President Hage Geingob used the State of the Nation Address on Tuesday in parliament to release and make known the Harambee Prosperity Plan (HPP). Harambee is an African, in fact a Kenyan, term that means “pulling together”. Certainly given the mammoth but insurmountable task of arresting the negative and debilitating legacies of colonialism, neo-colonialism, not to speak of state capitalism, there can be no denial nor oversight that all the people of the Land of the Brave do not just need to continue to be brave, but equally resolute and purposeful – but above all, volunteering to pull together.
Hence the operational essence of the concept and meaning of Harambee, which must become the buzzword to give practical meaning to the good intentions of the HPP. If there is anything at this stage that the HPP is, it is ambitiousness. Such ambitiousness would be hollow and empty if those who are supposed to give practical meaning to it, all and sundry, do not pull together.
Instructive in the HPP are the five pillars of the plan, which are: Effective Governance and Service Delivery; Economic Advancement; Social Progression; Infrastructure Development and International Relations and Cooperation.
More of note regarding these five pillars are the expected outcomes, one thereof being the spirit of entrepreneurship which is ultimately intended to result in increased youth enterprise development. It needs no rocket scientist to see that the youth in Namibia have not only been at the rough end, but for the greater part just been passive players or recipients, if not altogether on the periphery of the socio-economic, cultural and what-have-you of the societal co-existence. While by verbal pronouncements and innuendoes of them being leaders of tomorrow, or conversely of today, they have indeed seemed for the most part outcasts of society – whether by design or default.
This has been so much the case given the fact that our education system has for years been discarding and dumping thousands of them by the wayside, especially the Grade 10s and 12s. Not only this, but as indicated by one educational lobby group last year, a significant number of Namibian children do not complete their school cycles.
Although there have been many a youth organisation and programme around, with the exception of a few their impact on the youth have been awfully negligible, if not invisible altogether. The blame may partly lay with the youth themselves for being unable to make use of the opportunities available and availed. But those who have been responsible for running these programmes as much cannot escape the blame either for the invisibility of the youth projects or their lack of necessary impact.
Either due to lack of information dissemination, not to mention the programmes’ inaccessibility to the masses of the youth other than a chosen few, due to the endemic favouritism and nepotism some of our public institutions are infested with. In this regard one cannot but have high regard for one of the five pillars, which is Effective Governance and Service Delivery. Yet to some the HPP is no more than a re-invention of the wheel.
Not to mention the trappings of lack of transparency and accountability. But note must be taken about the Harambee concept adding a new concept to governance and service delivery in Namibia in the sense of calling and/or insisting on the participation of and by all. By the participating and pulling together determinant, citizens are being called upon to be part of the trademark inclusive House of President Geingob. Not only this, but for all and sundry to own whatever processes of their governance, directly, or indirectly through their representatives. Including actively holding these representatives accountable, something that hitherto has only been appearing to be in the realm and duty of would-be institutions of checks and balances within the Namibian governance configurations and paraphernalia.
But as per the dictum of the ‘Namibian House’, and the Harambee clarion call, it cannot be business as usual with all and sundry expected to play their parts, but that short of becoming state actors, regarding any matter of concern and immediate interest to them, including the issue of genocide and reparation.