Where Is The Rationale In All Of This?

THERE are moments when we reach a tipping point. Just like in the cartoon series ‘Looney Tunes’, when the coyote continues to run while he is no longer on the precipice of the mountain – he stops, looks down and realises that he will fall, as there is nothing else to do.

The story of the coyote in ‘Looney Tunes’ tells us that sometimes, perhaps often in our case, things are not that clear and we just advance without understanding in what direction we are moving. We are hesitant and progress blindly in the thick of the night.I am not too sure if it would be right for a marginal individual like myself to impose this tale on the state of the nation. It could just be a matter of personal angst. However, I hasten to add that the fog that I observe, and the angst I go through, is a consequence of the type of responses that we got from our Finance Minister regarding the financial resources we committed to the office of the Founding President, in particular the construction of new office space.Perhaps the most shocking comment was when she said that the Founding President rendered services to the nation without getting any compensation.Hence the idea of him getting office space.However, when my anger had dissipated and I looked at matters soberly over the weekend, I listed a laundry list of gifts that we the people have given to Founding President Sam Nujoma. Let me start with the first. At Independence in 1990, Namibians en masse elected Sam Nujoma as Head of State. He was triumphantly re-elected for a second term.As African political history would have it, we the people demanded that he go for a third term as we felt that we were not yet ready to take over from him.Now, irrespective of our personal sacrifices, I don’t think that there is any bigger honour in the land other than being the first citizen.That honour was given to the Founding President on three occasions. During that time, I don’t think that the Founding President lived anything like a pauper.Namibia made sure that he travelled in a state-of-the-art Falcon presidential jet worth over N$80 million. Second, unlike his counterpart Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in a prison cell and whose autobiography was an individual effort, Namibian taxpayers funded the memoirs of the Founding President in a project that was worth several million dollars. Third, emotional Namibians acquiesced to fund a movie based on the very same memoirs whose final cost was estimated to be well over N$60 million.Fourth, when he retired in 2005, we explained to the nation why he deserved a cosy retirement in the form of generous perks.These were in the form of a hefty monthly allowance in terms of a law that was enacted. We the people agreed to all these things. Fourth, when the office of the Ombudsman was emptied in order to allow space for the Founding President, we the emotional people also agreed. Almost five years have passed into history since the Founding President left office and we the people ought to be shocked to hear that our Founding President is suddenly without an office.Equally we, the emotional citizens, ought to be angry that ungrateful opposition MPs expect the Founding President to continue serving the nation ‘from the streets’. The alternative view would be why our Finance Minister would assume that all of us are so emotional to the point where we don’t grasp that what we have given to the Founding President is more than enough.When I inked a celebratory column about President Nujoma’s exemplary life, immediately after the 2007 Swapo congress that elected President Pohamba as his successor at party level, I did not anticipate that I would write a column dismissing helplessly the current folly.In recent times, there are many things about my country that truly makes me feel like the coyote in ‘Looney Tunes’.Perhaps it is time that I go back in order to grasp better why we engage in so many fanciful, emotional fantasies instead of crafting rational utopias of the future. * Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow in political science at the University of Paris- Panthéon Sorbonne, France.