Equality, Liberty, Peace, Prosperity, Security, Justice, Stability, Reconciliation, Food, Shelter, Clothing, Employment, Democracy, Rule of Law, Separation of Powers, Deregulation, Community Development, Land Reform, Sustainable Growth, Early Child Development , One Namibia, One Nation, Unity In Diversity, Free Education.
Many Namibians surely must have heard the above barrage of phrases, in fact nothing more than political jargons and empty promises which has been contained year after year in the political manifestos of many political parties and formations in Namibia since with the first ever free general elections in Namibia in 1989. With all of them year after year resurfacing, having been retrieved from party the shelves of party offices, for the parties and formations with offices, dusted and reproduced. Without the promises the entail having been realised for the good 34 years that Namibia is old this year. Some of the voters are long gone without having any single of the promises contained in the said manifestos realised. With the barrage of promises being repeated after every five years only to evaporate and disappear in thin air shortly after any election. With those making the promises retreating in the intervening period, that is between the elections, in their habitual hibernations of enriching themselves by appropriating national resources which are meant to be applied, in the least towards the fulfilment of the said promises as contained in the election manifestos. For the ruling party that has been in power since, it has simply not been able to deliver. And for the other political parties and formations, their promises has been just as empty as they have never been able to assume the reigns of powers to make good on their promises. Equally they have been less convincing that once in power they may be able to make good on their promises. Telling from how they have been running public affairs on the local and regional level where some have had the opportunity to show what given the opportunity at the next hgher level, they shall make good on their promises.
But these are all purely academic. Because the essence is not how sweet-sounding and bombastic your promises, let alone compelling. But how realistic they are and have been. If ever you stand no chance of ever assuming the reins of power, or rather of governance, than your promise are just as good as non-delivery. For the party that has been in power all along since independence in 1990, the record speaks for itself. Not so much that for lack of will and inability to deliver. But promising to deliver the impossible. Because most of the things that the party has been promising, it cannot and shall never ever be able to deliver. Simply because capitalism has got its stranglehold over the country and does not and shall not allow the party to deliver. Likewise equally that is why also voters should have little time to listen to the fantasies of other political parties and formations delivering. The very things that the Swapo Party of Namibia has not been able to deliver. Not because of political will but largely
because they are not deliverable under the pertaining capitalists system. First thing first. For any political party, let alone the Swapo Party of Namibia, to induce any iota of believe in the voters that it shall deliver on many of its promises. And make no mistake its promises, to those coming from the capitalist colonial system background, and its exploitative and inhuman nature, have been bankable. Bankable to the electorate but no to the operators and beholders of the capitalists system, the multinationals, with the backing of their governments, in the so-called development countries, and their peoples.
There cannot be two ways about this. If the political parties and formations wish to toe the capitalist line, they simply must desist promising voters better lives. Because such better lives in capitalist economy is reserved for a few. Because the dictum is everyone for herself/himself and ????? for all. This for all in a capitalist productive economy that Namibia is, is poverty, hunger, miseries for the majority. Made to live from the crumbs falling the tables of the owners of the means of production. Which in a capitalist dispensation are not owned by the people and/or country, let alone the State on behlf of the people, but in the hands of private entities, and foreign ones for that matter. Something in modern day which is and has since independence been happening as evidenced most recently by the acquisition of Dundee Precious Metals (DPM) to the Simone Resource Group. Continuing the trajectory of the alienation and wholesaling of the country’s natural resources.
Thus rather than political parties and formations continuing to feed voters on like drought emergency rations of empty political verbiages, voters deserve better than what they hitherto been getting . A paradigm shift dealing with the real situation prevailing, which for 34 years has not only been having the Namibian masses in economic bondage but have been driving them near to starvation. Indeed with some having been dying from hunger. Just because instead of dealing with what is and have been fundamentally wrong in Namibia, and thus practically addressing the fundamentals, voters, and the masses, have been election year after election year, and year in and year out, been sustained on a political diet of empty promises. Leaving the system that is and has been responsible for their miseries intact addressing and/or only tinkering with it without addressing the fundamentals. The fundamental reality is that capitalism in Namibia does not need tampering with it if the socio-economic needs of the masses are to be addressed in earnest and to the root.
