regroup. This raises the difficulty which would have been better obviated if he started small with the possibility of increasing it later. It would appear that one of our shortcomings as a nation is that we do not do scenario planning so that the best scenario is selected. This is the trouble when only a few individuals have the power to determine everything and there is no system that guides at all times and which has references to the core values of the nation at heart.
The budget considerations in the last finance speech by Minister Calle Schlettwein that includes giving the pensioners N$1 000 a month is a very welcome gesture but it cannot end poverty. First of all the pension fund is abused by greedy officials and citizens who register for it when they are still too young. There are thousands of Namibians who receive this grant when they should be doing something with their able bodies, so that the government can look after those who are in real need. This sickness of greed is the same as the one in the use of the war veterans assistance funds that are eaten by people who are gainfully employed by the state! Further, as much it is a helpful move, it also encouraged people to be lazy and dependent on government support. In that way the goodwill of the government becomes a curse on the life of the nation. Subsequently, the government will not afford to assist as it wishes to, and its name is brought into disrepute
• Diescho’s Dictum will from now on appear in the Friday edition of New Era or on the last day of the workweek if the Friday is a public holiday. – Editor