‘Fishrot corruption is Namibian culture’

Why Iceland’s politicians find emotional relief in blaming Namibia

Recently, Iceland’s finance minister, Daði Már Kristófersson, addressed the Fishrot scandal with a comment that should insult not just every Namibian, but anyone with the emotional intelligence of chewing gum.

“This is a terrible case. But there is corruption in Namibia – not in Iceland,” the minister told Denmark’s Berlingske, a paper that describes Iceland as a modern-day oligarchy.

As someone who has spent years as the executive director of Transparency International Iceland, as a journalist and working in politics in Iceland, I recognise this rhetoric instantly.

It isn’t just a political defence; it is a form of emotional and cultural escapism.

Many of us are simply not able to accept information that even hints Iceland isn’t inherently uncorrupt.

When an Icelandic official says this (and let’s not pretend Kristófersson is the first Icelandic minister to say something like this), they are retreating into the comfort of ‘Icelandic exceptionalism’ – the delusional belief that ‘we are an almost perfect people’, inherently honest, and we only ever encounter corruption as a ‘foreign infection’ that might at times wash up on our perfect little utopian island’s shores and temporarily affect a small group among our usually exceptional people – pure of heart, pure of mind, and pure of the perils of the outside world.

To our politicians, blaming Namibia is a culturally psychological necessity.

If they admit that the corruption was manufactured in Iceland, the lies we tell ourselves of our exceptional kindness, honesty and greatness simply crumble.

EXPORTING CORRUPTION

The narrative being pushed by the political and business elite in Iceland is that Samherji, a global company, was simply a group of ‘honest boys’ who got lost in the ‘corrupt culture’ of Africa.

This narrative isn’t just patronising; it’s a fairy tale designed to protect the fragile ego of a small nation that tells itself everyone wants what we have, so if something happened in Namibia, it must have been due to the Namibian culture of corruption.

“But there is corruption in Namibia – not in Iceland,” the minister said.

There is an amazing amount of calamity in lying to oneself. It is how we avoid our responsibilities.

Blaming Namibia helps those in a position to see Namibia as an ally in the global and local fight against corruption sleep at night, rather than lay awake and feel guilty over treating Namibia as the other team.

Blaming Namibia is the only way we can pretend our politics didn’t design, protect, and manage a system responsible for raising men who haven’t been told ‘no’ for decades.

Entitled men without basic decency that took what they could and when found out attacked journalists, those investigating, prosecuting and affected communities, or just those they deemed inferior.

Making their list of lesser humans doesn’t take much.

Samherji did not ‘stumble’ into the Fishrot scandal. It exported a business model built on the exploitation of resources – a model perfected in Iceland’s individual transferable quota (ITQ) system, where a handful of families control our national waters and, by extension, our politicians.

THE STRATEGY OF NONCHALANCE

Our politicians and businesses will never admit to siding with corruption. Instead, they offer ‘technical objections’.

They complain about ‘legal jurisdiction’, they hush critics, and they label anyone demanding accountability as ‘drama queens’ or ‘activists’ who don’t understand the realities of international business.

It is a tactic to protect their own ego. A pathetic strand of nationalism and self-importance. Why self-reflect when one can just brush it off and claim Fishrot is just an inevitability of Namibian culture?

They use our weak institutions as a shield. Iceland often scores well on international ‘perception’ indexes, but as I’ve argued for years, that isn’t because we are clean – it’s because our elite lacks the self-awareness to realise they are dirty.

Our regulatory agencies are intentionally underfunded, undermanned, and stripped of power.

This ‘incompetence’ is not a mistake; it is a conscious or unconscious policy, but a policy nevertheless.

If you never fund police investigations, you can proudly claim you have no crime.

GASLIGHTING AS NATIONAL POLICY

When minister Kristófersson claims there is no corruption in Iceland, he is standing over the evidence of Fishrot and telling the Namibian people their eyes are lying to them.

He is seeking emotional refuge in the idea that Iceland remains untainted.

By blaming Namibia, he protects a system that rewards nonchalance, while 18 000 Namibians have lost their livelihoods.

To the Icelandic elite, it is easier for their soul to believe that Namibia corrupted our innocent businessmen than to admit that Iceland has become a middleman country – a weak link that provides the ‘clean’ infrastructure for toxic money to move from the pockets of the poor into the accounts of the powerful.

Because if Namibia isn’t to blame for corrupting our boys, who would we blame?

SOLIDARITY BEYOND THE ELITE

I want the people of Namibia to know that the minister’s Iceland is not the only Iceland.

There is a deep, simmering anger here.

Polls show that roughly 90% of Icelanders believe Samherji is guilty of bribery.

We see the same tactics being used against truth-tellers here as you see there: the smear campaigns, the ridicule, and the ‘Samherji’s guerrilla division’ – the establishment mouthpieces – who call anyone seeking the truth crazy or unpatriotic.

We must stop treating Fishrot as a Namibian scandal.

It is an Icelandic scandal. It is a global scandal. Until my government stops finding relief in blaming the injured and starts facing its own reflection, Iceland remains an accomplice.

The strategy was ours. The infrastructure was ours. It is high time we stopped blaming the victim for the impact of Samherji’s actions.

But seeing this and coming to terms with it seems too hard for the higher-ups in Iceland.

If Iceland exported corruption, and our men stole from Namibians while we called the robbed ones the robbers, we would have to ask ourselves a question our politicians can’t ask themselves: Why on earth would the state of Iceland see Namibia as an agitator rather than an ally in the fight for justice?

I am afraid the answer lies in a word that cannot be spoken, for almost perfect people can’t be.

That thing might exist in the world, but in Iceland, we obviously do not care about the colour of anyone’s skin.

White supremacy is just too ghastly for such an egalitarian society like ours. Obviously, if this were France, the United Kingdom, Norway, or Sweden, our ministers would also line up to blame those people for the corruption that allowed our hard-working men to profit.

Fishrot simply must be Namibia’s fault in order to avoid a long-overdue national conversation.

What exactly is the argument for this long-held belief that corruption is simply not in the DNA of any pure-bred Icelander?

My deepest apologies to Namibians.

Perhaps it matters to know that even in Iceland, there are those who see and feel the injustice inflicted on Namibians by a project designed, orchestrated, and protected by our fragile national pride.

Our denial is shameful, but that shame should not be projected onto Namibians.

• Thor Fanndal is Transparency International’s executive director in Iceland.

Why Iceland’s politicians find emotional relief in blaming Namibia

Recently, Iceland’s finance minister, Daði Már Kristófersson, addressed the Fishrot scandal with a comment that should insult not just every Namibian, but anyone with the emotional intelligence of chewing gum.

“This is a terrible case. But there is corruption in Namibia – not in Iceland,” the minister told Denmark’s Berlingske, a paper that describes Iceland as a modern-day oligarchy.

As someone who has spent years as the executive director of Transparency International Iceland, as a journalist and working in politics in Iceland, I recognise this rhetoric instantly.

It isn’t just a political defence; it is a form of emotional and cultural escapism.

Many of us are simply not able to accept information that even hints Iceland isn’t inherently uncorrupt.

When an Icelandic official says this (and let’s not pretend Kristófersson is the first Icelandic minister to say something like this), they are retreating into the comfort of ‘Icelandic exceptionalism’ – the delusional belief that ‘we are an almost perfect people’, inherently honest, and we only ever encounter corruption as a ‘foreign infection’ that might at times wash up on our perfect little utopian island’s shores and temporarily affect a small group among our usually exceptional people – pure of heart, pure of mind, and pure of the perils of the outside world.

To our politicians, blaming Namibia is a culturally psychological necessity.

If they admit that the corruption was manufactured in Iceland, the lies we tell ourselves of our exceptional kindness, honesty and greatness simply crumble.

EXPORTING CORRUPTION

The narrative being pushed by the political and business elite in Iceland is that Samherji, a global company, was simply a group of ‘honest boys’ who got lost in the ‘corrupt culture’ of Africa.

This narrative isn’t just patronising; it’s a fairy tale designed to protect the fragile ego of a small nation that tells itself everyone wants what we have, so if something happened in Namibia, it must have been due to the Namibian culture of corruption.

“But there is corruption in Namibia – not in Iceland,” the minister said.

There is an amazing amount of calamity in lying to oneself. It is how we avoid our responsibilities.

Blaming Namibia helps those in a position to see Namibia as an ally in the global and local fight against corruption sleep at night, rather than lay awake and feel guilty over treating Namibia as the other team.

Blaming Namibia is the only way we can pretend our politics didn’t design, protect, and manage a system responsible for raising men who haven’t been told ‘no’ for decades.

Entitled men without basic decency that took what they could and when found out attacked journalists, those investigating, prosecuting and affected communities, or just those they deemed inferior.

Making their list of lesser humans doesn’t take much.

Samherji did not ‘stumble’ into the Fishrot scandal. It exported a business model built on the exploitation of resources – a model perfected in Iceland’s individual transferable quota (ITQ) system, where a handful of families control our national waters and, by extension, our politicians.

THE STRATEGY OF NONCHALANCE

Our politicians and businesses will never admit to siding with corruption. Instead, they offer ‘technical objections’.

They complain about ‘legal jurisdiction’, they hush critics, and they label anyone demanding accountability as ‘drama queens’ or ‘activists’ who don’t understand the realities of international business.

It is a tactic to protect their own ego. A pathetic strand of nationalism and self-importance. Why self-reflect when one can just brush it off and claim Fishrot is just an inevitability of Namibian culture?

They use our weak institutions as a shield. Iceland often scores well on international ‘perception’ indexes, but as I’ve argued for years, that isn’t because we are clean – it’s because our elite lacks the self-awareness to realise they are dirty.

Our regulatory agencies are intentionally underfunded, undermanned, and stripped of power.

This ‘incompetence’ is not a mistake; it is a conscious or unconscious policy, but a policy nevertheless.

If you never fund police investigations, you can proudly claim you have no crime.

GASLIGHTING AS NATIONAL POLICY

When minister Kristófersson claims there is no corruption in Iceland, he is standing over the evidence of Fishrot and telling the Namibian people their eyes are lying to them.

He is seeking emotional refuge in the idea that Iceland remains untainted.

By blaming Namibia, he protects a system that rewards nonchalance, while 18 000 Namibians have lost their livelihoods.

To the Icelandic elite, it is easier for their soul to believe that Namibia corrupted our innocent businessmen than to admit that Iceland has become a middleman country – a weak link that provides the ‘clean’ infrastructure for toxic money to move from the pockets of the poor into the accounts of the powerful.

Because if Namibia isn’t to blame for corrupting our boys, who would we blame?

SOLIDARITY BEYOND THE ELITE

I want the people of Namibia to know that the minister’s Iceland is not the only Iceland.

There is a deep, simmering anger here.

Polls show that roughly 90% of Icelanders believe Samherji is guilty of bribery.

We see the same tactics being used against truth-tellers here as you see there: the smear campaigns, the ridicule, and the ‘Samherji’s guerrilla division’ – the establishment mouthpieces – who call anyone seeking the truth crazy or unpatriotic.

We must stop treating Fishrot as a Namibian scandal.

It is an Icelandic scandal. It is a global scandal. Until my government stops finding relief in blaming the injured and starts facing its own reflection, Iceland remains an accomplice.

The strategy was ours. The infrastructure was ours. It is high time we stopped blaming the victim for the impact of Samherji’s actions.

But seeing this and coming to terms with it seems too hard for the higher-ups in Iceland.

If Iceland exported corruption, and our men stole from Namibians while we called the robbed ones the robbers, we would have to ask ourselves a question our politicians can’t ask themselves: Why on earth would the state of Iceland see Namibia as an agitator rather than an ally in the fight for justice?

I am afraid the answer lies in a word that cannot be spoken, for almost perfect people can’t be.

That thing might exist in the world, but in Iceland, we obviously do not care about the colour of anyone’s skin.

White supremacy is just too ghastly for such an egalitarian society like ours. Obviously, if this were France, the United Kingdom, Norway, or Sweden, our ministers would also line up to blame those people for the corruption that allowed our hard-working men to profit.

Fishrot simply must be Namibia’s fault in order to avoid a long-overdue national conversation.

What exactly is the argument for this long-held belief that corruption is simply not in the DNA of any pure-bred Icelander?

My deepest apologies to Namibians.

Perhaps it matters to know that even in Iceland, there are those who see and feel the injustice inflicted on Namibians by a project designed, orchestrated, and protected by our fragile national pride.

Our denial is shameful, but that shame should not be projected onto Namibians.

• Thor Fanndal is Transparency International’s executive director in Iceland.

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