Revelations this week by Omaheke governor Pijoo Nganate that the region recorded 300 cases of malnutrition from January to June, including 263 hospital admissions, nine readmissions and 26 deaths – sent a chill down the nation’s collective spine.
Desperate and with his hands seemingly tied, Nganate says people in his region cannot continue languishing in a sea of poverty with uranium under their feet. This resource, Nganate hopes, will unshackle them from the yoke of poverty.
Nganate painted a worrisome picture, one wherein the region’s most destitute are left to fend for themselves.
In advancing his argument, he hopes uranium exploration in parts of his region can turn around fortunes for residents.
The only drawback is the proposed uranium extraction method, which is bothering residents.
“People in my region ask: What do we have to lose if we are anyway dying next to this water, and this water does not mean anything to us? These people are affected by poverty. They hardly have a glass of water, and you are telling them about water contamination,” said the governor.
Nganate does not want history to judge him harshly when he transitions to his ancestry one day.
For admitting that 26 children died of hunger, the governor received backlash, as could be seen across the social media spectrum.
Some argued that his admission was an indictment of the government’s failure to address hunger in the country, while others felt it could cost the ruling party votes in November.
But since when can human life be equated to political victories or losses?
When did we become this insensitive?
A simple desktop search can inform any reasonable person what the role of regional governors is and the confines within which these offices operate, mostly on an annual budget of less than N$1 million.
What could Nganate have done miraculously with his office’s miniscule budget to rescue the 26 people from dying?
If anything, Nganate must be credited for revealing the truth in its ugliest format, for it is only based on such uncomfortable truths that sustainable solutions can be born.
Hunger in Namibia has the names and faces of real people living among us.
So, hunger in Namibia is the last thing to be worried about.
In his inaugural speech in 2015, late President Hage Geingob declared an
all-out war on poverty.
As audacious as it may appear, his aim was to eradicate poverty in the proverbial ‘Namibian House’, where no one should be excluded.
Beyond political rhetoric, Geingob went a step further to establish the Ministry of Poverty Eradication, headed by Bishop Zephania Kameeta.
In his justification for the appointment of a man he had taken out of retirement, Geingob said he always believed that being a clergyman and closest to the needs of the most destitute in society and his ability to distribute resources fairly and honestly, Kameeta was the right man for the job.
Geingob didn’t stop there. He doubled the old-age pension, and under his administration, provision of social safety nets expanded rapidly. He also established a food bank, which was later converted to a conditional basic income grant. This has been done, and the grant was recently increased from N$500 to N$600, which is significant in the fight against urban and peri-urban poverty in food-insecure households. We are alive to the reality that most Namibians were living under inhumane and degrading conditions and struggling to meet their basic needs: a decent income, decent roofs over their heads, clean water and sanitation.
BIG
It is not a secret that the late president was a staunch advocate of poverty eradication policies, especially those of the Basic Income Grant (BIG).
Going down memory lane, at the launch of the Otjivero BIG pilot project in 2008, Geingob was the first person to pledge money towards the pilot study.
On several occasions after that, he called for the implementation of a BIG as a measure to fight poverty.
The BIG intervention has indeed proven to be one of the best mechanisms ever introduced to address poverty at household levels, as admitted recently by one of its pilot project’s beneficiaries, Frederick Fredericks from Omitara.
In 2008, all residents at Omitara below the age of 60 received an allowance of
N$100 per person per month.
Over the weekend, hundreds of Namibians took to the streets, calling for the government to introduce a monthly payment of N$500 to all unemployed citizens aged between 0 and 59 to address poverty in the country.
It received 3 589 signatures in support of the immediate implementation of the BIG in Namibia.
Drought
Last year, the government set aside N$892 million to, among others, arrest food insecurity in the country and address drought-related issues, coupled with malnutrition, Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila announced in September.
Some on the opposition benches saw this as a political ploy and abuse of voters in the current administration’s quest for re-election when Namibians go to the polls this year.
Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said this in response to New Era report that brought to light how hunger pushed the destitute Ovatjimba community into eating goat skin.
The office responded swiftly to the report, and rendered food assistance to the marginalised group.
This, however, was not an isolated case.
Between October 2023 and March 2024, approximately 695 000 people, or about
172 000 households, were expected to face high levels of acute food insecurity, and would require urgent humanitarian assistance. As drought continues to wreak havoc in most parts of the country, the government’s almost N$1 billion emergency relief fund has been rolled out, with a comprehensive plan to aid both farmers and food-insecure families.
Introspection
For the current financial year, political parties represented in both the National Assembly and National Council will get a combined N$181 million.
Over the past five financial years, political parties received N$592 million from Treasury. Between 2015 and 2020, taxpayers gifted political parties a combined N$679.5 million.
At the time of writing, no political party had dared to donate substantively, at least openly, to the government’s emergency fund to assist it in tackling the drought that has gripped the country for almost 10 years.
But time and again, most political parties have been accused of diverting
taxpayer funds to pay off loans for some party leaders, buy family members cars and other nice-to-have things; pay themselves second salaries, as well as adding associates to the party’s payroll without clear terms of reference.
Not once have they shared with the electorate, most of whom are struggling to make ends meet.
So, before any politician attempts to sanitise and vindicate themselves, they must reflect on their own collective failure not doing anything to assist Namibians, within the confines of their own resources.
If a political party can afford to buy a N$800 000 vehicle for the spouse of their leader or pay their leader a second salary, that party can equally donate N$100 000 to eight different orphanages in the country, even in areas where they dominate.
If anything, hunger is the last thing to be used for political expediency, whether from the governing party or the opposition.
The fight against poverty cannot be won by the government alone.
We need all hands on deck, irrespective of our religion, political affiliation, sex, creed or ethnic extraction, to eradicate poverty.
While Geingob can be described as the David in the poverty fight against Goliath, he left a firm foundation in place for current and future administrations to build on and realise a Namibian House wherein no citizen dies from hunger.
If we can inherit anything from the Geingob legacy, it is having empathy for the most vulnerable in society by sharing the little we have with them.