Dr Job Shipululo Amupanda
A few months ago, a national debate emerged, following a much-publicised video of Etondo lyaNehale supporting a vendor selling dog meat at Omuthiya. White animal organisations entered the debate, making empty threats.
My decisive response sent them into their shells from where they had not returned. Some blacks started declaring to whites that they did noteat dog meat. No one invited declarations. Others sent private messages that they consume dog meat as did their ancestors.
“We are behind you,” they wrote in private, as I wondered when they would get in front or beside me.
This debate exposed a deep-seated inferiority complex in blacks remaining as Frantz Fanon theorised. White culture, logic and subjectivities, the debate demonstrated, are still highly ranked in our social hierarchy – unfortunately supervised by black freedom fighters. Properly defined, colonialism consists of three things: the occupation, control and domination of a sovereign space/territory by a foreign other. Independence only ended the occupation, leaving the control and domination intact. Whites still control and dominate our society and e
conomy. Black leaders are their handbags. From white handbags, we only see heads and fingers. 127 years since the erection of the 1896 redline and 33 years after blacks started wearing suits and ties for Cabinet and Parliament, blacks are still prevented from bringing the very same meat they ate at 13h00 in Omuthiya for personal consumption in Tsumeb at 14h00. Indeed, whiteness controls our livelihoods. Part of the reason why whiteness controls and dominates our livelihoods is that we tend to focus more on political power, electoral politics and the political behaviour of political actors than structural issues of our economy.
Agriculture, an important economic matter, is left to liberal agriculturalists as if natives are not innate agriculturalists.
A recent social media post came to mind that read that the black government made English in school compulsory and agriculture optional. We now have hungry graduates speaking good English. In three instalments, I will lead a discourse on agriculture and livelihood politics to confront the tide of the black inferiority complex. Today, we are discussing the alleged development occurring through continued dispossession. Next week, we will consider the natives' perspective on agriculture by confronting yield as a narrow neoliberal reading of natives’ agriculture and livelihoods. The last will conclude by exploring the options available to change the status quo. The liberation movement had more soldiers than organic thinkers/planners. For this reason, the task of designing constitutional frameworks was left to foreigners. After inserting commas and full stops, soldiers uncritically adopted these foreign frameworks. Further policy frameworks were designed by consultants working for the United Nations Institute for Namibia in Zambia. Indigenous perspectives on development were outside these frameworks. As a result, development became anything brought by the government. African collectivism smoothens matters, for leadership is seen as divine with benign motives.
In Oshiwambo, for example, development is defined as ‘ehumo komeho’, meaning ‘going/advancing forward’. To question the alleged ‘development’ is to invite attacks from local councillors on Oshiwambo radio, as those ‘taya yi ehumo komeho moshipala’ (blocking development).
Towns in northern Namibia were established on existing foundations of local communities; none of them was established on virgin land. The government only came to ‘hotspots’ from these communities by building offices. The private sector and foreign ‘investors’ added the rest once politicians successfully evicted natives from their land. These self-organised communities stood because of the traditional leadership to whom the
land belonged. To the Africans, land could not be bought nor sold. It is
held in trust by the traditional
leadership on behalf of the people. Commercial entities and households on the land paid taxes to the traditional authority. This sustained and assisted the traditional authorities in supporting the needy. Take Uupopo and Ondjondjo locations that were integrated into Ondangwa with more than 600 ‘uundingosho’ (cuca shops). The traditional leadership collected close to N$50 000 in taxes annually. After integration, all this revenue was lost. Worse, soldiers now in government started private negotiations directly with those ‘renting’ the land from the traditional leadership, offering them vacation/eviction fees.
The traditional authority
became the first victim, and dispossessed natives were the second victims of alleged development. Facing a government without traditional leadership, the weaker natives are forced to accept whatever offer is made as vacation/eviction fee. In implementing outsiders’ policy frameworks brought from exile, soldiers in government ignored the cultural, spiritual and otherwise value of land. Nostalgically, locals return years later to see a drug-selling nightclub erected at their deceased parents’ favourite spot. Indeed, the Okandjengedi
prostitution site in Oshakati,
populated with used condoms, once belonged to a native, who was told to make way for alleged development. Once in town, natives are to change
their livelihoods – included are new monthly taxes. At the proclamation stage, they are instructed to stop producing food from their fields.
Lost is not only land but also culture, food and livelihoods. Whereas you owned chickens, you now buy these from Woermann or Shoprite. Laws prohibit you from owning animals (food), apart from dogs. Is urbanisation only possible through dispossessing black people of their land and livelihoods? Stellenbosch, a South African flagship town of apartheid and Afrikaner nationalism, has had vineyards and fields for more than 100 years. There is no difference between vineyards and mahangu
fields. As early as 1836, the Royal
Bafokeng Kingdom avoided disenfranchisement by urbanisation. Under Kgosi Mokgatle, the Bafokeng king, the Bafokeng were not
dispossessed of their land and livelihoods.
Afrikaner leaders, such as Paul Kruger and Hendrik Potgieter, recognised and respected the
Bafokeng.
The Rustenburg municipality respects the Bafokeng the same they did in 1851 when the town was established. In fact, on 14 August 2014, the Rustenburg Municipality and the Royal Bafokeng Nation signed an agreement, recognising each other. Namibians can only marvel. The Bafokeng are now the wealthiest native community in Africa, with a net worth of N$30 billion by 2016. Instead of planning massive land dispossession for alleged development, there is a lot Bukalo town, founded within the Masubiya kingdom, can learn from Royal Bafokeng and the town of Rustenburg. Those in villages generally produce their food, while those in town depend on retail shops that import food from outside Namibia. With tunnel vision, soldiers in government cannot see the risk. Imagine retail shops or their foreign suppliers conniving to close their doors for three days. Social unrest, if not insurrection, is guaranteed.
The continued takeover of rural agricultural land is a serious food security risk. As is the case with
hungry graduates speaking good English, we will soon have many urban houses without food. As these gimmicks continue, agricultural land, owned by whites, is protected by the neoliberal constitution and other capitalist laws adopted by soldiers after returning from exile. We need to rethink development and address this tragic failure of imagination if we are to secure our children’s future. If we fail, the coming generations will be spitting and urinating on our graves as the authors of their oppression, subjugation and domination.
* Dr Job Shipululo Amupanda is the activist-in-chief of the Affirmative Repositioning movement and former mayor of Windhoek. He holds a PhD in political studies from the University of Namibia, where he serves as a senior lecturer.