If our fallen heroes were to rise today, they would be confronted with sentiments of intertribal animosity and the dislike between ethnic groups promoted by those who feel being marginalised.
They would be confronted with a chronic disease of corruption and nepotism. This chronic disease is being practised by some or perceived to be practised by some of our people in positions of leadership who do not care about many unfortunate poor people of our country. Our forefathers and mothers will be faced with a situation where some failed politicians change political colours like chameleons, preaching unity during the day but at night they are tribal leaders, singing songs of greed and tribalism and expressing sentiments of political toxicity.
These dangerous leaders are busy consciously or unconsciously poisoning the young generation of our country. Although they continue asking young people, whom they feel are a threat to them, where they were when they started the liberation struggle, these types of failed politicians are never called to order.
Some people made themselves believe that those who did not lose land during German and Apartheid South Africa rule must not be resettled on the land bought with the taxpayers’ money. These people are of the idea that the citizens from the northern regions who did not lose land during the colonial era must not be resettled.
They have forgotten that the martyrs of the liberation struggle came from all corners of Namibia, including from the south and north of our country. It seems some of our fellow compatriots have forgotten that the land is bought with taxpayers’ money and that the whole country pays tax irrespective of where one comes from. They have forgotten and may not know that many people from the areas where people might not have lost land, died too for independence and in order to restore the right to ask for ancestral lost land. This is to say many men and women from the groups considered not to have lost land had to die in order for freedom to come. This is why One Namibia, One Nation is a better philosophy instead of a return to homelands mentality.
What will Jacob Morenga say when he finds that money is getting lost in institutions without being traced and when they got lost no one is held accountable for it? Peter Nanyemba would be worried to notice that some of his former colleagues in PLAN at independence were not treated as adequately as they were supposed to. There is great division within the ruling party and backstabbing is a routine daily prayer although many of our people in the country hardly do pray every day. Ethnicity is consciously or unconsciously being encouraged through recognition of too many traditional authorities.
I actually advise that our government must stop recognising tribal authority at the level where the country is now. The communities must take care of their tribal leaders in terms of providing recourse. Why should traditional leaders be remunerated if they are collecting an annual levy from their community on a yearly basis? How are those funds used and how are they accounted for?
If that is not worse enough, even governors who are appointed by the president rather than being elected are deployed in the capital towns in the regions where they are born – a practice that consciously or unconsciously cemented the notion of ‘these are my people’ or ‘this is my country’. Kahimemua Nguvauva who swore not to give land to the whites will be surprised to notice that after 27 years of independence 80 percent of the commercial land is still in the hands of the children of those he refused to give land because of its sensitivity.
Nehale lya Mpingana will regret having killed Jordan, the so-called prime minister of the Republic of Upingtonia over the land grabbing since the current generation seems not to consider it wrong for the land to be owned by great children of the settlers without sharing it between all races.
In Zambezi, Brendan Simbwaye will be confronted with a fanatic notion held by some people from that region who fanatically still are possessed with the idea of seceding that part of the country from the unitary state, Namibia.