Accountability Is About Democracy
AT LEAST once a week, often daily, we see that Namibians do not understand the notion of democracy.
We read that an editor was rudely threatened with being expelled from the press conference at the SPYL [Swapo Party Youth League] and we read statements which ‘explain’ that our President doesn’t have to account for what he is doing. The latter a statement issued by Information Minister Joel Kaapanda. This is horribly undemocratic!
Over the years, we learned that the leadership of SPYL always has the one or other ‘Einstein’ on its panel. Now it is young Job Amupanda, the ‘intellectual megalomaniac’, as he is fast getting to be known in this country. Others use him as a ‘tool’, as much as the whole of the SPYL membership was used as a tool for many years now, often as the ‘barking dog’ of the mother party.
The leadership of the SPYL is helpless in the hands of its masters, and also confused by dead ideologies, words they do not understand and, of course, personal promises that realise for only very, very few of them.
However, the less amusing report was a statement by minister Joel Kaapanda; it was indeed a shocking one. This Kaapanda is a man in a position known as the ‘Minister of Propaganda’ in other states. It is a position usually reserved for ‘intellectuals’, for ‘foxes’ – who of us does not remember Hitler’s fox Joseph Goebbels. Is Kaapanda an intellectual, is he a ‘fox’? He wears glasses but in this age, many wear glasses and glasses, once a sign of an intellectual, have lost that meaning. And his utterings, well, you decide!
We have to tell him that especially our President has to account for all he does! That is part of democracy, and an important part it is. If the top servant of a democratic state is not obliged to account for what he does, who then has to be accountable? All the various Kaapandas, the Ekandjos, the Ngurares and Amupandas, the ministers and all the other office bearers in Namibia and even the citizenry will then also not have to be accountable for what they do – because they do as the president does; the president has to set an example for the nation. And failing this example has consequences. Our justice system would have no power anymore and we could send the Director of the Anti-Corruption Commission, Paulus. Noa, packing because our democracy then would be impotent, bankrupt and instead, a new tyranny would have been born and sanctioned.
What do our new candidates for the 2014 presidency say about all this? Did any one of them volunteer to speak up already? If not, why not? We should ask them now! If there is no response, we‘ll know that nothing ever will change for the better!
J ‘Broekkaros’ Blokstaan
Karas region