Windhoek: A Capital City That’s Forgotten Its Ambition

There IS something deeply unsettling about watching the seat of your republic crumble in slow motion – not from lack of resources, not from lack of revenue, but from a leadership culture that has confused occupying an executive chair with actually leading.

The City of Windhoek recently admitted what every resident who drives to work already knows in their bones and in their tyres, our roads have not been properly maintained for 35 years.

Thirty-five years. That is not a service delivery gap. That is a generational failure, compounded, compounded again, and then dressed in a press statement and sent home.

Yet the institution that cannot fill potholes fills a payslip with extraordinary precision. The chief executive officer of Windhoek earns N$4.4 million a year.

With N$200 000 to N$300 000 in unclaimed subsistence and travel allowances  absorbed tax-free, the effective package approaches N$5 million annually.

Every senior executive walks away with N$3.2 million, plus the same unclaimed allowances stacked on top.

These are not salaries paid for performance but salaries paid for presence. And the difference matters enormously.

To place this in perspective, these executives earn more than Namibia’s president and prime minister. Individuals responsible for managing a single municipal authority are compensated more than the leaders of the entire nation.

If compensation is supposed to reflect responsibility, consequence and expectation of results, what exactly are we paying for?

OVERSIGHT DEFICIT

A fair question must be directed at State House and the national executive: who is watching Windhoek?

The president travels the globe attending investment forums, engaging heads of state, courting capital from the Gulf, from Asia, from Europe. This is commendable.

But where is Windhoek’s voice when investment conversations are held? The capital city is not merely an administrative address, it is the face of the nation.

It is the first impression diplomats, investors and visitors form of Namibia.

When that face is cracked tarmac, broken streetlights, stagnant economic zones, and a Zoo Park that once brought joy to families but is now a metaphor for institutional neglect, we must ask whether the Cabinet has allowed a dangerous blind spot to develop at the centre of the republic.

Perhaps it is time Windhoek’s leadership is invited to sit at the tables of national governance not as subordinates seeking permission, but as strategic partners who understand that Windhoek’s success is Namibia’s success, and Windhoek’s failure is a national embarrassment that no amount of foreign investment summits can paper over.

Between Windhoek and Hosea Kutako International Airport lies vast, largely undeveloped private land, a corridor of potential that, in a city led by visionary executives, would already be the subject of masterplanning, investor engagement and long-term spatial development frameworks.

Instead, we watch quietly as private individuals and companies acquire parcels of land, some reportedly under 99-year lease arrangements concluded during previous city administrations – arrangements that the current highly compensated executive has apparently neither interrogated, reviewed, nor challenged in the public interest through self review process in our courts of law.

‘IS WINDHOEK HIERSO’

Has the City of Windhoek bought even a single hectare in that corridor for future urban development? Has it outlined a long-term vision for what that stretch between the city and the airport should look like in 2040 or 2050?

If the answer is no, we must be honest, this is not a resource problem. It is a vision problem. And vision problems at the executive level cannot be solved by increasing the budget. They can only be solved by changing the people.

The executive must show intent. The private sector watches leadership before it commits capital. Investors do not move where there is silence, indifference or the smell of institutional complacency.

A credible public commitment to land acquisition and long-term spatial development would send a signal that no marketing campaign can replicate.

Windhoek has more churches and shebeens than it has factories. More prayer halls than production floors. More signage of ‘I love Windhoek’ and ‘Is Windhoek hierso’ than industrial zones generating employment.

This is not a moral criticism of faith or community, it is an economic diagnosis the city’s leadership should find deeply alarming.

OF MICE AND MEN

Where is Windhoek’s industrial policy? Where is its foreign direct investment strategy?

What are its target sectors? What investment incentives does it offer?

What research and development ecosystem is it nurturing for startups and young entrepreneurs? What is its export-oriented growth plan?

These are not abstract questions. They are the fundamental instruments of any city administration that takes its mandate seriously.

The ‘Mice’ – Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions – sector alone offers a window of opportunity that Windhoek has almost entirely ignored.

Africa’s business events industry is projected to grow from approximately US$16.6 billion to US$65.6 billion by 2032.

Cities like Kigali, Nairobi, Accra, and Cape Town are positioning aggressively. Windhoek cannot even host a major indoor conference. We lack the venues. We lack the arena capacity. We lack the accommodation volume. And, apparently, we lack the executive urgency to build any of it.

When those executives travel to Kigali or Luanda and see a city that has transformed itself within a single decade through intentional policy and relentless execution what do they bring home?

Because what Windhoek’s residents see on their return is love-is-love banners, motivational murals and street graphics.

These have their place. But love slogans do not build factories. Murals do not create jobs. And inspiration without implementation is simply tourism at the taxpayer’s expense.

HAPPY FISH, DRY
PONDS, NO VISION

In Windhoek’s informal settlements, generations of Namibians live in conditions that no amount of executive salary justification can reconcile with a functioning municipal conscience.

These communities are not on the periphery of Windhoek, they are Windhoek. They are its workforce, its culture, its future taxpayers, its potential consumers and its most urgent moral obligation.

When does the city intend to demonstrate that it has a credible plan for these communities not a pamphlet, not a promise during election season, but a funded, timebound, publicly accountable development agenda?

Meanwhile, Zoo Park – once a cherished communal space for Windhoek families, a place where children laughed and weekends meant something – is dead. The executives can’t even replace the happy fish we used to see in its now dry ponds.
Its silence is symbolic!

The executives drive past it daily, windows raised, in vehicles paid for by the very residents the park once served.

Windhoek’s current population is approximately 500 000 people. That number should not be a ceiling, it should be a baseline.

A city leadership genuinely hungry for growth should be publicly declaring that Windhoek will house 700 000 to a million people within 25 to 30 years not because of natural population drift, but because the city will have created the conditions that make people want to come here for jobs, industries, entertainment infrastructure, education institutions and agricultural belts that reduce food costs and circulate money locally. 

We are told that seven billionaires from Europe and the Gulf visited Windhoek last year. Did anyone from the city’s executive meet them?

Did anyone sit across a table and say: this is what we’re building, this is what we need, this is what we’re offering you?

DOES SIZE MATTER?

Serious cities are built by serious people. And seriousness in executive leadership is not measured by the elegance of one’s office or the size of one’s package. It is measured by what you leave behind.

I am willing to extend grace to the political leadership of the City. Their roles are defined by electoral cycles, constituency balancing and the complexity of coalition governance. But I direct this appeal squarely to the eighth administration of the Republic of Namibia: do not allow complacency to govern the seat of our state.

The City of Windhoek’s executive managers are paid at a level that demands transformation – not maintenance, not management, not press statements. If they cannot deliver it, they must make way for those who will.

Windhoek must compete with Kigali, Nairobi, Cape Town, Accra and Lagos, not in 30 years, but now. With a plan that starts today.

A capital city with a 24-hour construction pulse. Libraries. Factories. Agricultural zones. Conference infrastructure. An arena for African youth. Land secured for the future. Informal settlements upgraded with dignity. And a river of investment flowing through it.

This is not a wish list. This is the minimum expectation of a capital city that claims to represent a free people. Windhoek must reclaim its mandate. It must reclaim its ambition. It must reclaim its pride.

The tarmac is broken. So is the patience of the people who paid for it.

Enough!

• Imms Nashinge is a proud resident of Windhoek and a concerned voice on our capital’s future.

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