Do We Understand Data?

THE article by Citizen Nahas Angula in your edition of 10 March 2013, is informative and interesting. There is, however, something irritating about it too.

The good citizen stated, after giving us some figures, that: “The underlying causes of rural poverty are under-development, lack of arable and grazing land, low production technologies and other critical assistance to communal and resettlement residents”.
 Seen superficially, this seems true. But is it so? Let us look at it in its context.
Facts we have aplenty, figures too. However, there is that little something we call ‘common sense’.
In the rural areas, the true ‘underlying cause’ of poverty was and is overpopulation. Yesteryear, overpopulation was a result of ‘the seven fat years’ and was quickly regulated by Mother Nature itself (drought and famine). Today’s constantly growing overpopulation (made possible by man’s ‘technical progresses’) begs for man’s intervention, which it too seldom gets. In fact, this is the real underlying cause of misery the world over. In Namibia, the population has become too big.
We say that the Chinese are our respected friends and their way of governing is an example for many of us. The today successful Chinese nation faced the same problem of overpopulation; they recognised the problem and did something about it. As we know, the state (Communist party) simply forbade its citizens in the urban areas to have more than one child and, in the rural areas, more than two children (this second one only if the first child is a girl). Something like that is a cruel measure. However, doing nothing to solve the problem would have had much more cruel consequences for the Chinese.
Namibia can – if the nation has the will to overcome its growing misery – go the same or at least a similar way that will lead it out of the unchecked, destructive growth of its population.
Too many of us still think this country with its vast empty spaces and often unspoiled horizons is under-populated. It is not.
Carefully reading what Citizen Angula wrote and regularly questioning his deductions shall enable us to understand the problem better. It is not necessarily wrong what he said – in fact, much is right - but building a solution on a questionable foundation must be regarded as dangerous.
Like in China, Namibia will need a re-engineering of its society. In China, this was very expensive, the whole process cost millions of lives and, as we see it now, brought to the fore other miseries. Therefore, an easy way it will not be; not for China and not for Namibia. However, we could learn from the mistakes made in China.

Rudolf
By E-mail

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