Kae Matundu Tjiparuro
“Revolutions are made not by the deputies in parliament, but by the masses,” wrote French Marxist Louis Althusser in his rendition of Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.
Yours Truly Ideologically cannot but muse what the honourable members of our august houses, that is the National Assembly (NA) and the National Council (NC), composing Namibia’s parliament, would say and have to say about this excerpt and posit from Althusser.
In view of the fact that, albeit him, parliament cannot but be just another apparatus of the state. In fact, there is and can be no denial that parliament is just another functionary/tool and/or an element among many elements of an infrastructure determined by the base. This base being the economics.
The Namibian Constitution provides for three branches of government, which are the Executive, the Legislature (NA and NC, and thus parliament), and the Judiciary.
All three, each in its own special way, are designed and designated, for that matter, to be serving the existing system.
Call the pertaining system, the socio-economic system in Namibia, what you may want to call it, but Yours Truly Ideologically is not mistaken that this system is capitalism.
Without indulging in its goodness and badness, it is a fact that the three branches of government are serving this system. It suffices to note that the masses are and have been at the sharper end of this very system.
Hence the notion from Althusser’s excerpt that they are the ones making revolutions. In Namibia, as much, none but the masses can and shall bring about the necessary fundamental change, Althusser’s notion of revolutions.
Thus, the question begging is: where do members of Parliament, that is of the NA and the NC, stand with regard to helping the masses bring about the revolution?
Starting in the least, as this is all that one can expect from any, if not all of them, helping usher in, in the least, the beginning towards fundamental change, and ultimately the revolution.
Because a little help from the current crop of the honourables is all that the masses can hope for, as few of them can claim to be, if only believing, especially ideologically, in real fundamental change.
This is not to say there are not those who genuinely, when aspiring and vying to become members of parliament, may initially have been harbouring the best intentions in improving the welfare of the people, if not pretending to be.
With many, at the end, once in parliament, having proven themselves incapable of improving, let alone causing an improvement in, the welfare of the people. Materially and substantively so.
Other than by sheer noise until their terms are over. If there are any members of parliament ideologically disposed towards fundamental change, a fundamental change which in essence entails an overhaul of the current capitalist system, they simply have not been there.
Not only this, but none, for that matter, has ever pretended to overhaul the pertaining capitalist system. As their election manifestos time and again have been testifying to this reality and continue to.
Thus, in a nutshell, the Namibian parliament since the country’s independence in 1990, like the other two branches, has never been intended, let alone for laying the necessary foundation for the would-be transition from the current relations of production, which are capitalist, to different relations of production, whatever they may be, and/or even pretended to be.
If there may have been any members with the good intentions, as indeed there are and have been some claiming such good intentions, which to them has been all about improving the living conditions, that is tampering and tinkering with the system as opposed to daring to overhaul it, they have come to meet and see a different reality in this august house.
That this august house is no better than reproducing itself. In its realistic role under the pertaining capitalist system, which is at best to provide the system with its supposed human face.
Running into a system, which, against their best intentions, which for that matter is only about ameliorating the exploitation of the masses instead of undoing it completely, has a way of swallowing people and making them its subjects.
The essence of Althusser’s investigation in Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.
For starters, it is needless to point out that most of the members are elated in being called and referred to, even to the point of themselves insisting on being called and referred to as honourables.
Which is an ideological ploy of making themselves feel respected members of the system, while what it is doing in reality is to subjectivise them. Just like everyone in society is being subjectivised to allow the system to produce itself.
Admittedly, few, if any, of the current crop of parliamentarians are in parliament to radicalise change, except the promises which most of them have made that they would better the living conditions of especially the masses.
Thus, by its nature as but no more than another branch of the status quo, there is not much the masses must and could expect from the parliamentarians, despite their showmanship in at least wanting and/or pretending to be working in the best interests of the voters.
Let it be put to the parliamentarians that voters are by no means a monolithic group whose interests, let alone needs, some thereof most critical, are thus easily rendered to delivery by the parliamentarians however united they may be ideologically.
On the contrary, as divergent as the interests and needs of the voters may be, they are equally eclectic and irreconcilable. Foremost among the interests and needs being those of the exploited masses and thus of the many impoverished.
The honourable members, given their proclivity to self-reproduction as part of the production system, the capitalist system, are the least of the agents who can, nor are expected to, deliver the workers from the yoke of exploitation and thus capitalism.
Hence Althusser’s notion that “deputies in parliament cannot make revolutions.” Likewise, there is no way Namibian parliamentarians can deliver the Namibian masses, including workers, from capitalism!
