Hagenomics for the People

Chris Smith

PLAYING chicken and milking the people. Add in school owner- ship, rotting hospitals, killing the flower business, the BCI joke and now some goat who wants to take a successful game farm and hand it over for execution by government. Throw in “secret” water deals and hidden promises of subsidies for wind farms plus an overpriced dam that will benefit no Namibian; this is our future?

Throw in our new performance plan and gradings being slid under the radar, a plan, as I read be- tween the lines, almost identical to the previous British wage and staffing exercise, WASCOM in 1996, we continue at increasing speed down the road to nowhere with more staff and worse out- comes.To mix my metaphors we are sailing at full speed onto the rocks!

Even more obvious we have just completed the full circle as Hage returns to his original roost. How have his views changed since his last time peddling the government bicycle? He left with a governance creed launched by him (and Dr Sam) known as the Public Service Charter, he left with a budgetary control system emerging, with Finance, that put our finances and controls on the right road and his views made co-operation with the private sector a real possibility. But the pay and performance exercise shows how we are repeating that of old rather than progressing from what we had already decided. Or do what is quite obvious?

Is political action and party survival the priority or improving the Namibian lot? I also look at our education boss saying how using school facilities to house private education is not on. He is prepared to sacrifice kids education by not allowing “the people’s property” to be used more effectively. Or a Central Hospital which due to a lack of maintenance is falling apart and politicians now pushing for a new building rather then looking after what they have! Our thinking in the public brain circulates about milking the cow, not maintaining and improving the breed!

Which brings me onto milk which we all need. And I have to say up front I have much sympathy with our local dairy industry but on reviewing the history of the Mariental project find a disturbing pattern in the initial promises and intentions, especially when the current situation with cross subsidised transport, collusive RSA linked wholesalers and Namibia’s intent to have chemically and genetically clean product, were all real threats at the project start in 2007. The press coverage did indicate cheaper money from Agribank and the Development Bank plus 398 ha of additional government land should have brought on a level playing field. (The Namibian 07/07/2007, 15/07/2007, 25/08/2007) But it did not. The Infant protection scheme has now faded and we are back to square one. Round in a circle.

Chicken is heading the same way with retailers quite evidently boosting locally produced chicken prices to a level where it is unaffordable. Again the threats were all well known before the project started. The chicken is fine, the commercial blackmail of monopolistic or collusive major wholesalers will kill the business. The problems are known, and while local producers may not be perfect they are battling the exogenous effects of price manipulation by RSA suppliers wanting to kill our local business. Equally interesting, while this goes on the RSA producers are trying to kill imports from the US and Brazil so that they maintain their local advantage.

So if government intervenes in these private sector managerially they will kill the businesses. The private sector is threatened by external forces of the private sector trying to kill them! Meanwhile our government is trying to climb into the MeatCo cash flow.

What a world. Solution? We need to return to the old style Hagenomics where accountability and openess were the rule. People doing business as part of their competitive committment must have their basic value chains exposed if wrongdoing is suspected. After all we want to do business with (say) RSA but are sick of being taken for a ride. The current ongoing exercise investigating the add on from import price to shelf price may well be a good start and is in line with what Hagenomics used to be.

Sometimes we have to be difficult to those suspected of profiteering excessively through commercial ethical malpractice. This is the economic war that has to be constantly fought.

Then the wise policy of “Grow at Home” can begin its difficult road. Milk, chickens, uranium enrichment, rail building, water power and hydrogen, education and vocational training and health are all on this map.

But,as Abe of Japan has found, the people will respond well to clear cut economic agression. Hagenomics may well require playing chicken if the milking of the people is being addressed! Namibian Economic Warriors (NEW), step up.

csmith@mweb.com.na