A Better Man In Waiting?

YOUR report (14.11.2012) on Bernardus Swartbooi’s call for restructuring of a failing ministry is worth taking up for a greater cause.

Yes, this was news, real news! And for the first time since 1990, it was, in its own context, good news!Obviously, here is a still rather young man who is able to think. So much went wrong in our beloved country; so much went against our erstwhile idealistic dreams of a better Namibia that we wonder why our leaders did not hoeka change what went wrong. All the way, their only ‘panacea’ was ‘money’. They threw money and more money at the problem areas without achieving any positive results. To try to heal a faulty structure or system is only wrong; one cannot strengthen a cancer, one has to cut the cancer out.This young leader – now a governor of one of our most troubled regions – is not only able to think, he is even able to think ‘out of the box’ and out of the brackets his party has installed; he has got the rare potential to do what others could not do.Would his people, all the people of Karas Region, rally behind him and would the party and government leadership for once listen to him? If so one of the most concerning problems of Namibia, the poverty of the southern regions, would be solved in a few years. However, that seems impossible without a generational change; the Old Guard is keeping itself smugly inside the old box while ignoring the real problems of Namibia.However, Swartbooi met resistance and bad judgment in his own region, too; he still meets intellectual and other corruption. He meets backward thinking, even thinking along the old racial lines. And sometimes, he is forced to make use of that too because this is seemingly the only language others understand. Therefore, we can say, he meets foolishness and stupidity!A region is suffering. A country is suffering! And the leaders, even the candidates for the highest office of our state do not see that, do not mention it and are, if we have to judge them by this ‘blindness’, really unfit to lead this nation in a better time.Egan A (jnr)By email