Dealing With Empty Promises
THE only lesson that seems to come from the saga of the ‘struggle kids’ who are demanding that they be given jobs, training and cash payouts is that our government leaders are becoming masters at passing the buck.
Unfortunately for them, the offspring of the liberation war heroes no longer trust the comrades who fought alongside their parents. They will not move until what their demand is delivered on the spot – that spot being the bushes outside the perimeter of the Swapo head office in Katutura and other regional offices of the ruling party. The government leaders have tried to tell the demonstrating ‘struggle kids’ that they should return home and wait to be given at least something of what they demand. But the ‘struggle kids’ no longer have the patience ‘waiting for Good’.
How did it get to this? Information is emerging that the Swapo leadership made promises to the guerilla fighters not to worry about their offspring because the organisation would look after them, especially if they were to die fighting. What is also apparent is that no one really had the responsibility to do the job and there was no plan as to how to go about fulfilling the promises.
And so, independence of Namibia came with humanitarian organisations such as the the Council of Churches and the United Nations taking care of Swapo’s obligations while most leaders had their eyes fixed on taking over government. By the time the problems of the ‘struggle kids’ became apparent, the Swapo leadership had passed the matter on to ‘the government’ but with no specific person/s taking responsibility.
Now the questions abound from other quarters of Namibian society which have been quietly watching the ‘returnees’ settling in and allocating themselves state resources. And it is legitimate to ask, why should ‘they’ be treated in a special way? Why should an orphaned ‘struggle child’ whose parents were in exile with Swapo during the liberation struggle be given better government treatment compared to an orphan of parents who were killed or disappeared because they supported Swapo guerrillas?
So bad is the tendency to pass the buck that the Swapo leaders are comfortable posting some 30 police officers [in this crime-infested country] to guard the party’s headquarters against the nuisance of toyi-toying ‘struggle kids’.
What is clear is that the empty promises of the Swapo leaders are catching up with them.
In May 2002, President Hifikepunye Pohamba, while as Swapo secretary general, warned his comrades during the national budget debate in the National Assembly against making promises as these would come back to haunt them. “What embarrassment are we not causing ourselves as politicians when we don’t deliver? What votes do we expect to get in the next elections? It is somehow better to keep quiet than to make promises.”
To that we can only say ‘it is in their nature’. But soon there will be no room for empty promises that may take a lifetime to materialise.
Shooting The Messenger
NAMIBIANS in positions of power [even at the lowest rank it seems] do not want to admit that shooting the messenger will not solve the problem. Officials of Cricket Namibia were reported recently to have blacklisted the government mouthpiece, New Era, and refused to involve them in their events because the newspaper would not stop highlighting allegations of racism in the sport.
Cricket Namibia ought to be reminded that boycotting the media will not change the fact that they have to deal with the issues being highlighted even when they perceive them to be not as serious as portrayed. Their main sponsors considered racial discrimination so omnipresent in Namibian cricket that they imposed a quota system. Sidelining one newspaper will not change that.
The Namibian has suffered such numerous bans and boycotts many times before those singling out the paper realised that they still have to deal with society.
Officials of Cricket Namibia would be well advised to stop treating that national institution as their private domain. And the major lesson for the rest of society is that Namibians must tackle the issues rather than trying to find scapegoats on which to offload their frustrations.