Joseph Diescho
Africa has entered an era of great discomfort with governance. Elected democratic governments are under threat of something more unpleasant, namely military restlessness to remove elected leaders.
At the heart of the angst in about all of Africa is the inability of African leaders to govern states. Namibia is no exception as it is being governed as a private farm of the Head of State.
The concept of a nation-state or ‘rechtstaat’ in its historico-political formulation encompasses the territorial integrity of a country with an existent rule of law, citizenship rights, and broad political, social, religious, and economic responsibilities.
A nation-state refers to a sovereign State in which a majority of the people are united by factors such as a common history, language, culture, values, and traditions cherished within a given territory.
The State is comprised of chambers to make and change laws; a legitimate Executive bureaucracy to carry out the laws and an independent Judiciary to interpret and explain the laws.
The State also has institutions through which it exercises its authority and influence within the borders of the State, such as the military, the police constabulary, foreign missions in countries with which it has relations, hospitals, universities, and institutions of learning as well as economic development agencies such as parastatals with which it brings about infrastructural developments that extends beyond change of government or administration.
In this sense, opposition political parties and interest groups, non-governmental organisations, farms and mines, the fauna and flora within the internationally recognised territorial boundaries, are part of the State.
The State is bigger than the government or political party in government. Political parties and governments that are elected come and go, but the State endures. The State subsumes all formations of operators and stakeholders. The State is the existence of a sovereign territory with the means and instruments to rule and conduct relations with other states in the pursuit of national interests.
The unhappy situation in a number of West African countries can be ascribed to the lack of congruency in the understanding of those nations of how they should be governed. For the longest time, African leaders have relied on foreign handouts and directions to stay afloat or in power. Former colonial masters have continued to treat their former colonies as adjuncts of their hegemonies and expressions of their imperial interests.
France, in particular, has not been very clean in so far as it continued to stranglehold the Francophone economies and cultures by treating them as outposts of France, without much regard to the national interests of those nations.
Over time, many citizens of Francophone Africa internalised a falsehood that they are more French than African. In their ways with other Africans, they are obscenely French and this is one aspect that the militaries are reacting to when they want to do away with French currency and even the French language.
Lest we forget, the pendulum swing towards right wing and racist politics in the global north also has much to do with democratically elected leaders giving up too much to foreign interests.
This is how Donald Trump was visited upon the American people when he promised to make America great again. Nationalism is back!
The fact that most African heads of State and government do not understand how to run their nation states cannot be overestimated. Our leaders treat the countries they govern as their personal jurisdictions and abuse their official power to run State institutions into the ground.
They appoint officials based on loyalty to them, their families, and their personal interests. In the process, the State is disabled. Our leaders behave just like the Belgian King Leopold who treated the country now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo as his private vacation farm, even though he never set foot in that country.
The African Union speaks with a forked tongue on African crises mainly because the African heads of state have neither courage nor leadership to steer the already broke and toothless organisation that depends for its operations on funding from the European Union, America, China, and Russia.
Hence, Julius Nyerere called the Organisation of African Unity a trade union for African heads of State where they come together to protect each other from their own people who are unhappy with their mismanagement, nepotism, and corruption and looting.
Namibia has not escaped this African curse. Namibia is not being governed as a nation State but as by preferences and the whims of the head of State and the fist lady.
We have seen how individuals landed State positions not because they are the most competent or the best or in terms of national interests, but by virtue of their association with the First Couple. This is clearly not how states are governed.
The case in point is how the excitement over the new game in town, namely the green hydrogen is being handled. We are told that green hydrogen is the one industry that will solve all of Namibia’s unemployment problems. Yet, this industry is placed in the hands of a person who, to all intents and purposes landed this huge responsibility by virtue of his friendship with the President and the first lady. James Yusufu Mnyupe is a Tanzanian and a trained economist and asset manager, not an expert in green hydrogen.
He was hired by the President as a personal economic advisor and when green hydrogen came into vogue, the President shunted him to become the main man in negotiating with foreign interested investors and stakeholders on behalf of Namibia.
It is very sad that Namibia does not have an informed and well-argued national philosophy that would guide the President and all State officials on the business of the State and how to safeguard Namibia’s national interests.
The appointment of Mnyupe as the face of Namibia’s green hydrogen regime is neither appropriate nor in the national interests.
Without casting aspersion on him as a person, a professional and a fellow African, the fact of the matter is that he has split allegiance and split loyalty between his job and the Namibian interests. Understandably, he can and will defend his career in Namibia, but his emotional and political loyalty is in Tanzania which he calls motherland and arguably where he will be buried, even though his mother now lives in Swakopmund. It is just not enough to say that he is the most competent because this is neither true nor or acceptable from the vantage point of patriotism and Namibia’s national interests. Here is why:
Nation states are governed by values, principles, policies agreed to by Parliament and in the national interests. Every state is faced with known and unknown threats to its interests and must therefore guard against appointing people and/or policy makers that do not have the same considerations for the citizens and their wellbeing.
To argue that Mnyupe is the most competent in the nation is foolhardy because if it was about competency, we would have kept some white people to govern Namibia. Democratic elections are held every five years, not to appoint competent people but legitimate representatives to run the affairs of the nation. Elections are hardly about competency, but about legitimacy and representativity.
To have Mnyupe to set up a bureaucracy as it is being reported, meaning that he is to appoint Namibians to work under him is silly. There is evidence that is inclined to recruit fellow non-Namibians to build his turf, something that is totally antithetical to what the struggle for freedom and independence was all about.
There are Cabinet ministers and members of Parliament who, with suitable support staff, are competent to manage the process of negotiating with other nations such as the Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Chile, Australia, Germany, and certainly more interested countries on behalf of Namibia.
It would appear that the recruitment and appointment of Mnyupe was not done with the advice and consent of Parliament. This means that he was not vetted according to the established security procedures of the State. Friendship with the President and first lady is not sufficient vetting for someone to represent Namibia’s national interests internationally, never mind in a terribly sensitive economic industry like the green hydrogen energy.
Most distinguished Pan-Africanists such as Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere and Thabo Mbeki had non-nationals or naturalised citizens on their senior staff, but not as key negotiators on behalf of the State. They were hired at universities and as senior technocrats and advisors in the government but could not be entrusted with functions that were reserved for those who took the oath of office to defend the Constitution and the national interests.
With all due respect to the President who may have meant well to appoint someone to defend his family interests, the whole notion of parading a naturalised person the face of a key component of the national economy is impolitic, unintelligent and at variance with national interests. It points to a lack of an ideological orientation on the part of the state led by people who fought for national independence and sovereignty.
Africa’s woes and challenges cannot and will not be solved by half-baked notions and slogans of pan-Africanism, but by improved governance systems and processes of national economies.
When elected leaders ignore the dissatisfaction of citizens about matters such as this, discontent can and will only grow as we are witnessing in West Africa. With this kind of hubris on the part of State House, the population is noticing that national interests are being compromised, and the leaders will only have themselves to blame when the dung hits the fan.
The unilateral and arbitrary decision by the President to appoint an individual who is neither consented to or approved or vetted by Parliament is a vote of no confidence by the President in the ministers and MPs who have the oath to defend he Namibian Constitution and protect the secrets of the state. There are already signs that Mnyupe has no regard for parliamentary committees as he believes he works for the President and not Namibia.
In the spirit of informed Pan-Africanism and internationalism, it is perfectly in order to have other nationals working, especially from Africa, working in Namibia. It must be said that there is a good number of non-Namibian nations from Africa and elsewhere (professionals and technocrats) who are working in and serving Namibia well. They are mature enough to appreciate that they cannot be entrusted with the sacred responsibility of negotiating the future of the Namibia child as that is the function of elected officials who work for the nation and not just themselves.
Finally, do not say later that you were not warned. Remember states and national economies are governed by acceptable rules that flow from values and norms that have come along with the struggle for freedom and independence.
People did not sacrifice only to be governed by others, however well-meaning they were. Stop telling Namibians that they are inadequate, incompetent and stupid to do things by and for themselves. There is nothing wrong with having a competent technocrat assisting the Namibian State to execute its function of building a modern and functional economy to serve the Namibian people, but to have a foreign national as the face of the nation in the most crucial economic activity of the day, to negotiate the nation’s life with crooked international players is not on.
Sovereignty cannot be outsourced, and nothing about Namibia without Namibians!
*Joseph Diescho is a visiting fellow in the Centre for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies in the University of Bonn, Germany.