Stiglitz and Schiffrin’s Namibia

• NDUMBA J KAMWANYAH IT might be just me, but why do I feel that in their article ‘Learning from Namibia’ in The Namibian of 17 June 2016, the eminent professor Joseph Stiglitz and his co-author Anya Schiffrin were describing a different Namibia?

The duo penned the article a few weeks after their return from Namibia, where they were official guests of the government. In that article, written for the opinions’ portal Project Syndicate, Namibia’s progress since independence apparently immensely impressed the two guests.

The authors not only described Namibia as a country superbly on top of problems in its march towards progress, but also a country for the world to draw lessons from.

It further painted Namibia as a country which has turned its education system around by implementing free education.

Namibia’s leaders were also said to manage the country’s resources well to the benefit of all Namibians.

The authors were impressed by Namibia’s press freedom, as well as the reality that neighbouring Angolans could access healthcare here.

Well, in the scheme of ordinary things, perhaps Namibia should be humbled for notching such glossy validation from personalities at a top-ranking university in the world. I also acknowledge that there are some truths in the article that I fully agree with.

However, it comes as a surprise that Namibia gets such an easy moral pass without questioning the basics, in the face of obvious socio-economic injustices, especially inequality, issues which Stiglitz has spent his entire professional life challenging.

Namibia is a country which is in the top two or three leaders in income inequalities in the entire world, having hardly made progress in 26 years of independence.

I am baffled to the core that our guests did not for a bit spot the dominance of neo-liberal policies in action, policies which continue widening the gap between the haves and have-nots.

Nor did they seem to have noticed the heavy prevalence of class and economic/neighbourhood segregation.

But more importantly, I am also afraid that perhaps this article has given arsenals to the government to dismiss those who are trying to make the government do the right thing.

It would be a pity if government leaders think that they now have been validated by the great professor, who also happens to be a Nobel Prize winner, and that problems like rampant poverty and gender-based violence were mere imaginations of the people they don’t like to listen to.

Yes, Namibia has reduced its Gini coefficient (the standard measure of inequality in income distribution) by some 15 points since 1993, but statistically, this reduction is insignificant.

Namibia’s income inequality is still stubbornly very high. Unless, of course, the authors were going by the so-called ‘Third World’ standard!

That for 26 years Namibia did not significantly reduce this country’s gap of inequality is an indictment of our leadership and their policies.

It is also true that Namibia has increased school enrolment and increased access to affordable healthcare, but those are not indicators we use in Namibia because they don’t necessarily mean quality education or quality healthcare.

In fact, evidence shows that the quality has dropped drastically.

It is apparent the duo did not talk to the security guards who opened their doors at the hotels; the cleaners who took care of their rooms, and the waiters/waitresses who served them food at the hotels and lodges where they stayed.

It also seems that they did not hear about Namibia’s urban housing shortage crisis and sky-high prices that has put decent shelter out of the reach of many Namibians.

Nor did they seem to have read about the unresolved land issue, in the sense that huge productive land in commercial areas still belongs to the previously advantaged whites and the few emerging black elites, who also have fenced off (privatised) larger tracks of land in communal, subsistence areas.

Indefensible!

Had the authors taken a stroll to the north-west of Windhoek, where sprawling shack cities are the norm, I am sure the article in question would have taken a critical angle.

How about the reality that research has repeatedly shown that higher numbers of people in this country are eking out a living in the informal economy where they have no job security and no health benefits, and many in that sector are struggling as self-employed, which in this part of the world is tantamount to being unemployed?

Joe and Anya, you are right, Namibia is the most beautiful place in the world, but that you opted for lessons learned instead of critical engagement left many of us Namibians puzzled.

The Namibia you depicted in the article is another country.

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