Becker Has No Clue

LET’S deal with Jochen Becker. He authored an odious [letter] on Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari (‘Write for the man on the street’, The Namibian June 10, 2011).

I see a danger in such bigoted offerings. The chauvinism of Jochen Becker, if not dealt with, can set a bad precedent. It can also be a serious blow to those young minds role modelled by us (political scientists). We owe it to the profession we represent, to defend not only its name but also those few we have amongst us.We will interrogate it and then dismiss it as misplaced, insulting and anti-black intellectual. We know the history of this nation very well; our people (blacks) were denied proper education on the basis of pigmentation. When Hengari writes about his education level and experiences, it reinforces the idea in many of us to study hard and take our education seriously. This was not understood by Jochen Becker. Hengari’s excellent writings keep us on our toes, as young black intellectuals. His writing is homework. Dictionaries exist for a purpose and we are [neither] lazy, nor stupid to read. Jochen Becker makes a lot of unintelligent generalisations. Apparently ‘nobody gives a sh*@t about John Rawls or Amartya Sen’. Does he even understand John Rawls’s thinking and the underpinning discourse? John Rawls’s thinking, as postulated by Hengari, is important and has underscored the writings of many of us (public black intellectuals). Hengari was correct in dismissing Jochen Becker as ‘dangerously oblivious of the need to call on theory.’We must never be apologetic for our achievements, especially in education. It was not Hengari that ran away with the textbooks of Jochen Becker and prevented him from commanding knowledge. Hengari’s participation in public discourse has always been key. It must be noted that degrees, although important, are not the key unit of analysis in our field. They are a means to attain their ends. A good political scientist is not he with degrees, but he that makes Jochen Becker react they way he did. By the way, some of us, while doing our first degrees, looked up to the black intellectuals such as Hengari. We did not know Hengari in person but that education footnote inspired us.Jochen Becker has no clue. Hence the need to dismiss him as a matter of urgency. The Namibian society is in a coma and public intellectuals can feel it. The country’s headship is busy ‘meal-ticketing’ our national treasury. It is only sharp intellect and prolific scholarly work (Post-Scriptum) of political scientists such as Hengari that can save us.Job S AmupandaBy email