Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
The appeal the other day in the National Assembly by Monitor Action Group (MAG) parliamentarian, Honourable Jurie J. Viljoen, that was reflected by a section of the media, for the Namibian public service to start absorbing Grade 10 and 12 white school-leavers sounds interesting.
To some readers, this plea may sound sectarian. However, there is more than mere sectarianism to this statement than many would dare to admit. A thoughtful pause and reflection may reveal that it is true that somehow this school-leaving section of our population may have been left on the sidelines of our civil service, perhaps condemned by our affirmative action policy to its sharper end. Not, in my opinion, they may have suffered a lot as a result.
Seventeen years or so down the line of our Statehood, I hold that unemployment is not as yet a scourge of the white section of our society.
Years of Apartheid and separate development have built in mechanisms and safety valves for this section of our population serving as a cushion against unemployment.
A formidable and entrenched network of opportunities and social securities backed by businesses provide for members of this group so that for a greater part members of this group seem to be born with golden spoons in their mouths. These golden spoons stand them in good stead later in their lives whether in terms of further education or employment. Thus I am surprised to hear today from Honourable Viljoen that we may find some unemployed white youths in an independent Namibia. Please, Honourable, pardon my ignorance but certainly there is no way the system that has entrenched itself over 100 years in favour of a section of our society can be undone in just 17 years.
In fact, one does not need to look beyond one’s immediate environs to realise that the boetie-boetie(Afrikaner or white patronage) system that the whites established for their own kind, of course with the help of their government (Apartheid), remains to a greater extent intact and biased in their favour. Let alone, if only for the fact that the economy is still in the hands of this section of our society and it would make sure that it remains in charge as a safety valve that their children do not go begging for money for further studies, loiter for jobs or go wanting.
One of the champions of the economic well-being and security of particularly the Afrikaners is Sanlam. Sanlam is today with us in an independent Namibia. Whether it is today a different entity from the original one, I am sure Advocate Vekuii Rukoro could give us an insight into it. But on the face of it, there is little evidence that Sanlam is more than an economic bastion of the Afrikaners or whites if you like.
It is long before blacks will start to cry Kings in the economic sphere and certainly not in my lifetime, let alone the lifetime of my children.
I don’t think for a moment that the Namibian economic order has undergone the necessary radical transformation to afford Africans a place under its sun.
Nor should any realistic African harbour such an illusion. Like the political freedom, economic freedom would not be achieved without a struggle.
Our African leaders in the economic struggle hitherto seem to suffer from their own historical shortcomings, if not lack of ideological vision. No amount of economic ascendance would be meaningful without the necessary ideological disposition to bring about the necessary economic transformation as opposed to the piecemeal absorption and assimilation of a section of the previously disadvantaged in a pre-determined economic system.
Not that I do not have respect and understanding for Mr Viljoen’s sentiments.
Yes, I may have but who do we blame for this state of affairs? Certainly we cannot blame the Government. We cannot expect economic integration or equality without a parallel integration on the socio-cultural equation, etc.
I personally harbour no dreams whatsoever about integration of whatever nature with a section of our white community. However, I do not think that I should deny my child this opportunity. That is why my child, and I believe that of many fellow Africans, are today attending school at former white schools together with white learners. This is to offer them an opportunity to start a new leaf unlike that of my and my fellow white citizens’ bitter past. If we offer them such an opportunity they would have made a head start in life at a tender age and they may responsibly take care of tomorrow as Namibians and not necessarily as whites and blacks.
But, are our schools currently proving the necessary fertile grounds for the grooming of unprejudiced leaders of tomorrow? The answer to this is a categorical no. Just ask your child who is attending one of these schools whether he has any friends out of her/his historical circles and the answer is again a categorical negative, of course with a few exceptions.
Who is to be blamed? No one in particular. That means we are all to be blamed somehow, including the Ministry of Education whose language subject choices, wittingly or unwittingly, seem to be driving children apart.
The schools, one would have thought, should be the ideal hotchpotch of cultures and thus the necessary opium for integration. Unfortunately, they seem to be far from this. Perhaps this is where we need to also concentrate parallel to other efforts in the economic sphere if we can hope to have a holistic approach to the issue of leveling the playing fields in the economic sphere, and the job market Honourable Viljoen!