Party manifestos: Crime and Safety

THE silly season, or politics of promises, as others know it, has seen different political parties making a myriad of promises to Namibian voters over the past couple of months.
With less than five weeks left, The Namibian takes a closer look at what promises the manifestos of various political parties hold for the voter.
Several stories will appear over the next couple of weeks taking under the microscope issues such as education, health, housing/water/sanitation, crime/safety, land/agriculture, employment/development, business and economics as well as gender equality.

THE past five years have seen a change in the face of crime in Namibia – shifting from being typically violent crime by individuals to an upsurge in organised crime.White-collar crime picked up and so did drug trafficking while murder, rape and armed robbery continued to pose a serious threat to individuals.The period under review also marked a time when many women remained threatened and felt unsafe as body parts of young women, killed and cut into pieces, were found in and around Windhoek between September 2005 and July 2007.These were the acts of someone who became known as the B1 Butcher – a person/s yet to be arrested or identified.The grisly finds of body parts apart, tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars have been lost through ill-advised investments by the Offshore Development Company and Social Security Corporation: the ODC managed to lose N$100 million, while the SSC handed over N$30 million to the politically well connected but fledgling BEE company, Avid Investment Corporation.The Government appears to have all but given up on ever getting back the N$100 million it recklessly invested in fly-by-night schemes.PRESIDENT’SPLEDGEThis left President Hifikepunye Pohamba to say that it all pointed to a society whose members were throwing away its moral values.In his inaugural address, shortly after he took the oath on March 21 2005, Pohamba declared in a well-rehearsed speech ‘zero tolerance for waste and corruption in public life’.’I shall set a personal example,’ he said then.Fast forward five years and the state of affairs on crime, safety and corruption has since become not only a threat to local communities, but also to the stable atmosphere needed for investment and socio-economic stability and development.Pohamba himself said crime negatively affects the Government’s efforts to attract both local and foreign investments and also the country’s international rating and competitiveness as a safe destination for investment and tourism.In a cautiously worded 42-page manifesto, Swapo promises to continue to build a society premised on the rule of law, a responsive and independent judicial system.The party promises to strengthen the capacity of the law enforcement agencies to continuously enhance their professionalism, employment conditions, equipment and technology.They also want to use the next five years to increase the number of courthouses and police stations, make prisons bigger, and allocate adequate resources to enable the delivery of justice and efficient correctional services.WHAT THEOPPOSITIONPLANS TO DO’Despite the professed zero tolerance for corruption and violence against women and children, and the putting in place of measures to combat this scourge, it nevertheless continues unabated,’ the opposition Rally for Democracy and Progress hits back in its manifesto.It promises to introduce stiffer sentences for serious offenders, promote the involvement of the public in fighting crime and give more resources to Police to fight crime while corrupt public officials will be dealt with quicker.The DTA said they are distressed at the standard of justice and ‘will attempt to eliminate miscarriage of justice’ by reorganising the system to make it more effective and accessible.’The DTA will spend more money on selecting, training and motivating police men and women so that they will have an attitude of service and protection towards the communities they serve,’ according to the party’s manifesto.They also promise to bring the salaries of police officers to a level that reflects their importance and danger of their work.Swapo has ‘privatised’ the Government as an agency for self-enrichment by a chosen class made up of ministers, senior bureaucrats, relatives, bootlickers and their fellow travellers, according to the Congress of Democrats.If voted into power, the party promises to restore honour to the public service ‘and not to rob them (public) blind’.CoD said they would raise the cost of corruption as a deterrent for would be miscreants.All three opposition parties gave no details on how they plan to pay the cost of these changes.Under the UDF, Namibia will see the introduction of sectional patrolling by around 1 000 newly recruited Police officers and the banning of those under the age of 18 from the streets in the evening.’New community police must be positioned where people are (and) not in offices or vehicles,’ the party said in its manifesto.They also promise to do away with ‘the free flow of handguns’.The All People’s Party promises to open all major corruption cases swept under the carpet by the Swapo Government and to establish a special tribunal of retired judges to deal with corruption.If voted into power, the APP also promises to review and reform security institutions such as the Police and Army to ensure that their top and middle management structures reflect the whole of the Namibian population. Saying Swapo had tackled crime with ‘kid gloves’, the National Unity Democratic Organisation (Nudo) makes the somewhat daunting promise of establishing a court and appointing a magistrate in each of the 107 constituencies of Namibia.If elected, they also want to improve the investigative skills of the Police and place more focus on victims’ rights.