Namibia's Political Landscape: A Reflection
By: Andre du PisaniDemocracy is the politics of the ordinary.John Dunne.There is no escape from yesterday because yesterday has deformed us.Samuel Beckett, Proust (1931) INTRODUCTIONAT Independence almost a decade and a half ago, reconciliation and nation-building became the leitmotivof the politics of the new State.
Given the history that deformed us and the politics of liberation
with its craving for loyalty, solidarity and unity, both projects
were hardly surprising.
What was surprising, however, is that both reconciliation and
nation-building have taken different forms to those originally
envisioned by their architects.
In post-colonial Namibia with its deep contradictions,
reconciliation and nation-building became a hegemonic project
designed to incorporate previously oppositional elites into the
dominant political and economic structures of society.
Neither projects were anchored on justice.
Neither transformed the society in ways that benefit the
citizenry as a whole.
THE OPPORTUNITY STATE
The explanation for the above outcome is vested in the nature of
the State and its essential character.
The post-colonial (and post-apartheid) state, while having
escaped in important respects from its racial past, nevertheless
has remained imprisoned by the shackles of its economic and social
foundations.
These frame the space, which both defines the potential of the
State for incorporating new social groups (other than those already
belonging to the new hegemony) into the post-apartheid order, and
simultaneously limits the State's capacity to address the extreme
levels of degrading poverty and inequality in Namibian society.
Apart from the undoubted neo-liberal character of the State, a
character reinforced by the provisions of the Constitution, the
party system and the nature of class power and dominance that it
makes possible, too, are key elements that need to be considered in
any analysis of the country's politics.
Within the dominant governing party, Swapo Party of Namibia,
(the very name invokes the past), the centre-right and the militant
mediocrity are ascendant, as illustrated by the outcome of the
recent Extraordinary Congress, the cabinet appointments that
followed the sacking of the former Minister of Foreign Affairs and
his deputy and the pronouncements on affirmative action loans for
those previously disadvantaged, but who have since joined the ranks
of the new elite.
At the time of writing, the state of play in the party is too
fluid to arrive at any definitive conclusions about the class
character of the Party.
The alliance with organised labour, at least for now, seems not
to meaningfully constrain the rightward shift of Swapo, nor does it
hold the governing party at least partially accountable to an
important constituency, the workers.
On the contrary, some trade unionists have either abandoned the
cause or have joined the ranks of those who are feasting happily
with those already on the gravy train.
In the absence of positions and meaningful parties to the left
of Swapo Party of Namibia, accountability would be difficult to
deliver.
The cautious conclusion that one arrives at is that the state in
Namibia has transformed itself into an opportunity state for those
who think alike for there is precious little diversity of thinking
on key issues in our body politic and for those who use the
networks of the State and the Party to enrich themselves.
It has to be said that economic and political elites of all
parties, for that is the essential character of the minimalist
neo-liberal state such as ours, are not averse to power, wealth and
rank.
The quality and depth of our democracy, for we have an elite
democracy with regular no-choice or limited-choice elections, have
been seriously undermined by the rise of the militant mediocrity
with its seemingly unsatisfied and envious appetite for greed.
It is indeed sad to witness the death of idealism and community
activism, so soon after independence.
The opportunity state rests of the relations between political
and economic power, between Swapo and corporate capital and between
the political elites and global capital.
Taken together, these relations determine the class character of
the State.
Examining the continuities between the former apartheid and
post-apartheid state is as important as addressing the
discontinuities.
It is instructive to remind oneself that issues of class,
privilege, race, justice and inequality were paramount in
pre-independent Namibia.
With the arrival of democracy during the 1990s they tended to be
forgotten and subsumed under the politics of national
reconciliation and nation-building.
Yet these very issues have a dogged habit of forcing themselves
back on to the agenda.
In doing so, they lay bare the power and class relations that
determine the character of the State.
Lack of political will and the nature of the historic
compromises borne out of the negotiated transition to independence
inhibit the potential for realizing a just reconciliation.
The politics of reconciliation and the attendant nation-building
project have failed to address past and present injustices and have
not significantly contributed towards the building of a human
rights culture.
In important respects, the State has become a threat to the
human security of its own citizens.
This is evident in the unruly behaviour of some members the
Special Field Force (SFF) and the seeming inability of the Namibian
Police to protect life and property against an ever increasing tide
of crime.
President Nujoma's original racial reconciliation and his more
recent transformative reconciliation (linking racial reconciliation
to black economic empowerment), while necessary, have been
seriously compromised by his administration's tendency to resort to
racial labelling when confronted by legitimate critique.
The land issue is precisely an important litmus test for the
credibility and workability of transformative reconciliation.
In respect of land, transformative reconciliation has shown both
positive and negative sides.
On the positive side, there seems to be a firm enough commitment
to the Rule of Law and the provisions of the Constitution.
On the negative side, the politics of land have yet to be
adequately integrated into a national, comprehensive and long-term
poverty eradication strategy.
Land lends itself too easily to sloganeering and an
unquestioning intellectual certainty about the course of
struggle.
The challenge remains to return to the project of racial
transformation with social justice without burdening it with crude
racism from ruling party spokespersons or the official and
independent media.
The crude racism of some members of the white privileged class,
as evidenced recently in Gobabis, Outjo and elsewhere, too, signals
that national reconciliation has but shallow foundations.
DECENTRALISATION
While the policy framework and the building of regional and
local capacity for decentralisation have received attention, the
capacity to deliver resources to the rural and the urban poor, and
establishing capacity for development, remains severely
compromised.
In some instances, corruption and nepotism have been
decentralised to the level of the local and the regional State.
The paradox persists, while decentralisation can indeed be one
of the most effective ways of delivering development, its capacity
remains most compromised.
More effective ways to building and sustaining local and
regional capacity for development need to be urgently explored.
Codes of Conduct, while necessary, are not a sufficient
condition for effective governance at the local and regional
level.
Civil society actors, too, need to become much more supportive
of Government attempts to decentralise power.
There is indeed much room for democratic action at local and
regional level.
DEMOCRATIC LIFE
Since independence, progress towards the consolidation of
democracy and institution building has been mixed.
On the positive side, we have institutions such as the Office of
the Ombudsman, the Auditor General and the independent media that
constitute a break with our racial past.
In addition, the symbolic reconciliation of the first years of
independence has been replaced with a transformative initiative
that is necessary for a just reconciliation in our country.
But, on the negative side, several systemic deficiencies
continue to undermine reconciliation and nation-building.
First, the post-apartheid state remains a prisoner of narrow
class interests, thereby limiting its transformative potential.
Second, the absence of a viable opposition dilutes
democracy.
Third, managerial capacity is limited in some state
institutions, especially at the regional and the local level.
Finally, the potential for transcending the racial divisions of
our past is compromised by both the unwillingness of apartheid's
beneficiaries to acknowledge their complicity in the imposition and
maintenance of that racial order, and elites resort to the race
card for short-term political gain and as naked opportunism.
On closer analysis, it has to be said that there is no political
crisis in our country.
There is something potentially more dangerous; a crisis of
politics.
Anti-colonial nationalism and its attendant discourse are
dependent upon the earlier racial and colonial discourse.
While autonomous, it is not a sovereign discourse.
It cannot exist without invoking the colonial and imperial
past.
It needs enemies to justify its own existence and language.
It mimics the colonial in its practice and its strategies of
justification.
Historically anti-colonial nationalism (just like nationalism)
will run its course.
It will be eclipsed as has been happening in Zimbabwe.
The real victim at the recent Swapo Extraordinary Congress was
the idea.
We desperately need new ideas.
A new language of politics.
A language that is more ethical and pro-poor.
More visionary and imaginative.
More emancipatory.
A democratic culture that debates both moral and practical
problems.
A discourse that values diversity as a key ingredient for
unity.
There is another urgent task, that of constructing a competent
opposition.
Election results over the past decade or more indicate that the
competence and relevance of the opposition can indeed be
questioned.
Electoral outcomes suggest that democracy as a system of
governance that hinges upon viable choice and checks and balances
may indeed be under threat.
Statutory watchdog institutions such as the Office of the
Ombudsman and the Auditor General, while important, cannot replace
the value of a competent and meaningful opposition.
Public accountability, both vertical and horizontal, depends
critically on a viable, competent and credible opposition.
The time has come for all opposition parties to determine the
factors responsible for their slump.
These are indeed many and varied.
One of the challenges for the opposition is to attract more
voters in key constituencies, both urban and rural.
But Swapo has them captive because of symbolic reasons and
because its empowerment policies (made possible by the opportunity
state) make it unthinkable for the nascent Black middle class to
defect.
There is also the challenge of opening political space for
diversity.
There is too much convergence and a near-absence of a national
dialogue on key policy and development issues.
This brings us to issues of economic transformation.
ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
The demise of apartheid and the introduction of democracy have
seen Namibia's entry into the global economy as an active member of
the international community, with robust trade and diplomatic
relations.
Economic growth, albeit far lower than hoped for, has been
consistently achieved over the past few years.
Pockets of the local business sector have broken into new
regional and international markets.
Revenue-sharing capacity has improved.
Black entry into the corporate sector has been fostered, if
somewhat selectively, and black economic empowerment has been put
on the agenda.
The country enjoys a respectable credit rating and its
reputation for sound economic management has not been seriously
tarnished.
Not yet anyway.
Namibia's experiment with democracy has been accompanied by the
politically and morally disconcerting rise in unemployment.
Trends in unemployment, employment earnings, job creation and
poverty, might in fact have been aggravated by the government's
existing economic policy.
Perhaps there is need for a universal Basic Income Grant (BIG)
that is underwritten by a consumption tax? Such a BIG, if properly
designed and fairly applied, need not threaten foreign and domestic
investment in the economy.
Given the nature of the State, one should not be too optimistic
that Government would follow such a social-democratic approach to
the problems of unemployment, employment earnings, job creation and
poverty.
CONCLUSIONS
Namibia has indeed made meaningful progress since
independence.
Attempts to consolidate its nascent democracy and to build
institutions that can provide the architecture for democratic life,
have had mixed results.
The opposition remains fragmented and largely impotent.
In the absence of a credible opposition, civil society tends to
play the role of such an opposition.
This is not good for the health of our democracy, since it often
casts civil society in an adversarial relationship to the
State.
This in turn, deprives our national political life from the
potential competence and knowledge that reside within civil
society.
Added to this, there is the matter of lack of diversity in our
political thinking on key challenges that face our nation.
There is precious little oxygen left for our democracy to
entertain new thinking and ideas.
Most of our political parties have gone seriously stale.
Finally, unemployment and poverty deserve our immediate, ongoing
and collective efforts.
Our society is simply too unequal and unjust to remain stable
and peaceful.
We should not be fooled by the oft-repeated assertion that
Namibia is a profoundly peaceful place.
There is much, too much, violence and crime in our society.
The time has come for a Basic Income Grant (BIG) as one way of
responding to the degrading poverty that plagues our country and
weighs heavily upon our minds and morality.
* Andre du Pisani teaches politics and philosophy at The
University of Namibia (Unam).
The views expressed in this article are his own.
What was surprising, however, is that both reconciliation and
nation-building have taken different forms to those originally
envisioned by their architects.In post-colonial Namibia with its
deep contradictions, reconciliation and nation-building became a
hegemonic project designed to incorporate previously oppositional
elites into the dominant political and economic structures of
society.Neither projects were anchored on justice.Neither
transformed the society in ways that benefit the citizenry as a
whole.THE OPPORTUNITY STATEThe explanation for the above outcome is
vested in the nature of the State and its essential character.The
post-colonial (and post-apartheid) state, while having escaped in
important respects from its racial past, nevertheless has remained
imprisoned by the shackles of its economic and social
foundations.These frame the space, which both defines the potential
of the State for incorporating new social groups (other than those
already belonging to the new hegemony) into the post-apartheid
order, and simultaneously limits the State's capacity to address
the extreme levels of degrading poverty and inequality in Namibian
society.Apart from the undoubted neo-liberal character of the
State, a character reinforced by the provisions of the
Constitution, the party system and the nature of class power and
dominance that it makes possible, too, are key elements that need
to be considered in any analysis of the country's politics.Within
the dominant governing party, Swapo Party of Namibia, (the very
name invokes the past), the centre-right and the militant
mediocrity are ascendant, as illustrated by the outcome of the
recent Extraordinary Congress, the cabinet appointments that
followed the sacking of the former Minister of Foreign Affairs and
his deputy and the pronouncements on affirmative action loans for
those previously disadvantaged, but who have since joined the ranks
of the new elite.At the time of writing, the state of play in the
party is too fluid to arrive at any definitive conclusions about
the class character of the Party.The alliance with organised
labour, at least for now, seems not to meaningfully constrain the
rightward shift of Swapo, nor does it hold the governing party at
least partially accountable to an important constituency, the
workers.On the contrary, some trade unionists have either abandoned
the cause or have joined the ranks of those who are feasting
happily with those already on the gravy train.In the absence of
positions and meaningful parties to the left of Swapo Party of
Namibia, accountability would be difficult to deliver.The cautious
conclusion that one arrives at is that the state in Namibia has
transformed itself into an opportunity state for those who think
alike for there is precious little diversity of thinking on key
issues in our body politic and for those who use the networks of
the State and the Party to enrich themselves.It has to be said that
economic and political elites of all parties, for that is the
essential character of the minimalist neo-liberal state such as
ours, are not averse to power, wealth and rank.The quality and
depth of our democracy, for we have an elite democracy with regular
no-choice or limited-choice elections, have been seriously
undermined by the rise of the militant mediocrity with its
seemingly unsatisfied and envious appetite for greed.It is indeed
sad to witness the death of idealism and community activism, so
soon after independence.The opportunity state rests of the
relations between political and economic power, between Swapo and
corporate capital and between the political elites and global
capital.Taken together, these relations determine the class
character of the State.Examining the continuities between the
former apartheid and post-apartheid state is as important as
addressing the discontinuities.It is instructive to remind oneself
that issues of class, privilege, race, justice and inequality were
paramount in pre-independent Namibia.With the arrival of democracy
during the 1990s they tended to be forgotten and subsumed under the
politics of national reconciliation and nation-building.Yet these
very issues have a dogged habit of forcing themselves back on to
the agenda.In doing so, they lay bare the power and class relations
that determine the character of the State.Lack of political will
and the nature of the historic compromises borne out of the
negotiated transition to independence inhibit the potential for
realizing a just reconciliation.The politics of reconciliation and
the attendant nation-building project have failed to address past
and present injustices and have not significantly contributed
towards the building of a human rights culture.In important
respects, the State has become a threat to the human security of
its own citizens.This is evident in the unruly behaviour of some
members the Special Field Force (SFF) and the seeming inability of
the Namibian Police to protect life and property against an ever
increasing tide of crime.President Nujoma's original racial
reconciliation and his more recent transformative reconciliation
(linking racial reconciliation to black economic empowerment),
while necessary, have been seriously compromised by his
administration's tendency to resort to racial labelling when
confronted by legitimate critique.The land issue is precisely an
important litmus test for the credibility and workability of
transformative reconciliation.In respect of land, transformative
reconciliation has shown both positive and negative sides.On the
positive side, there seems to be a firm enough commitment to the
Rule of Law and the provisions of the Constitution.On the negative
side, the politics of land have yet to be adequately integrated
into a national, comprehensive and long-term poverty eradication
strategy.Land lends itself too easily to sloganeering and an
unquestioning intellectual certainty about the course of
struggle.The challenge remains to return to the project of racial
transformation with social justice without burdening it with crude
racism from ruling party spokespersons or the official and
independent media.The crude racism of some members of the white
privileged class, as evidenced recently in Gobabis, Outjo and
elsewhere, too, signals that national reconciliation has but
shallow foundations.DECENTRALISATIONWhile the policy framework and
the building of regional and local capacity for decentralisation
have received attention, the capacity to deliver resources to the
rural and the urban poor, and establishing capacity for
development, remains severely compromised.In some instances,
corruption and nepotism have been decentralised to the level of the
local and the regional State.The paradox persists, while
decentralisation can indeed be one of the most effective ways of
delivering development, its capacity remains most compromised.More
effective ways to building and sustaining local and regional
capacity for development need to be urgently explored.Codes of
Conduct, while necessary, are not a sufficient condition for
effective governance at the local and regional level.Civil society
actors, too, need to become much more supportive of Government
attempts to decentralise power.There is indeed much room for
democratic action at local and regional level.DEMOCRATIC LIFESince
independence, progress towards the consolidation of democracy and
institution building has been mixed.On the positive side, we have
institutions such as the Office of the Ombudsman, the Auditor
General and the independent media that constitute a break with our
racial past.In addition, the symbolic reconciliation of the first
years of independence has been replaced with a transformative
initiative that is necessary for a just reconciliation in our
country.But, on the negative side, several systemic deficiencies
continue to undermine reconciliation and nation-building.First, the
post-apartheid state remains a prisoner of narrow class interests,
thereby limiting its transformative potential.Second, the absence
of a viable opposition dilutes democracy.Third, managerial capacity
is limited in some state institutions, especially at the regional
and the local level.Finally, the potential for transcending the
racial divisions of our past is compromised by both the
unwillingness of apartheid's beneficiaries to acknowledge their
complicity in the imposition and maintenance of that racial order,
and elites resort to the race card for short-term political gain
and as naked opportunism.On closer analysis, it has to be said that
there is no political crisis in our country.There is something
potentially more dangerous; a crisis of politics.Anti-colonial
nationalism and its attendant discourse are dependent upon the
earlier racial and colonial discourse.While autonomous, it is not a
sovereign discourse.It cannot exist without invoking the colonial
and imperial past.It needs enemies to justify its own existence and
language.It mimics the colonial in its practice and its strategies
of justification.Historically anti-colonial nationalism (just like
nationalism) will run its course.It will be eclipsed as has been
happening in Zimbabwe.The real victim at the recent Swapo
Extraordinary Congress was the idea.We desperately need new ideas.A
new language of politics.A language that is more ethical and
pro-poor.More visionary and imaginative.More emancipatory.A
democratic culture that debates both moral and practical problems.A
discourse that values diversity as a key ingredient for unity.There
is another urgent task, that of constructing a competent
opposition.Election results over the past decade or more indicate
that the competence and relevance of the opposition can indeed be
questioned.Electoral outcomes suggest that democracy as a system of
governance that hinges upon viable choice and checks and balances
may indeed be under threat.Statutory watchdog institutions such as
the Office of the Ombudsman and the Auditor General, while
important, cannot replace the value of a competent and meaningful
opposition.Public accountability, both vertical and horizontal,
depends critically on a viable, competent and credible
opposition.The time has come for all opposition parties to
determine the factors responsible for their slump.These are indeed
many and varied.One of the challenges for the opposition is to
attract more voters in key constituencies, both urban and rural.But
Swapo has them captive because of symbolic reasons and because its
empowerment policies (made possible by the opportunity state) make
it unthinkable for the nascent Black middle class to defect.There
is also the challenge of opening political space for
diversity.There is too much convergence and a near-absence of a
national dialogue on key policy and development issues.This brings
us to issues of economic transformation.ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATIONThe
demise of apartheid and the introduction of democracy have seen
Namibia's entry into the global economy as an active member of the
international community, with robust trade and diplomatic
relations.Economic growth, albeit far lower than hoped for, has
been consistently achieved over the past few years.Pockets of the
local business sector have broken into new regional and
international markets.Revenue-sharing capacity has improved.Black
entry into the corporate sector has been fostered, if somewhat
selectively, and black economic empowerment has been put on the
agenda.The country enjoys a respectable credit rating and its
reputation for sound economic management has not been seriously
tarnished.Not yet anyway.Namibia's experiment with democracy has
been accompanied by the politically and morally disconcerting rise
in unemployment.Trends in unemployment, employment earnings, job
creation and poverty, might in fact have been aggravated by the
government's existing economic policy.Perhaps there is need for a
universal Basic Income Grant (BIG) that is underwritten by a
consumption tax? Such a BIG, if properly designed and fairly
applied, need not threaten foreign and domestic investment in the
economy.Given the nature of the State, one should not be too
optimistic that Government would follow such a social-democratic
approach to the problems of unemployment, employment earnings, job
creation and poverty.CONCLUSIONSNamibia has indeed made meaningful
progress since independence.Attempts to consolidate its nascent
democracy and to build institutions that can provide the
architecture for democratic life, have had mixed results.The
opposition remains fragmented and largely impotent.In the absence
of a credible opposition, civil society tends to play the role of
such an opposition.This is not good for the health of our
democracy, since it often casts civil society in an adversarial
relationship to the State.This in turn, deprives our national
political life from the potential competence and knowledge that
reside within civil society.Added to this, there is the matter of
lack of diversity in our political thinking on key challenges that
face our nation.There is precious little oxygen left for our
democracy to entertain new thinking and ideas.Most of our political
parties have gone seriously stale.Finally, unemployment and poverty
deserve our immediate, ongoing and collective efforts.Our society
is simply too unequal and unjust to remain stable and peaceful.We
should not be fooled by the oft-repeated assertion that Namibia is
a profoundly peaceful place.There is much, too much, violence and
crime in our society.The time has come for a Basic Income Grant
(BIG) as one way of responding to the degrading poverty that
plagues our country and weighs heavily upon our minds and morality.
* Andre du Pisani teaches politics and philosophy at The University
of Namibia (Unam).The views expressed in this article are his own.