Ben Uugwanga
With the just-ended Swapo elective congress, we learned that politics is not about glorifying personalities at the expense of principles. Personalities may serve their interest, and are not more important than the principles and the unifying values which bring people together.
Many a personality want to access power, privileges and prestige, and have drifted away from being servanthood leaders. With the exception of a few, many so-called leaders do not know the basic principles of leadership, and are entertaining the appetite for greed and honour/personal self-actualisation. Some avoid and vilify persons who harbour constructive criticism and alternatives stemming from expertise, ethics, science, logic and experience. The technocrat is viewed as a threat, and is ostracised and victimised at the periphery by the bootlickers. The philosophy in leadership of walking with the people, in front of the people and above the people (the latter being to provide Christian-centric extra rational leadership), is neglected.
Within the new paradigm shift of leadership at party political level, there is a need for inner- party democracy to be safeguarded, and to guard against personal self-interest and opportunism. The unifying values of freedom, peace and justice, including integrity, transparency, respect for the rule of law, love, unity, hard work and diversity management, should also be advanced.
Because institutions and organisations go through phases such as forming (foundation), storming (frictions and division), norming (camarader i e , synergy and cooperation) and performing (impactfulness through realisation of political strategic goals and objectives), the time now is not to reinvent the wheel, but to complement existing achievements through milestone plans and talent management by operationalising the Millennium Development Goals, the Africa we want Agenda 2063, Vision 2030, Harambee Prosperity Plan 2 and the NDPs. This reality is so because, Albert Einstein opined, for us to have been able to see far is because we have stood on the shoulders of giants.
A philosopher once stated that people are drawn to leadership because of wisdom, honour or money. I propose that we choose wisdom and the abundance of knowledge, experience and skills to build a welfare-centred, developmentalist knowledge economy state architecture in our lifetime in order to ensure that politics and economics do not cheat our people out of empowerment. As a result, it is required of leadership to design institutional action plans to be implemented by capable teams in line with reflecting on where we are; where we want to be; how to get there; and how we know we can get there through verifiable and measurable indicators.
Namibia’s challenges can be overcome. The challenges that we face are opportunities to solve our problems through technical subject matter solutions which embrace political, economic, scientific and cultural inputs. Namibia is overwhelmed with blue prints. The time is now to adapt, benchmark and implement these roadmaps in line with the dictates of a SWOT analysis, which dictates the operationalisation of strategy and tactics as informed by the external and internal environmental dynamics. Resource constraints, prioritisation and stakeholder consultations are necessary to inform planning. Planning can both be a mix of bottom-up and top-down inputs. This brings to mind that when plans are crafted that they should be inclusive, pro-poor, sustainable and moralistic. Morality in this existential dispensation is needed to inform vision, plans and purposes because society is self-destructing due to its entrenchment of anarchy and relativism, as opposed to absolutes which define origin, destiny, character and purpose.
Individual responsibility on the part of society is needed to transform followers into leaders, and to rise to leadership. Leadership is about self-sacrifice and servanthood, and should defend the cause of the poor. It should empower, and it should be pragmatic. Leadership should love all people; serve all people; empower all people; and improve the living conditions of the have- nots. A commitment to a united, transparent, accountable, disciplined, honest, focused, caring and loving leadership-follower relation can make this agenda possible. The Bible states that “He who defends the rights of the poor shall reign a long time”. Therefore, a foundation for a pro-poor, gender and youth-sensitive empowering state should be laid, and continued to be laid in order to build on previous legacies, post-elective congress 2022.