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Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - Web posted at 6:40:15 GMT Wolf of poverty is snapping at Namibia's heels: Melber * JOHN GROBLERGOVERNMENT'S failure to implement its own poverty-alleviation policies - while instead pandering to politically connected economic interests - is a threat to continued peace and stability in Namibia, Professor Henning Melber of the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) warned last week. |
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The potential for destabilisation was still being held in check by equal measures of "fear and trust in the Big Man", as personified by the ruling Swapo Party and its president Sam Nujoma, Melber said in his annual review of Namibia's socio-economic policies. Melber, a former Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Review Unit (Nepru). was addressing a well-attended event hosted by the Hans Seidel Foundation in Windhoek on Friday. Melber's views were tempered by Dr Dirk Hansohm (his successor at Nepru) as "perhaps a little too gloomy" in assigning a failing grade to Government's efforts at eradicating poverty in Namibia. Melber, who currently holds the chair of Director of Research at the Nordic Africa Institute, gave a comprehensive critique of where and why Government's policies have failed: unrealistic plans (like Vision 2030) that did not practise what they preached but served to lull the ruling elite into a false sense of achievement. POLITICAL WILL While acknowledging that the legacy of apartheid had created one of the most unequal societies in the world, Melber questioned the lack of political will in dealing with this. "Given the dimensions of chronic poverty existing at Independence, the formulation of a rigorous strategy towards a coherent and cohesive social protection policy could have been expected at the forefront of post-colonial efforts towards further emancipation," he said. A lack of reliable and up-to-date data made accurate assessments of poverty difficult, but what was available from the likes of the National Planning Commission (NPC) made it clear that little if anything had changed for the majority of Namibians still living in destitution, he said. One part of this was because of a lack of an effective planning body that would direct a coherent strategy in this regard; the NPC, while producing many fine-sounding documents like the First and Second National Development Plan (NDP I and II), the Millennium Development Goals and Vision 2030, had produced little in terms of tangible results. By its own admission, the NPC knew that a lack of proper planning and implementation, poor co-ordination, a critical shortage of specialised skills and capital and inadequate implementation of Cabinet decisions saw such development schemes fail to be implemented, he said. Especially Vision 2030 drew his fire: while it declared that it would place all Namibians on par with their peers in the developed world by 2030, Melber suggested that Vision 2030 would only become reality by 3020 - 110 years from now, rather than just 25. Melber also criticised Government's stance towards foreign aid. Although Namibia was the highest recipient of foreign aid per person, Government's failure to make good use of this had seen it lose the support of many former donors. Instead, closer co-operation with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund appeared to be emerging, he said. AVARICE AND AVID In this regard, Nujoma's increasingly populist rhetoric a la Zimbabwe at especially the World Summit for Sustainable Development in 2002 was also at odds with his own Government's NDP II. Telling foreign donors "to go to hell" and keep their money if they did not want to agree that Africa was equal to Europe led to a drop-off in external assistance at a time when Namibia needed to raise at least 41 per cent of its development budget from the same countries he was insulting, Melber said. At the same time, Government's insistence that Namibia should be classified as a Least Developed Country (LDC) was counter-productive, as it sent the wrong message to potential foreign investors, he said. Achieving LDC status would be dangerous, as LDCs were generally perceived as countries with weak economies and seriously lacking in infrastructure, he warned. Melber said it appeared that "public spending is increasingly being channelled to more privileged groups in society employed in activities that bring little in the way of return through higher economic growth, such as in defence, paramilitary security, intelligence and poorly performing parastatals". He also quoted other research in this regard. At the same time, pursuing overly ambitious but unrealistic decentralisation goals risked increasing, rather than reducing, general poverty amongst the rural poor, he cautioned. Additionally, Constitutional checks and balances on the powers-that-be have been eroded by a culture of political impunity: the Namibian Office of the Auditor General has noted with dismay that instructions were "being totally ignored without any fear" by top civil servants, including Permanent Secretaries. The Avid-SSC case was one of the best examples of this, Melber said. It exposed a network of politically connected people whose shadowy business practices were a textbook illustration of the "fat cat" syndrome prevalent in certain circles in Namibia's ruling elite, he said. He cited Prime Minister Nahas Angula's warning that this sort of asset stripping could lead to a class war in Namibia; the upper class in this instance were often massively paid parastatal managers, whose salaries often were double that of the President's. What appears to have happened in sectors like fishing and agriculture was that a selective interpretation of affirmative action led to a pact between the old and new elites that sought to sustain the prevailing status quo rather than bring about meaningful social change. * John Grobler is a freelance journalist; 081 240 1587 |
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