The Namibian Work Ethic Revisited

• MEL KELLYMY INITIAL piece for newspaper some months ago was on the need for Namibians to reconfigure our attitude towards the concept of work. Specifically, I dealt with our national work ethic (or lack of it) when compared to working practices elsewhere.

I was gratified by the responses and the consensus that it was time we jettisoned a collective mindset that conflates being busy (on Facebook in office time, or grocery shopping when we are supposed to be attending a workshop) with performing the tasks that we are contracted and paid for to undertake.

My observations then were general and somewhat cautious. We are living through contentious times, when it is especially imprudent to try to manufacture ill-fitting generalisations or formulate snap judgements about human behaviour solely from circumscribed personal experience, especially if one is looking at an issue from a position of privilege.

Nevertheless, a long litany of frustrating work experiences has given me a demoralising insight into how many Namibians perceive the value of their labour, and their expectation that they should be asked to really earn a living from it.

A regular theme in the SMS pages and letters section of this paper is the plea for jobs by graduates. They have worked hard, so the argument goes, often at great personal cost to themselves and their parents/guardians, yet work opportunities are vanishingly scarce, and they are somehow expected to accrue work experience, even though no one will actually give them a position in which to accumulate it.

Let us set aside the fact that these complaints are often written in such a way that one might question the value of the paper qualifications that the graduates hold – it is not their fault if they were in receipt of poor-quality tutoring and/or exam-marking criteria that failed to separate the wheat from the chaff – and look at the primrose path that some graduates appear to believe should now be their due, one along which a signpost demanding the sweat of their brows would not appear to feature.

My own experience has regularly shown that certain young people expect to have an income delivered to them on a plate in return for doing almost nothing: not getting out of bed or answering the phone or taking their CV along to likely employers.

There is a yawning chasm between their expectations and the reality of the world of work in a depressed economy, and just two instances will illustrate my point. Both pertain to the creative industries – a subsection of the economy where it is extraordinarily difficult to get paid a decent fee for the work that you do, and both are unedifying examples of why certain Namibian graduates need to get real.

I knew a talented arts graduate who was battling to establish a professional presence – so I offered to use my contacts to help him since this guy was just starting out, and shy, and probably struggling to buy recharge vouchers. I persuaded the manager of a Windhoek venue to agree to view his work with the idea that he would be able to have an exhibition there, for which they would take just a small commission on any work sold.

It didn’t end well…not because they cancelled the offer, or changed their terms, or were not available when he pitched for discussions. It went pear-shaped because he failed entirely to follow up on the offer they made, and therefore fatally sabotaged any chance he had of getting a great deal of free exposure for his work.

Did he imagine that if he just waited a while at home, the international art world would beat a path to his door without any effort on his part, as if he was Windhoek’s answer to Damien Hirst (a man who really does know the value of self-promotion and hustle)?

Later, I was looking for an up-and-coming young local artist to illustrate some books I had written. The publisher was offering a fair sum for the artist’s endeavours, which would deliver invaluable exposure to whoever they contracted. It was an opportunity that would give the right person a gold-plated chance to establish themselves in the Namibian market place and possibly even regionally, kick-starting their career in their chosen field.

Except, none of that happened. We contacted (very helpful) tutors at various colleges and asked for the contact details of likely candidates, and canvassed further afield to produce a final list of more than 10 young Namibians who might fit the bill. We approached them, and waited for our phones to start ringing… then checked to make sure that we had transcribed their numbers correctly, for the ensuing silence was deafening.

We never discovered whether we could agree terms with any of them because only one candidate (unsuitable, ultimately) bothered to respond to multiple requests for quotations or examples of work, and no one else appeared willing to put any effort into contacting us or finding out more about the project.

The whole process was a bust, and it was wholly dispiriting to have our efforts go so comprehensively unrewarded. In fact, I will go further and say that as a de facto Namibian, it was a huge embarrassment to me since my publisher – not from here – had been working on the understandable assumption that if you offer people just starting out in a profession some well-compensated work, they might be happy to take up the chance.

These are two examples, but I can produce many more. If this is indicative of a more general attitude in Namibia, is it any surprise if potential employers sometimes feel they must look beyond our borders to source suitable expertise?

The ‘lack of opportunities’ excuse for unemployment in certain sectors evidently needs to be parsed more thoroughly, and Namibian graduates must accept at least some of the responsibility for a paucity of work if they are not prepared to take a far more active role in searching it out and grabbing chances when they come along.

In an age of information overload, Sunrise is The Namibian’s morning briefing, delivered at 6h00 from Monday to Friday. It offers a curated rundown of the most important stories from the past 24 hours – occasionally with a light, witty touch. It’s an essential way to stay informed. Subscribe and join our newsletter community.