A Missed Opportunity
LOOKING back at 2012, I visualised the Namibian president’s cabinet repair, usually called a ‘reshuffle’, as a very important event. However, taking the president’s original priorities seriously, I cannot but regret the missed opportunity by President Hifikepunye Pohamba to take a swipe at grand corruption in this country. Yes, it was a missed opportunity, maybe the best opportunity during his time in power.
Since his first day as the president of Namibia, Pohamba spoke out against corruption. He declared corruption as the public enemy number 1, and so did most Namibians. During the first months of his presidency, Pohamba was idolised by Namibia as the new broom because of this, a broom that would be able to clean up the mess of corruption under which Namibia is suffocating.
But soon it became obvious that the new broom was not really in use, the listless sweeping went on with old brooms, brooms which were unable to clean up properly even when still new. Corruption grew in leaps and bounds and hope for a better Namibia diminished. And later it surfaced that even some of the guardians of our people were involved in corruption. It became general knowledge that our ruling body did nothing of what was announced by the president, instead, the image emerged that corruption inside the high circles of government was covered up, while no findings of commissions of investigations were made public, underpinning that image.
During the last two years, a new sort of corruption came to the light. It surfaced that not only money continued to disappear in huge amounts, no, even land in the communal areas was stolen and many of the highest ranking government officials are, allegedly, involved in that most horrible of all crimes. Land is the most valuable asset of a people – and we saw them robbed of their land and of their livelihood by the powerful, the ‘fat cats’ of Namibia. What happened to the ‘land grabbers’? Nothing at all!
The last cabinet reshuffle was the perfect opportunity to get rid of those who, it was said, had taken land from the poor communities, land they then had fenced in. Our law forbids this. Our law is clear. Why did the president miss the very good opportunity to root out this evil? The people are very disappointed now. It seems as if the crooks are allowed their crooked ways, as if the president protects them at the cost of the people. Is his ‘fighting corruption’ only a grand swindle? Is it part of the sleeping potion we Namibians have to drink every day? I can understand that it is ‘difficult’ to recover the stolen millions – they are billions already – of Namibian assets, I can understand that it is ‘difficult’ to control tender corruption and that it is, contrarily to this, easy to catch the petty thieves, on which our government is concentrating. If it comes to the larger fish in the sea of corruption, they are swimming well, are healthy and strong and no hook or net seems to get hold of them. However, land, the land under our feet, is something quite different; we can touch it, even trample on it. 3000 ha cannot disappear; even one single ha cannot disappear. Land is there, it stays there and it should be the easiest of investigations to clean up the matter of stolen land. And because the time is ripe for something drastic, why did the president let go of the opportunity to throw out the suspected culprits, the suspected stealers of land? That would have been a perfect opportunity of his government to ensure a renaissance of the hailed ancient African culture and values! Our president missed that opportunity, will he ever tell us why?
Augustus Q Angola (jun)
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