The RDP And The Politics Of Opposition
By: ALEXACTUS T KAURE
LET me start from a basic premise. In order to have an opposition party there must be opposition/alternative (not confrontational) politics. The Rally for Democracy and Progress has, in my view, stood out on some of the major issues facing our country.
The RDP president, Hidipo Hamutenya (HH), a week or so ago launched an interesting document entitled ‘National Alternative Policies’ featuring altogether 15 such policies. I worked for and with HH when he was the minister of information and broadcasting and I know that when he says tomorrow there will be a school there, there will be one.
I know that the RDP shares the same acronym with the South African Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), which basically failed. Hopefully the same fate will not befall the RDP. The RDP secretary of mobilisation and organisation, Libolly Haufiku, said that as the official opposition, the RDP has a duty and responsibility towards the people of Namibia to present alternative policies. “This government has deliberately kept people ignorant. It’s as if a policy was set up to keep people ignorant of their rights. People believe it’s wrong not to vote for the ruling party. People are actually insecure,” said Haufiku.
“Give us a chance, we will do so.”
The Rally for Democracy and Progress says the Namibian government, under its stewardship, would be one without a National Council, where traditional leaders are not allowed to be active politicians, and one where all permanent secretary jobs would be advertised and contracted on a performance basis every five years.
An RDP-led Namibia would also, as a measure to alleviate corruption, blacklist those found guilty of corrupt activities, implement the Basic Income Grant (BIG) as a short-term measure to tackle abject poverty. The RDP said it would replace the party-list system with a constituency-based electoral system to improve accountability.
“The RDP will abolish the National Council and increase the number of representatives in the National Assembly. The RDP will enforce the separation of powers as stipulated in the Namibian Constitution, where for example executive members shall not be part of the legislature,” reads the RDP policy document.
If he comes to power, RDP president Hidipo Hamutenya would not shy away from appointing ministers from outside parliament, provided such people had the required skills to fulfil the tasks “to ensure an all-inclusive leadership”.
“If you are a traditional leader, you have no business being in politics,” Haufiku said.
On issues of decentralisation, the RDP would allow regions to have their own budgets, which would then be incorporated into the national budget. It would eliminate the appointment of regional governors, who instead would be directly elected by the regions.
The RDP’s 15 policy alternatives also include those on tendering, transport, environment protection, gender, labour, land, energy, information, education, health, economic development, youth, sport and the arts.
One of the chronic problems of the opposition parties in many African democracies is their failure to forward distinct policy alternatives to the voters. As Mathisen and Svasand pointed out, “the obvious problem of African political parties is that they are weak in terms of developing a comprehensive political vision”.
But in this case, the RDP has given what I think is a comprehensive agenda to many of the existing government policies.
I do not want to dwell too much on the policy document but such an alternative must be based on a party advancing a socialist programme for the formation of a workers’ government in opposition to all the contending political representatives of big business as is the case now in our country where tenderpreneurship is being advanced and celebrated in the name of BEE instead of real and progressive development for the majority of our people.
One crucial issue that is hardly discussed is that opposition parties don’t just operate in a vacuum. Forget about their sometimes fragmented nature, their lack of financial resources, which is true in some cases because the ruling parties have state resources at their beck and call. For me the main determinant at the end of the day are the people – the masses out there. I know that the concept of class consciousness is complex and a bit ambiguous in Marxist philosophy. But the underlying notion here is that the African masses will only come of age when it makes that transition from being a ‘class in itself’ to a ‘class for itself’. Thus the role of opposition parties and civil society organisations is to play the role of developing that political consciousness. Because, after all, societies are not static but dynamic. Opposition parties are sometimes accused of hibernating in the period between elections. And only to become active during election times. Thus it is now time for the other opposition parties to come out of their closets and state in clear terms their policies on many of the issues confronting our country.