Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
As much as Yours Truly Ideologically would wish to give Her Excellency Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, President of the Republic of Namibia, and her eclectic team based on considerations such as gender and youth, and presumably also on technocratic merits, the benefit of the doubt, experiences in governance over the last 35 years simply dictates against this.
As with most policies over the last 35 years, the few meaningful ones in the uplifting of the living standards of the masses are concerned. Safe for co-opting a few petty bourgeoises in the current capitalist economic productive system. They are yet to make any difference to the suffering masses. Especially in terms of changing the livelihoods of the majority of Namibians. Most of whom continue to suffer under the heavy yoke of poverty. With the gap between the haves and have-nots widening.
Thus making the would-be policies that are supposed to bring about a fundamental change and make a difference in the socio-economic capitalist structuralism of Namibia simply abstract in reality. Meaning the disconnect between the good intentions of the politicians and governments since independence and the practical reality of the ordinary masses on the ground has been the practical reality. Even 35 years after independence, many people continue to suffer from the prevailing, exploitative, and neglectful socio-economic conditions year after year. They are perpetrated by none other than those who obtained votes to lessen these undesirable and unbearable socio-economic conditions. Whether such amelioration is, at least, only in the short term or short-lived. But as things have been seeming and at the rate they have been deteriorating, prospects of an ultimate eradication of the suffocating, crippling and debilitating socio-economic ills seem forever slim.
The buck stops nowhere but at the country’s successive administrations since independence. The Swapo Party of Namibia won. The buzzword shortly after independence 35 years ago was the eradication of many of the socio-economic ills the country inherited. Poverty, inequality. You name them. But today it looks like the word eradication has disappeared from the political radar into oblivion. Becoming and getting lost in the political/administrative morass of the government and its so-called development partners. A realisation, perhaps, that it may have been more easily said than done.
As complex as the socio-economic problems that Namibia inherited from colonialism may be, the inability to address them frontally, needless to mention, is partially a factor of not defining them ideologically to locate their cause and genesis. Except for a lack of political will. As much as symbiotically a political will can only be informed, inspired and propelled by a defined ideology. Namibia is independent, free and liberating. Granted! Granted! But from what exactly? Obviously not from poverty and hunger and many other socio-economic miseries. The emphasis here is socio-economic. Cloaked and decorated during colonialism by many isms like racism, tribalism, and sexism. But as you would have it, colonialism was not and could not have been an end in and of itself but a rationalisation of capitalism. Meaning the bigger evil was capitalism.
Thus, independence, freedom and liberation cannot and do not mean politics only and the overtaking of political power by the indigenes. Without also ultimately dealing with the root cause, which is capitalism. As the politicians themselves would profess, when talking about economic emancipation, they must also, for a moment, pause and seriously reflect on what they mean by itn. If such is feasible under a capitalist system. Until they gain clarity on this matter, they will persist in using abstractionism, ambiguity, ambivalence, and rhetoric in their policies. With the policies they formulate based on abstraction and contradiction. Thus, they are not addressing reality. This reality in Namibia, as elsewhere in the world where exploitation and oppression continue, is capitalism.
But capitalism notwithstanding, it does not mean there is still nothing that can be done in the meantime until and with the necessary socio-economic restructuring ultimately. Yours Truly Ideologically is not aware of the ideological disposition of Burkina Faso’s President, Ibrahim Traoré. Other than the fact he and fellows must have gotten wise during years of neocolonial exploitation and subjugation of their country and her people. By none other than capitalist countries like France. Today, under his guise, the country seems on a completely opposite progressive reconstruction trajectory socio-economically, which cannot be said to be based on any conventional ideology. But simply on his consciousness and conscience that the former colonist has not been working in the best interest, if any interest at all, of his people and country.
It goes without saying who must have been behind his assassination attempt lately. For obviously what he has been doing for his country and people since assuming governance cannot be in the best interest of capitalism, but to the contrary, as much as capitalism has never been nor shall it ever work, let alone in the marginal interest of Burkina Faso and her people, especially the mass of the exploited, subjugated and wretched.
