LAST WEEK we detailed how the ruling party, Swapo, has been captured by the comprador bourgeoisie and how this capture translates into state capture.
Comprador bourgeoisie is an indigenous class, often middle class, with an international business or outlook. This class has captured some elected Swapo leaders with executive/legislative state power.
Poignantly, there is no force fighting to return Swapo to earlier tenets of delivering the means of production into the hands of the toiling masses. Swapo is captured and as a consequence the state is captured.
This last of three instalments concerns white monopoly capital. It cannot be understood without locating its historical context: apartheid. The common mistake of the analyses on apartheid is the tendency to focus on the political structure – ignoring how the political structure was designed to meet an economic objective.
Hendrik Verwoerd, the apartheid mastermind, was a product of an earlier Afrikaner consciousness that formed a secret powerful organisation called the ‘Afrikaner Broederbond’ in 1918. It initially started off to help Afrikaners to make a successful transition into urban life but later grew into a powerful network of Afrikaners with economic schemes such as reddingsdaadbond, helpmekaarfonds, Volkskas, Federale Volksbeleggings, Federale Mynbou and Dagbreek Pers (banks and media empires). It also created Sanlam.
The Broederbond controlled the apartheid economy – it was represented in every aspect of life; economic, political, social (such as churches and media). Apartheid was necessitated by insecurities and needed to protect and advance Afrikaner economic interests in general and the Broederbond in particular.
So determined was the Afrikaner Broederbond to stop their children from love and sexual relationships with blacks that they criminalised interracial sex through the Immorality Act of 1927 and the second Immorality Act of 1957.
When it became clear that the ANC was set to take political power in South Africa in the mid-1990s, this monopoly capital, particularly the likes of the Oppenheimers and Ruperts, captured Nelson Mandela and the ANC during secret meetings to ensure that post-apartheid South Africa protected and maintained its interest. The same happened in Namibia with Swapo and its leaders.
Swapo, like the ANC, promised whites that the old economic order will be maintained in a manner reminiscent of the words of a Belgian officer, general Janssen, who told the Congolese just weeks after their independence that “after independence equals before independence”.
Geingob, who chaired the constitution drafting Constituent Assembly, confirmed this in his 2004 PhD dissertation: “The United Kingdom, France, and Germany managed to protect their economic and settler interests in the region… the United States of America secured its economic and geopolitical interests in the region.”
Swapo’s capitulation did not end with the content of the Constitution – it had a practical manifestation. At independence, President Sam Nujoma appointed a white person as finance minister, Otto Herrigel, to appease white monopoly capital. Even when Herrigel resigned, he was replaced by another white man, Gert Hanekom.
The instance of state capture refers to the ability of white monopoly capital not only to ensure that the supreme law guiding state action protects their economic order but also its ability to influence actions of state officials. Appointing white people as ministers was an extra successful insurance.
The term white monopoly capital, therefore, refers to the white economic order, consisting of Germans and Afrikaners, that was protected by Swapo and characterises the present day economic order.
As such, we should not be surprised, as disclosed by our statistics agency in 2012, that only 6,9% of people who speak Afrikaans are poor while 68% of people who speak Khoisan are poor. It was not surprising when it was disclosed in 2011 that the richest 5% of the population, mainly whites, controls 71% of the GDP while the poorest 55% accounts for 3% of the GDP.
White people are also concerned. Listen to Hugh Ellis writing in a local newspaper in January 2015: “The fact is that the apartheid past left many of our families with large holdings of land, significant shareholdings in companies, and other assets… Plus, we are still perceived by society to be the ‘good guys’, which gives us a continuing advantage. Bank managers smile at us, security guards smile at shoplifting white teenagers, job interviews are invariably conducted in one of our first languages.”
The consequences of this state capture are clear; continued white privilege, a paralysed state and an increasing agitated black majority waiting for Swapo and government promises of justice for all. Indeed, citizens are growing tired of a state that cannot address fundamental questions such as land, housing and inequality.
Worryingly, President Hage Geingob is not prepared to continue the promises he has made, together with other Swapo elites, at independence. On black empowerment policy he is reluctant; on land reform he zig-zags and discloses his fear of white retaliation. His administration, as was the case with previous Swapo-led governments, continues to privilege white monopoly capital.
Namibia Breweries, for example, has been allowed over the years to supply free beer to all our embassies during independence celebrations. They are not traumatised by an idea of converting our diplomats into drunkards. Scandalously and recently, the same company has moved to capture parliament, sponsoring its official meetings.
Those who doubt must quickly check parliamentary adverts in newspapers where the alcohol company’s logo is paraded alongside that of our sacred institutions of parliament. These shenanigans only happen when you have a captured state.
Given these discussions on state capture, we should now turn to what is to be done for the state to be returned into the hands of the people as a whole.
• Job Shipululo Amupanda is a political science lecturer at the University of Namibia. Follow him on Twitter: @Shipululo
