THE nation-state in Namibia was a colonial imposition. The apartheid system practised a policy of divide and rule. Thus the process of moulding various ethnic entities into one nation has always been tricky.
But the common colonial experience did, at least, give the colonised people a sense of unity under the banner of ‘One Namibia, One Nation’ – an imagined community if you like – during the liberation struggle.Though arbitrarily drawn and lacking cultural meaning, the geo-political boundaries did help to define Namibia and give its people some kind of political identity. But are we on track in our quest to build that ‘imagined community’ or are we sliding back into our pre-colonial past? Are demography and democracy now becoming incompatible? Are we increasingly witnessing the Africanisation of Namibian politics (some would say politics in Namibia) under the Pohamba administration?Patrick Chabal defines political Africanisation as the ‘all important process whereby the political legacy – the ideas, practices and institutions – of colonial rule and colonisation was assimilated, transformed and re-appropriated by African rulers’. If that is so, then it follows that the nature of the colonial legacy is less important than the ways in which the African nation-state was Africanised after independence.The quintessential nationalist, Sekou Toure, confidently asserted at the time of Guinea’s independence that ‘in three or four years no one will remember the tribal, ethnic and religious rivalries which in the recent past caused so much damage to our country and its population’. Some people even thought that the ethnic question could be managed within the framework of the independence constitutions. But even the best of constitutions on the continent like the Namibian one, didn’t prevent leaders from giving key appointments in the civil service, the military, security agencies, police, diplomatic missions or awarding scholarships to people who hail from their regions, or taking most development projects there.Looking at Pohamba’s latest Cabinet appointments shows that he had his kith and kin, his region and party in mind. Some ministers from non-Oshiwambo speaking ethnic groups were easily dispensed with while others enjoy life-long tenure as ministers or deputies – even among the non-performing ones. His Cabinet falls way short in terms of both regional representation and ethnic balance, given the multi-ethnic nature of the country. I don’t know whether this was by omission or commission. But Pohamba must have been conscious about the need for building an inclusive, participatory and a united country. But it seems that as time elapses, the post-colonial period wears out, as the Namibian ethnic groups recover their past and evolve according to continuities which link them back with the past to pre-colonial period, then the significance of the colonial legacy would be pushed into the background.If we accept that to be the general pattern of how successive African states have developed after independence and taking cue from the experiences of Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe etc., then it is safe to say African politics follows its own unique trajectory and logic embedded in pre-colonial history and memory. In such a setting the tribe is seen as the unit that binds a specific cultural, linguistic, religious and traditional community together, and that’s where one’s loyalties lie (or ought to lie especially from the perspective of those who benefit from tribal politics). And although radical scholarship has tried to move away from tribe as a unit of analysis, the reality on the ground seems to present a different picture, pointing to identity politics. But few could clearly read its likely impact on the broader political system after independence.One is forced to argue that social or economic classes in the Weberian and Marxian sense don’t seem to matter much among mainly illiterate and rural Africans. And the Swapo leadership seems to be comfortable with that kind of world-view. For some of us trained in Marxian analysis, such a scenario presents one with a very uncomfortable vantage point from which to analyse our societies. That is in terms of ethnic and tribal variables and not economic classes. But unfortunately, in terms of the institutional arrangements – appointments to higher Government offices and institutions – one can clearly see that there has been a slow but consistent process of exclusion of ‘minority tribes’ from the political system since independence and this doesn’t bode well for the country.Twenty years into our independence we have, for example, dismally failed to address the San question. The San people have no single representative anyway in the country’s top political hierarchy. The same applies to other groups that don’t have political muscle – usually represented by lesser known figures just for symbolic and cosmetic purposes because they would not dare to challenge the system.This situation will remain like that until such time that the majority of Namibians or indeed many other Africans start seeing politics from a completely different angle that would hopefully relegate tribe and ethnicity to the backwater. Pohamba still has an opportunity to truly Namibianising rather than Africanising politics here.
