Josephat Simvula
No pun intended but our political leaders’ love for money and power is frightening and sometimes very embarrassing. They are not ashamed to abuse their political power to extract and accumulate for private enrichment and use politically corrupt means to maintain their hold on power. Anyone with money and who is willing to give it to them when they need it it is welcome no matter how dirty that money may be.
It cannot be right that about 300 people have been implicated in the Fishrot scandal and yet the relevant authorities and agencies are engaged in political procrastination to bring them to book. They need to be arrested and be prosecuted. These are the same leaders whose tentacles are everywhere – whether it is acquiring uranium and diamond vessels prospecting licences or owning land rights all over Namibia at the expense of local indigenous Namibians. It is therefore embarrassing to see how government officials, tenderpreneurs and other senior public officers are falling over each other to get closer to the overly overrated semi-gods.
Despite that, Namibia has immense natural resources yet the majority of our people are in general very poor. We as Namibians are linked by nature and culture and we should be proud of each other by choice. Take the scenario of what happened in the Zambezi region whereby the incumbent President had the arrogance to question why the four fishermen who were shot dead by the BDF were fishing at night and later on issued an ill-conceived press release condemning the demonstrations in Windhoek and Katima Mulilo.
Perhaps Swapo party should have exhibited empathy by organising demonstrations. People were in pain and the head of state should have flown to the region to console the bereaved family and one wonders why the regional leadership, instead of pandering to the politics of the belly and being psychophants, did not advise the President accordingly.
There are any things we don’t like about the way that region is governed due to the ruthless incompetency of our regional and town authorities’ political leaders and we shouldn’t be duly surprised that Swapo party lost in four constituencies. We cannot continue to accommodate armchair political leaders with a tainted political history who are Swapo during the day and other things at night.
The problem we have in Swapo party is that there are a few rotten apples who are within our midst who are there to sabotage and destroy the party from within and unless we purge them and throw them out in the cold we are doomed. It cannot be right that people ran as independent candidates in some constituencies in the west of the region but claim to be Swapo party members.
As l write this narrative, l am in pain. Most of us know the long-term effects of this abuse of public authority and power for private benefit which needs to be stopped. In their desire for votes, our leaders must smell the coffee and desist from the politics of favouritism and patronage, politically motivated distribution of financial and material inducement benefits, advantages and spoils.