Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
It seems unclear if the current Namibian administration is aware and conscious that it is quickly moving towards its midterm without having properly put its pulse on the many socio-economic ills the country is facing.
Let alone giving the country the much-needed impetus, compass, and direction as to how the downward spiral on which the country is heading can in the least be halted, even if only for now.
Before work can start in earnest in reversing the downward spiral and eventually putting the country on the correct path towards meaningful socio-economic progress. But what is, and could, meaningful socio-economic progress mean?
That is the big, if not bigger, question the country has been shying away from and continues to shy away from. Because it is assumed it is enough for the country to be seen to be creating the necessary conducive environment for investments and growth, believing that with the attainment of growth via the requisite and/or desired investments, whatever the desired investments may be and however such could be measured, the country shall automatically progress towards socio-economic prosperity. Once again, whatever this may mean.
This laissez-faire approach is practically the one mitigating against the country fully taking stock of what pertains, the socio-economic status quo driven by capitalism, and whether this is a desired state of affairs or not.
If not, where to and how? And if the where to can be answered by luring investments into the country, with such investments automatically unleashing and unchaining the desired socio-economic progress.
Assuming the reins of political power after the country’s political independence, 36 years since, by now one would have thought the current administration has inherited the right foundation on which to build.
Indeed, we have been hearing praise-singing and self-glorification showered upon the country by would-be governance watchdogs internationally. Yes, it may have been a necessary pat on the back.
But has there actually been anything to show for socio-economically other than what such has been, a simple and meaningless pat on the back?
The effect thereof, at best, has been a delusional self-assurance and satisfaction, to the extent, if you wish, of complacency and inertia. That the socio-economic realities within the country, as far as the majority of the previously exploited are concerned, have at best been marginal, if of any consequence pertaining to their livelihoods, even basic ones.
Given the continuing state of affairs, admittedly of a country running like a headless chicken as administrations after administrations appear to have been doing, surely at one point the administration must do a serious recalibration.
Let it be said, there is no point since the country’s independence 36 years ago that she has been engaged in any serious ideological rethinking. Workshops after workshops, retreats after retreats, you name them, have been held.
But no single one has led to visible results in terms of putting the country on a meaningful fundamental progressive, if not radical, transformation trajectory. The ultimate of most of these indabas has been tinkering and tampering with the status quo. What is and has been this status quo? Capitalism!
The country has never seriously engaged herself by asking the fundamental question: if the pertaining capitalist status quo can and shall ever deliver the desired transformation from the colonial capitalist edifice inherited, let alone ask herself if such is, and may be, the right and correct edifice, only needing, for that matter, reform in one way or another, if not daring to speak of its complete overhaul.
Lately, one has been hearing about the appointment of yet another task force, this time on parastatals. How many task forces have not already been appointed and announced by the current administration?
That by now, midterm as it may, must have been hitting the ground running. Given that 36 years of independence must have laid the necessary foundation for delivery other than continued regurgitation and the re-invention of the wheel that the said task forces appointed may represent, if not continued pipe-dreaming.
Yours Truly Ideologically cannot but be reminded of the appointment some time last year of a plethora of task forces.
Their blueprints for the respective areas of their terms of reference remain at this stage privy to the appointing authority for one to be able to measure their value and essence hitherto.
Only for another task force to see the daylight. Surely a task force like the one on the economy could not have been restricted and confined in its brief so as to also focus on the parastatals.
Because there can and could not have been a better rationale for it than also zeroing in on the disposition and impact of the parastatals on the economy, let alone their own rationale and structures justifying their remunerations, which is and has been a concern, hence the terms of the recently assembled task force.
One cannot but wonder how many more task forces the country is going to see, and who knows for what next. Before the end of time, the administration would have run out of its term, not to mention steam.
Only to be clamouring for another term, to do what other than continue to appoint task forces. With the vicious socio-economic cycle in the country continuing and the populace continuing wallowing in social and economic miseries.
