During his town hall meeting in Gobabis recently, President Hage Geingob raised his profound concern over the mushrooming of traditional communities, questioning their raison d’être, other than merely to get State benefits.
The Minister of Urban and Rural Development, Sophia Shaningwa, joined the presidential chorus on the same note and it is not the first time Namibian officialdom is raising this concern, especially regarding the mushrooming of traditional communities, and the resultant splitting up of others.
You name them, the founding president, Dr Sam Nujoma, and his respective ministers of regional and local government, housing and rural development (as the current urban development ministry was once known) at one point or another expressed themselves strongly on this undesirable phenomenon. The same holds for former president Hifikepunye Pohamba and his ministers in this regard.
In this column we have previously zeroed in on this phenomenon. It is strange, this columnist wrote in 2006, that the government should be the one to cry over this issue. It is the very same government that brought this situation upon itself, of course indirectly, through the Kozonguizi Commission that enquired into the recognition of traditional leaders in 1991 and subsequently put various options before government.
“The Commission, having found that the traditional system is not only necessary but also viable, recommends that it be retained within the context of the provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Namibia, and having regard to the integrity and oneness of the Namibian nation as a priority,” the Commission recommended at the time.
My issue is not so much with what advice from the commission the government decided to take, but the extent to which it applied itself to the matter after the fact. Granted that the government may have rightly opted to accommodate the traditional system in view of the historical centrality of the system, it equally had the opportunity to put the system on a completely different footing and in its rightful place.
That is, to put the system completely out of the broader public domain into its legitimate realm, which deals with purely traditional matters.
Articles 19 and 21 (b), and (d) of the Constitution are fundamental to the existence of the traditional authority system. Article 19 entitles anyone to “enjoy, practice, profess, maintain and promote any culture, language, tradition or religion.” Article 21 (b) allows for freedom of thought, conscience and belief”, which I interpret to also include traditional beliefs.
Article 21 (d) guarantees the right to “assemble peaceably and without arms”, which I again interpretatively extend to assembling with regard to traditional matters. Thus, more than anything else I think the two articles I have just cited gives credence and legitimacy to the traditional system.
As the case may be, I don’t understand why the system needs extra recognition by and from the government. If the Constitution already allows anyone to enjoy her/his culture and organise culturally, why does anyone need special recognition by the government to do so?
That is simply because the raison d’être of the system has been misdirected and overstretched beyond the purely cultural. Should it be like that? Shouldn’t the traditional system simply deal with cultural or traditional matters, whatever they may be? In that event the issue of recognition shall be irrelevant, immaterial and superfluous.
Any traditional authority must purely be what it is and supposed to be, that is protecting, promoting and preserving the culture of its people and administering to their cultural needs or wants. Should that be the case, recognition shall not be relevant, as no culture shall be more important than the other, as currently seems to be the case under the present traditional regime.
I, therefore, think the problem has not been so much about communities applying for recognition, but the existence and essence of recognition itself. There is inconsistency in the government’s current approach to the issue of recognition, borne out by lack of foresight.
I should distinguish between a “hereditary” clan, the so-called royal blood, or blue blood clans, and a traditional community. The former may be comprised of a handful of individuals and surely they have the right to enjoy their culture.
For that they do not need any recognition over and above and at the expense of other similar clans. In fact, in most cases these hereditary clans are not inclusive at all and exist purely for the benefit of their seemingly blue-blooded cast.