Namibia: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

ROMAN GRYNBERGIN MY LAST year in Namibia, I completed the first draft of a book on Fishrot which should be published towards the end of the year. That I am still alive to tell the tale even though much of the fishing industry, and by extension the government, knew I was writing the book is one of the best things about Namibia.

I recall that once, in a heated discussion with my co-authors, I argued that they should count their blessings that they live in Namibia. Had we tried to write this same book in democratic Botswana, I would surely have been deported as happened with Kenneth Good of the University of Botswana who, in 2005, dared to write that Botswana’s electoral system was not democratic. Moreover, had we tried to write this book in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola or Zambia, there is every chance that The Namibian would have been closed down by the government, and even a chance of the authors meeting with an accident. Despite justified complaints about the harassment of journalists, this is truly the ‘land of the free’ and this is a right that must be cherished and protected.

Yet there is something about the whole Fishrot Affair that also speaks very highly of Namibia. It is hard to imagine but there are things Namibians can be proud of in the whole dirty Fishrot affair. It was pointed out to me by a friend, Braam Cupido, a Namibian lawyer with whom I would often raise a glass at the Roof of Africa, that what happened with Fishrot was utterly exceptional by any standards and certainly by the standards of the rule of law and governance in Africa. 

Two days before the 2019 elections, two senior Cabinet ministers, Bernhard Esau and Sacky Shanghala, were arrested on charges of corruption, bribery and a host of other related crimes under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act. They still languish, without bail, on remand awaiting a trial that might never happen. However, the mere fact that such high-level arrests would even occur just before presidential elections is utterly exceptional. It is far more common in Africa that ministers are only arrested after there has been a military coup. What is more, in many of our neighbouring countries, ministerial level corruption is simply considered a normal part of daily business.

Namibia is the land of the free but is it the land of the brave? Despite every reasonable attempt to improve policy making, Namibia will continue with the current Swapo government policies and Namibians will  probably not change the administration in the next election. The economic governance of the country has been bad. Real per capita incomes have fallen since president Geingob took office in 2015. Unemployment and public debt have risen equally dramatically. Covid-19 has come along with low commodity prices and the drought and given the president a perfect justification for the government’s failings. Underneath though, he has failed either to steer the country on the stable course of an economy that simply digs holes in the ground and where capital is happy to invest, nor has he done anything substantial to redress the ugliest part of life in Namibia, its horrendous inequality.

Divisions between white and black Namibians along with ethnic and gender differences are the ugliest part of life in Namibia. I hated being a white man in Namibia because I was immediately associated with the sort of ideas often espoused by large sections, but by no means all, of the white community. As a result, many black Namibians associated me with the racist views of parts of the white community. This, together with the income inequality manifested in the way the majority of black Namibians live in places like Katutura, has not been arrested. Such reforms take a measure of bravery that is not evident even though other countries with far less inequality than Namibia have moved to undertake reforms that would equalise the opportunities of various communities

Next year, Swapo will have a vital  party congress which will determine both the direction of the party and the country as a whole. I can say with some pride that in my youth I stood shoulder to shoulder with Swapo and the ANC in their struggle against apartheid and colonialism. However, since liberation, power and money have changed much. Swapo has become tainted and increasingly controlled by tenderpreneurs, fishmongers and land grabbers. It, like its sister party in South Africa, has become something of an Augean stable, seen by large sections of the Namibian youth as a house of filth and corruption. 

In ancient Greek mythology, the hero, Hercules, was asked by King Augeas to clean out his stable which housed 3 000 cattle and had not been cleaned for 30 years. Hercules did this by diverting the course of two rivers so that they flowed through the stable. It will require a brave hero like Hercules to clean out Swapo next year and recreate a party of which Namibian working people can be proud of. If there is no cleaning out of the filth, the long-term decline of Swapo is assured, though it is unlikely to lose the next election unless the opposition can provide a united front.

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