Opinions

Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro “Relative success”, this is how a fellow descendant affirmatively texted me early Friday morning after Genocide Remembrance Day (GRD).  Referencing the second official, this is the second time the government is hosting and spearheading the commemoration since its official inauguration at Parliament Gardens in Windhoek last year. Following its gazetting eventually, a year after the adoption of the relevant motion in 2024 by the National Assembly.  Why it took a year for the gazette of the day is anyone’s guess. Long, if only in the eyes of some descendants, like the Okandjoze Chiefs’ Assembly, who in 2023 and…

Paul T. Shipale (with inputs by Folito Nghitongovali Diawara Gaspar) Why the future belongs to states that learn to play Go Do our leaders understand the logic of Go? Do they grasp that the strategic game of our era is no longer chess but Go? States seldom disintegrate in dramatic fashion. More often, they erode quietly beneath the façade of normalcy. Government institutions continue to operate. Elections are conducted without turmoil. Foreign capital keeps flowing. Economic indicators show growth. International partners applaud stability. Yet underneath that surface calm, the architecture of dependence remains entirely intact. That is the real danger…

Lazarus Kairabeb  Abstract This article advances a conceptual framework linking conflict, consent, and knowledge production within the Namibian academic context. Drawing on dialectical philosophy and post-development theory, it argues that intellectual stagnation is less a function of scarcity than of constrained epistemic conditions in which conflict is muted and synthesis remains underdeveloped. The paper introduces the concept of “interrupted dialectics” to describe the persistent tension between development-orientated scholarship and critical post-development perspectives that fails to culminate in transformative theoretical production. Extending the doctrine of Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) beyond its legal domain, the article proposes the notion of “epistemic…

Lazarus Kwedhi History cannot be erased, but it can be confronted, and from that confrontation, a new path can be forged. For Namibia and Germany, the coming years will test whether two nations bound by a brutal colonial past can forge a relationship defined less by guilt and resentment than by mutual interest, respect, and shared purpose. The record of Germany’s rule in Namibia between 1884 and 1915 is stark. What began as a colonial claim became a campaign of dispossession, violence, and demographic destruction. The 1904–1908 war against the Herero and Nama peoples culminated in mass killings, starvation, forced…

Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro Presumably the eighth administration of Namibia under Her Excellency Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, President of the Republic of Namibia, has been brought to power under the mandate of service delivery.  And indeed, it seems at a breakneck speed that this is what it has been striving to just do. Not that intrinsically there’s any wrong about a government delivering service to the citizenry. After all this, it is just what it was and has been mandated by the citizens when they voted it in power. But the question that begs is what service delivery is all about and what philosophy…

Paul T. Shipale (with inputs by Folito Nghitongovali Diawara Gaspar) Why African leaders must confront colonial amnesia and the dependency within In the architecture of global historical memory, not all suffering is remembered equally. Some tragedies are institutionalised through museums, films, academic systems, and international commemorations until they become part of humanity’s shared moral vocabulary. Others remain marginalised, acknowledged only occasionally and often without the same global urgency or emotional investment. Among the most overlooked of these atrocities is the Herero and Nama genocide, carried out by Imperial Germany between 1904 and 1908 in present-day Namibia. Many historians regard it…

Dikson Nangombe The recent rampant practice in Namibia of subjecting traditional leaders to election processes or installations is a departure from traditional norms. Namibia, being a democratic country where the doctrine of majority rule is upheld, is witnessing a shift towards politically installed or elected traditional leaders. However, I wish to criticise this trend. The position of a traditional leader should ideally be hereditary rather than being determined through elections or political appointments. Some traditional authorities are now adopting the Western method of selecting their representatives, seemingly detached from their roots and ancestral practices. Recently, I came across a case…

Paul T. Shipale (with inputs by Folito Nghitongovali Diawara Gaspar) “In Namibia, a cow can be worth less simply because it was born on the wrong side of a fence.” Few structures expose the persistence of colonial power in Africa as clearly as Namibia’s red line. Officially known as the veterinary cordon fence, the barrier is presented as a sanitary measure designed to prevent the spread of foot and mouth disease and protect Namibia’s livestock exports. But reducing the red line to a veterinary issue obscures its deeper reality; it is an economic, racial, and historical frontier born under colonialism…