Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

‘Economy still in the hands of whites’

‘Economy still in the hands of whites’

Zebaldt Ngaruka 

Swanu president Evilastus Kaaronda believes Namibia’s economy remains in white hands, and this perpetuates the historical networks that undermine the probability of economic freedom and black Namibians. 

He said this during his contributions to 2025/26 in the National Assembly recently, adding that blacks’ economic freedom will never exist without tackling the white supremacist corporate superstructure. 

“This, in short, means the production and power remain concentrated in white capitalist hands on the one hand and foreigners on the other,” he said. 

The Swanu MP said the country urgently needs a strong and vibrant black middle class around which a different social accumulation, where poverty eradication strategy, can be built. He proposed that the national budget must be weaponised to deliberately build a black middle class and push the economic freedom of black Namibians to the fore. “All these must be driven by the state as an active participant in the economy, taming the invisible hand of the market and securing affirmative distribution of resources,” said Kaaronda. 

The unionist-cum-politician added that black Namibians live like second-class citizens in their country, 35 years after independence and from one generation to the next. 

“All they bequeathed to one another is squalor and heightened indigene,” he noted. 

Kaaronda said it is evident that the class formations found in the informal settlements on the peripheries of urban towns and those found in rural Namibia are identical but the reproduction of these class formations takes place in rural areas. He suggested that the best place to start if the government is serious about poverty eradication, industrial development, and employment creation must be the rural areas. 

“The fact that rural Namibia is characteristically underdeveloped, primitive in its socialisation and accumulation and exclusively black, is no accident of history but a calculated outcome of the separate development philosophy of apartheid capitalism,” said the firebrand Swanu leader. 

He added that the country’s urban peripheries, known as informal settlements, have experienced rapid growth since independence. 

“This means more people are living in shacks on the peripheries of towns than at independence. Our people seek to escape rural poverty by migrating to towns in the hope of finding jobs but as soon as they arrive, they realise that there are no jobs and life is even far worse than in rural areas,” Kaaronda explained. 

He added that the rural poverty, urban poverty, and informal settlements faces are black. 

“The face of youth unemployment is black, and so is the face of every Namibian affected by the recent floods and the consequent displacements and the face of the landlessness is black,” the Swanu leader said. 

The parliamentarian added that informal settlements such as Twaloloka in Walvis Bay, Tsaraxaibes in Otjiwarongo, DRC in Swakopmund, Agste Laan, Havana and many more in the capital are inhabited by black Namibians in a country led by their fellow black brothers and sisters. 

“During election campaigns, they promise to improve their brothers’ living conditions and create employment but they fall prey to the trappings of public office wealth and comfort,” the MP said. 

-zngaruka@yahoo.com