Lahja Nashuuta
Eighteen-year-old Frederick Fredericks should be in school.
But here he is spotted on a school day, sunbathing outside his one-bedroom wooden shack with steel roof sheets at the Omitara settlement. Fredericks attended school at the Otjivero Combined School until grade nine. This, we are made to understand, would not have been possible without the intervention of the basic income grant (BIG) pilot project, conducted in Otjivero-Omitara, some 100km east of Windhoek.
In 2008, all residents below the age of 60 received a BIG allowance of N$100 per person per month. Fredericks and his family of seven were among the beneficiaries at the time. This meant the family were receiving N$800.
This grant, he reminisced, came in handy.
However, after the grant stopped, his parents could not afford to enrol him in high school elsewhere as there was no money to pay for transport or his other basic needs, including food and toiletries.
“I wish to continue with my studies, and one day become a doctor. But my parents cannot afford to send me to school,” said Fredericks with pain in his eyes. His single mother works as a domestic worker at a nearby farm. As miniscule as the N$800 per month might appear, his mother used to sort out all household expenses with the combined grant.
“Every month, my mother used to draw up a budget on how she would spend that money, and there was a massive difference in our house. We started with N$100, then it was reduced to N$80 – and later stopped. In winter, like this, it was hard to spot a child without a jersey, shoes or full uniform. All of us had to have clothing, and by then, there was happiness in Omitara. People’s bills were paid on time. BIG really helped many families,”
he said.
However, as the BIG intervention came to an end, many in Omitara find themselves swimming in a sea of poverty, with no hope in sight. “In the absence of BIG, many people are living in poverty. [The] youth are bitter, abusing alcohol and drugs. We are struggling. No jobs; no food in the house,” he lamented.
All hope, however, is not lost. There’s talk of a proposed N$500 BIG, with which his family will be able to afford their day-to-day basic needs again. He might then also hopefully revive his academic journey.
Not alone
Another resident of Omitara, Julia Nekwaya, painted a bleak future for the youth in the absence of the BIG. “It is a well-known fact that our people are suffering, which is why in 2008, the government decided to use the area to pilot the proposed BIG,” she recalled.
She said although the N$100 sounds like little, it meant everything to them during that pilot period. “With that money, people used to contribute to buy food, unlike now that families are relying on single breadwinners,” Nekwaya emphasised.
Demands
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.
The peaceful march was organised by the Basic Income Grant Coalition of Namibia.
It received 3 589 signatures in support of the immediate implementation of a universal basic income grant in Namibia.
Armed only with posters with different demands, the majority youth emphasised their ongoing struggles, unemployment, lack of decent housing, clean water and sanitation.
The petition was received by Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare minister Doreen Sioka on behalf of President Nangolo Mbumba, wherein the protestors demanded that the government honours its constitutional obligation by actively promoting and maintaining the welfare of the citizenry.
Rinaani Musutua, coordinator of the BIG campaign, told the gathering that the march intended to draw the government’s attention to addressing generational poverty and unemployment in the country.
“We decided we would organise a march to make sure that the government understood that the people were tired of struggling. The leadership needs to know that people are tired of having to go through bins and rubbish to find food, while we have a government which is supposed to take care of people,” Musutua said. “The problem that we are facing as a country is that we have over 1.6 million people living in poverty. If you do the math, that’s more than half of the country living in poverty. But there are reports saying that over 1 700 Namibians have N$400 billion amongst themselves.
So, this country has a lot of inequality – and this inequality is due to past wrongs, which have not yet been addressed. And for as long as we do not address some of those past wrongs, unfortunately, our people are going to continue to suffer,” said forex trader-turned-politician Michael Amushelelo, who also joined the protest.
Musutua maintained: “Young people, who are mainly affected by joblessness, are the majority and most important people in our country. Therefore, their future needs to be secured. Our leaders must commit to implementing an unconditional and universal BIG as a youth-centred social protection scheme to support young people who are jobless, and promote youth development”.
“The monthly income grant is not a new issue in the discourse. If we have to go back to Covid-19, Minister of Finance and Public Enterprises Iipumbu Shiimi made it clear that for one to meet basic needs, one needs at least N$250 per week, and about
N$1 050 per month, and those were four years ago. Hence, the N$500 that the coalition is advocating for is reasonable because it is half of what the finance minister indicated. The government is welcome to increase this grant with time,” labour researcher and social justice activist Herbert Jauch stated. Upon receiving the petition, Sioka informed the people that she would deliver it to Mbumba for further consideration. “I will take your petition to the president, and because your demands belong to my ministry, we will sit down and brief you on how far we have gone. You are the people who put us in government, and there is nowhere you can go and cry, except on the shoulders of this government,” she noted.