Electric Capitalism in Namibia?

For 53% of Namibians, firewood is their primary source for cooking, according to the Namibia Statistics Agency.

This means most Namibians don’t have access to electricity, which is crucial for socio-economic development.

These citizens are mainly impoverished working people of colour – living in rural and informal areas – where they spend a huge amount of time gathering the wood and cooking.

They do not own an electric stove or washing machine. No refrigeration of food or medicine is possible for them, not to mention that their children cannot study after dark or connect to the internet for educational research.

They remain trapped in poverty and ill health. They urgently need access to electricity.

This represents a huge failure on the part of the Namibian state to provide adequate (and safe) access. The crisis of under-consumption of working people continues.

Electricity inequality along colour and class lines persists. The former ‘white’ residential areas in Namibia have a sufficient supply of electricity.

Furthermore, this unequal electricity provision happens in the context of cheap electricity delivery to mining and capitalist industries in general.

The exceptional book ‘Electric Capitalism – Recolonising Africa on the Power Grid’, edited by David McDonald, founder of the Municipal Services Project that researched municipal services in southern Africa, highlights that a regressive electricity pricing system exists for mining and other industries.

SUBSIDIES FOR MINES?

In this regard, maybe NamPower could take the nation into its confidence. Gold production, for example, is electricity intensive.

What electricity subsidy was provided to B2Gold, our biggest gold mine, which is shutting down and taking declared profits of N$5 billion out of the country?

A former NamPower managing director served on B2Gold’s board so perhaps the parastatal could reveal the private interests, if any, involved in the functioning of the company so that the nation can understand the slow electricity rollout.

It is also noteworthy that the government had zero shareholding in B2Gold, and currently has 7,5% in the Navachab gold mine, 3% in Rössing uranium, and zero in the Tsumeb copper smelter.

What kind of electricity subsidies are provided to them?

Namibia actually needs affordable electricity tariffs immediately for impoverished households already connected to the grid.

The commodification of basic services has regrettably created a price framework and collection methods that are all about disciplining and the containment of working people.

It has led, for example, to widespread outsourcing by municipalities of electricity meter installation and reading, as well as revenue collection.

Ironically, this neo-liberal cost-recovery model is very expensive to maintain – producing and installing these meters, employing personnel to do the disconnections and reconnections, etc.

In this regard, free electricity for working people would be more efficient and certainly crucial for socio-economic progress.

It is high time for the decommodification of essential services.

EQUALITY

If anything, Namibia must ban prepaid electricity meters as they discriminate against the poor. And municipalities cut off low-income households far too quickly.

It is thus appropriate to stop the disconnections of the impoverished and to rather provide subsidies to them for such basic services.

The financial aspect cannot be the most important factor when it comes to our citizens’ social rights.

On the contrary, electricity ought to be provided on a not-for-profit basis.

Basic services could instead be run with cross-subsidisation because, in the final analysis, social equality is a far better principle than cost recovery.

A cross-subsidisation model would actually bring down the high electricity prices in Namibia.

HOW GREEN?

Regarding Namibia’s green hydrogen project, the new deal from Europe pretends to be a moral actor when it is really about profit-driven neo-colonialism.

Besides, the huge freshwater challenge such a green hydrogen project would pose for southern Namibia has not yet been resolved.

The problem with a desalination plant is that it is energy intensive and therefore it does not make much sense to set one up.

Not to mention the costs involved in developing a deep-water port at Lüderitz.

Moreover, the National Planning Commission’s exaggerated claims about the number of jobs that would be created by this project fails to specify the quality of the jobs or the incomes our working people would earn.

In any case, we should ask why Namibia is investing so much in expensive and yet unproven technology when the Grand Inga hydro-electric project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo would eventually be an effective option for the entire continent.

Are we being recolonised by European capital in the energy sector with this green hydrogen project?

PEOPLE POWER

Namibian working people want the electricity supply to be democratised without delay.

Electricity is a public good that must be available and affordable for every citizen.

The working class should consider an electricity crisis committee that might, for instance, coordinate forming cooperatives for solar energy in rural and informal areas.

Instead of importing most of our electricity, we should become as self-reliant as possible. Such a committee should also demand free basic electricity every day for every Namibian household.

We must resist the commodification of electricity.

• The authors are members of the Marxist Group of Namibia

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