Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
A local businessperson in the conservation and tourism sector, in an opinion article in The Namibian newspaper of December 6, 2024, headlined, “Breaking the Silence on Conservancies and Tourism Versus Mining,” took issue with threats posed by mining activities to the environment.
Not long after the said article, who sounded like a community activist, a native and resident of the Kunene region, in the ancient and/or pre-colonial Ohopoho, today’s Opuwo, featuring on the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC)’s Omurari FM daily current affairs programme, Keetute. Who last Thursday, 12 December, 2024, also raised concern, albeit of a different nature, against mining entities, including the award of Exclusive Processing Licenses (EPLs).
The businessperson-cum-conservationist’s central plank in the said opinion piece is the competition, if you wish, between mining activities and the preservation of the environment, with the odds, as one would of course expect in a capitalist mode of production, heavily stuck against the preservation of the environment and conservancies. The involvement of big capital in mining is not unexpected.
While for the would-be community activist, the main concern was and is the exclusion of communities from mining activities, let alone any benefit, even a trickle down. The wholesaling of EPLs to potential explorers and investors deeply and earnestly concerns the community activist.
Both the businessperson-turned-conservationist and the community activist may come from different perspectives, both ideologically and otherwise. But there is a common thread running through their respective concerns.
The country’s natural resources are being exploited with negligible benefit, particularly when the majority of the population lives in poverty and hunger despite abundance.
Their ideological unity stems from the evident lack of egalitarianism and their quest for it. But this is an egalitarianism of a different kind and sort from the fashionable one these days, phrased as beneficiation as espoused and advocated by the ruling elite, both political and bureaucratic, and capitalists in the business and economic spheres, whose ultimate essence is not and shall never ever be any fundamental change but the hoodwinking and appeasement of the country’s masses. Thus, they are laying the groundwork for the ongoing extraction and exploitation of the nation’s natural resources.
With no genuine recognition, appreciation and admission that the country’s natural resources belong to the people. Thus, they must be shared by the people for all and sundry to benefit from them. The current government and investors are solely responsible for facilitating the extraction and exploitation of these natural resources. For the fruits of such extraction and exploitation to be shared equally among the populace of the country according to the needs of each of its constituent members, with due regard to the most needy.
Axiomatically compensating, with much emphasis on compensating, the investors for their services in facilitating the exploration, exploitation, and extraction of the natural resources, commensurate with the services provided by each investor. Rather than the investors amassing exorbitant profits from the extraction and exploitation of the country’s natural resources, they should be compensated fairly. However, they are essentially leaving the country and its people behind.
More than anything, if you wish, this is something that does not beg for any ideology but simply a paradigm shift, based on the realities and eccentricities of the polity called Namibia. Ironically, a paradigm shift is what has been missing all along. Until lately, thanks to the business person-cum-conservationist and the community activist. By any stretch of the imagination, theirs cannot be considered an ideology.
Ideologically, they may differ greatly, regardless of the ideologies they adhere to. But united by their pure pragmatism, driven by a common practical experience from their respective socio-economic conditions, they have been subjected and subjugated to by the pertaining and obtaining capitalist order.
Not only this, but I would like it to change rather than being comfortable with the status quo which is and has not been in favour of the exploited suffering majority of indigenous Namibians. Heaven knows how many indabas, workshops, conferences, you name them, have there not been in Namibia herself or outside.
Leaving Yours Truly Ideologically, wondering to what extent such a paradigm shift, as being advanced by the typical Namibian business person-cum-conservationist, and the community activist, has ever been thought of as an agenda point or discussion point, and eventually seriously discussed at such platforms and what the end result has been and/or may have been. But surely given their nature, such a paradigm could rarely be expected from such platforms, if at all.
Such being platforms, more than anything, and in view of the fact that they are usually planned, convened, sponsored and hosted by the big capital, the outcome usually is a foregone conclusion. Which is has been, at best, all about maintaining and enhancing the status quo. Which, for all intents and purposes, is about advancing capitalism and making exploitation and its vestiges of poverty, inequality and inequity, acceptable and bearable to the political and economic elite, and by default, to the masses and the whole country.
Meaning, instead of serving the interests of the masses, some of Namibia’s typical politicians-cum-Members of Parliament have become instead the keepers of capitalism and proxy exploiters, on behalf of capitalism of their own people. The people prior to the elections made all sorts of promises to, least alleviate their conditions of poverty, hardly with elections over, forgotten until with the next round of elections, which are five years.
During which, more than anything, their plights deteriorated at worse and at best made only bearable, if bearable they can ever be said to have been and have become in between the elections. This scenario cannot but for those who are and have been at the sharper edge of the capitalist system and its avowed investment and growth myth, to see the notion of investment and growth as meaningless as far as they are concerned.
Meaningful only for its keepers and their proxies and the opiumised masses. Who, in the face of continued exploitation and oppression by the capitalist system, continues to be docile? Benign servants of it while it does not by any imagination serve, let alone their basic needs. But the opulent and decadent lives of the capitalists themselves and their operators, the local bourgeoisie. That includes the politicians, the presumed statesmen and women, the academy, religious leaders—you name it. Thus the businessperson-cum-conservationist and the community activist are not doing anything but rallying the country to the continuous reality of exploitation veiled in Namibia as development.
