…until we name the offspring of colonizers and the colonised, we will keep blaming democracy for our predicament
Lazarus Kwedhi
“Tashili ekunde, omekunde shili” — the enemy is within the nation itself
Thirty-six years after independence, Namibians have done what constitutional democracy demands. Citizens register. They vote. They have changed faces in Parliament and State House.
The government has launched Vision 2030, successive National Development Plans and the Harambee Prosperity Plans.
Yet the material conditions of the majority remain largely unchanged. The land question is unresolved. National debt, budget deficits, inflation, unemployment, poverty and hunger continue to weigh on the economy and on households. Economic ownership remains concentrated.
Out of this frustration, a narrative is gaining ground: that democracy does not work for Namibia, hence there is no need to vote, and that the Constitution is a foreign imposition, therefore Chapter 3 needs to be amended.
That conclusion misdiagnoses the problem. The failure lies not with democracy as a system, but with those entrusted to give it content. To understand why, it is necessary to return to political theory, history and language that speaks directly to the Namibian experience.
1. The house we inherited: Mamdani’s dual system
Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani described colonialism as having created not one nation, but two inside a single territory.
The first was civil society: towns, mines, commercial farms, banks and courts governed by direct rule and Roman-Dutch law. The second was tribal authority: communal areas and homelands governed by indirect rule through chiefs and customary law.
At independence, political authority was transferred. The economic structure was not. The result is a dual economy that persists today: one formal, modern, banked and integrated into global markets; the other informal, communal and structurally excluded.
Political independence without economic emancipation is the product of that dual system. Mamdani argued that unless the dual system is dismantled, independence remains incomplete.
2. The warning Ignored: Fanon and the buffer class
Frantz Fanon anticipated this outcome in The Wretched of the Earth (1961). He warned that the departing coloniser would leave behind a class to manage the colony on his behalf.
Fanon called it the “national bourgeoisie” — commonly referred to as the buffer class. Its defining feature, he argued, is not a commitment to transformation, industrialisation or the breaking of monopolies, but the ambition to occupy the position of the former coloniser.
“The national bourgeoisie will be greatly helped in its work of proxy by the western bourgeoisies, who will come to it as tourists in droves,” Fanon wrote.
The function of this class is to keep exploitative, exclusionary and divide-and-rule structures intact while speaking the language of the liberation struggle. It sits between the people and substantive change.
3. The Trap: Nkrumah and neocolonialism
Kwame Nkrumah termed the next phase “neocolonialism.” In Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, he argued that a state can be independent in form while its economic system and policy direction remain subject to external control.
“In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside,” Nkrumah wrote, citing institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.
In Namibia, the direction of policy is not only external. A significant portion now originates domestically. The buffer class Nkrumah described did not only emerge from foreign boardrooms.
It also emerged from within the liberation movement. Colonial structures of exploitation and exclusion were not dismantled. They were retained and managed by new office-bearers.
4. From Omakakunya to Amutumwandjambi: A Namibian lineage
The buffer class is not an imported concept. The language — buffer = Endangalati — and Namibian history already contain terms for it, based on conduct rather than race or origin.
During apartheid, PLAN referred to collaborators as Omakakunya, Omasolo, Omapuli, Omalandwambongo. The security formation was known as Koevoet. Their role was to sustain the apartheid system because it provided them with material benefits.
The apartheid administration, in turn, labelled PLAN fighters Iikulo, Ootoli — “terrorists and rebels.”
In exile, those accused of betrayal were called “spies and puppets.” Many became victims of the Lubango detention episode.
After 1990, leaders who had fought for self-determination were elected with a constitutional two-thirds majority and a 36-year mandate to advance decolonisation. Instead of dismantling the dual system, successive governments retained its mechanics: commercial farms, banking, fishing quotas, mining licences and public procurement.
The change was in personnel, driven by what in Oshiwambo is called uufukulume — extreme greed — and the desire to replicate the role of the former coloniser.
Naming the offspring
If a problem cannot be named in a language people understand, it cannot be confronted. Four Oshiwambo-derived terms help to describe the post-independence buffer class:
KAKOLAKEKULYE – the dog that bites the owner
A public office-bearer elected or appointed to dismantle colonial-era laws and improve living standards who, after assuming power, turns against the electorate through policies such as communal land compensation rules, the veterinary red line, and corruption scandals including Fishrot and Oilrot.
AMUTUMWANDJAMBI – angel in the neighbour’s house, devil in his own
A person who advances foreign interests at the expense of Namibian sovereignty.
TALI OOMPANDA MBALI – the double dip
A person who draws benefits both from colonial-era exploitative structures and from the communities that were victims of those structures.
TAKOMBO KONDJE, MEGUMBO MWAKAKA – cleaning outside while the inside is dirty
A person who creates opportunities for foreigners in Namibia while denying similar opportunities to Namibians.
The pattern is consistent: electoral legitimacy is sought on the basis of liberation history; state salaries and perquisites are drawn; public office is used to access farms, quotas, licences and tenders; the electorate is told to wait for policy plans; in foreign investment deals, the state takes a minority share while the remainder is privatised; party finances are presented as clean while public institutions face allegations of corruption; and state resources are deployed for political mobilisation.
The buffer class has an interest in preserving colonial-era laws and institutions because they provide access and rent. It also requires the vote of the majority to remain in office.
The destination: Decolonisation
Democracy and the Constitution are not the problem. The problem is who has been tasked with implementing them.
Fanon warned of the buffer class. Nkrumah warned of neocolonialism. Mamdani warned of the dual system. Their common conclusion is that changing political symbols without changing economic structures produces continuity, not transformation.
The liberation struggle was not fought to change the complexion of management. It was fought to end exploitation, exclusion and divide-and-rule, and to achieve economic emancipation for the majority.
Until the offspring of the coloniser and the colonised is named and identified, the country risks repeating the same error and blaming democratic institutions for political choices made by individuals.
The task ahead is not only independence, but decolonisation: breaking the dual system, dismantling colonial economic structures, and placing the means of production within the reach of the majority who remain disadvantaged and excluded.
Namibia belongs to all its people. The standard for leadership must be whether it responds to the needs of the unemployed, graduates and vulnerable citizens, rather than whether it reproduces greed, exploitation and exclusion.
