Political Perspective
By: Gwen Lister
THE Ministry of Veterans’ Affairs is struggling for identity and a raison d’être. It’s not the only one.
I’ve always maintained that an information ministry is an outdated concept – a relic from a bygone African era when governments controlled most of the media – but is superfluous in a democracy. Veterans’ Affairs also ought not be a ministry but a division or subdivision. At some point in the not-too-distant future, face it, there’ll be struggle veterans no more.
ALTHOUGH I have my opinions, it’s clearly not my choice as to whether ministries such as veterans’ affairs or information exist or not, but the problem is that they are simply spending money in an attempt merely to justify their existence rather than on essential projects in the national interest.
The latest folly is the estimated N$14 million Veterans’ Affairs wants in order to build more monuments and shrines to struggle heroes. In particular, if The Villager has got it right, that’s what the Iipumbu ya Shilongo shrine will cost approximately. Most of the heroes they want to honour (again!) already have their place at the Heroes’ Acre, built at a rough cost of N$75 million back in 2002 by a North Korean outfit. It’s a place where Namibian heroes and heroines are honoured and remembered, and that should surely suffice until the country can afford the luxury of more shrines and monuments?
To our national embarrassment, it has already been admitted by government that there are insufficient funds to pay old-age pensions, and yet the madness of waste and extravagance continues. There will be those who insist that our national heroes/heroines of the struggle years deserve all that and more, but in my view tribute has been made and paid in various ways, and the priority right now is the living and the yet to be born rather than the dead.
I’m prepared to chalk up many of the formative years of our independence, where projects and priorities were not necessarily well chosen, to our lack of experience at governance. But now, more than two decades later, we really need to be aware of our mistakes and how not to repeat them, and if nothing else we have to stop bringing the past into the present and future at a considerable cost. We have a youthful generation facing a myriad of problems – struggling with inadequate schooling and insufficient skills to understand the world they are moving into, unequipped to deal with the challenges or the chances to escape the quicksand of unemployment and hopeless lives. We cannot continue to glorify the past while people of the present continue to suffer. We cannot build positivity and progress and we really need someone with the power to say ‘no’ to foolish schemes and wasteful projects so that our resources can be better spent and utilised to the benefit of the current and future generations.
The minister of veterans’ affairs, Nickey Iyambo, surely knows better. But he needs to justify his existence and it’s always a popular political choice to bang the struggle drum and resuscitate fallen heroes. But it’s not good enough for our people who continue to be amazingly tolerant of our government’s silly excesses at their expense.
Enough now of monuments to the past.
Today marks International Women’s Day and the toll on the nation’s women in terms of violence, rape and abuse is what the struggle is all about in contemporary Namibia and there is no monument to their sacrifice. This is one of the most critical challenges we face and not history’s fallen heroes. So as women, let us also bring pressure to bear on government to get their priorities straight.
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