Inside The Absurd World Of State-Owned Enterprises

WHILE our attention is currently focused on other political issues like the Swapo Party Congress or the problems of tribalism or structural imbalances, as Rukee Tjingaete called it recently; some other equally troubling problems quietly keep piling up. I have in mind here the issue of the state of our parastatals or state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

My nagging feeling is that many people have given up on how most of these ‘monsters’ are managed because no matter how much concerned Namibians shout from the sidelines on the need for democratic governance, the boards, management of these institutions feel that the public has no business in the affairs of SOEs. And comments like ‘this or that information is not for public consumption and thus not to be discussed in newspapers’, is not uncommon. The politicians (especially the ruling party politicians, of course) have also not behaved differently from the way various boards of directors do when dealing with public outcry. In fact they have adopted an attitude of ‘hear nothing, say nothing and do nothing’ to the excesses, abuse, and self enrichment schemes that go on at many of these entities. Why they have adopted such a destructive attitude is not immediately obvious. But in the language of African political discourse, I suspect, it has to do with the ‘politics of patronage’ because the more clients the rulers have, the better their chances of clinging to political power become.Here are just some of the issues that are troubling and hard to understand:Last year the Director-General of the cash-strapped Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), Albertus Aochamub, was rewarded with N$90 000 as a ‘performance bonus’ and mind you this came against the background of an institution that is technically bankrupt and desperately looking for bail-out from government . The same could be said of the former NWR MD, Tobie Aupindi, who used to pocket thousands of dollars for just sitting at board meetings of an equally struggling parastatal. And at another also ailing parastatal, TransNamib, Titus Haimbili the CEO is said to have awarded himself a bursary to study at a UK university without the approval of the board of directors. And at AgriBank the fourth highest employee pockets a cool N$800 000 per year. Just wonder what the three highest employees get! (As an aside: some of the people running many of our parastatals are probably also ‘war veterans’ getting extra incomes and benefits). But this is not the end of the story. We have SOEs with ballooning salaries like the Namibia Airports Company. But truth be told, most SOEs are actually in that state – with run-away salaries willingly approved by their respective boards or even without their approval in some instances. That happened once at the Roads Authority and at TransNamib some few years back.Then we have the flawed investment decisions made by our parastatals. The Roads Contractor Company (RCC) probably lost close to N$2 million in the ambitious B1 venture which is still stalled at this stage although we hear that it will kick off again. The RCC might also have lost money in some other ventures in Zambia as well. And although in a state of denial, Telecom Namibia also lost millions because of wrong or ill-thought investment decisions as well. Take the biggest financial scandals of recent years: the missing ODC/NDC N$100 million and the Social Security Commission N$30 million, plus the interest, of course also lost because of bad investment/political decisions. And in the midst of all the stealing, mismanagement and secrecy that goes on at many of our parastatals to which the politicians turn a blind eye; they have become some of the biggest ‘black holes’ eating away a good chunk of public resources even though their missions were meant to be self-sufficiency – I’m excluding the educational institutions and other crucial entities which in my view are not supposed to be profit-seeking like NamWater. In my view NamWater shouldn’t have been commercialised in the first place but should have remained a department of water affairs like in the ‘old’ days because denying someone access to drinking water is basically criminal.Personally I have no problem if an entity like Air Namibia, which is one of biggest black-holes, is privatised altogether. For the other black-holes like Namibia Wildlife Resorts my solutions over the years have been simple: bring their salaries and benefits on par with the rest of the civil service. Because we can’t meaningfully reform the parastatal sector unless we address the thorny issue of stratospheric salary and benefit packages of CEOs and senior managers at our parastatals. The question is not whether or not a particular parastatal is in the red, black or blue. The question is one of unjustified double transfer of resources from the public realm to a few individuals to finance their Gucci lifestyles.