Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
There can be no better time than now for the country to be become more vigilant over its natural resources and with the same vigour that it is currently crisscrossing the globe like the late President Dr Hage Geingob did looking for investors to tap into the rich natural resources of the country.
And there can be no better generation than the current and future one to do this. Because it behooves them to ensure that such natural resources are preserved for future generations, which is none other than them.
One cannot but notice that currently it is this very generation that is currently at the forefront of the investment- attraction; -generation, -promotion, and what have you. The vigour, determination, acumen and time they have been and seem to be putting in this endeavour is commendable. But there’s a link missing. There are simply no commensurate and parallel endeavours to ensure whatever investments being eventually realised in terms of tapping onto the raw resources of the country are not wholesaled as raw as they are and have been. With little industrialisation taking place on the local and home front. A situation which comes from the colonial capitalist mode of production. When the interest of the capitalists, the so-called investors, was and has been to just extract and exploit any colonised country’s natural resources as quick and the shortest possible time, shipping out the profits and eventually themselves.
The best the indigenes were and/or may have been useful was to deploy them in such exploitation, also exploiting them as well through cheap labour. In the wake of such extraction and exploitation many a ghosts environment have been left. Economic ruins. Little could the indigenes do then and there believing, given the conditions of both political and economic subjugation they were subjected and subjugated, parallel to the colonisation of their minds, believing that they were gainfully employed. Unconscious that they were just pawns in a global capitalist productive chess game.
Dawn independence, which many formerly colonised countries have achieved. The very same situation has not only been continuing but it has now found many an accomplices, foremost amongst them, indigenous ones. Better educated, trained, skilled. But the worst better mentally manipulated. Into believing that more than anything they are professionals in their own right. Call them what you may call them. Engineers, entrepreneurs, businesspeople. The labels are endless. Few of whom has ever reflected on their existence within the given and pertaining capitalist productive system.
Which is by the mere fact that they are now fronting it, as proxies for that matter of the actual capitalists their forebears served without any illusion and/or of your wish any hangover of being stakeholders, and/or shareholders, call It what you may, is by no means different.
Because the capitalist project is far from complete. It is continuing in Namibia, for reference in many facets and modes. Typically the Green Hydrogen Scheme. Simultaneously the mind games continue.
Beneficiation, local content are the buzzwords to make a safe landing for the would-be investors and to assuage the local population that after all their natural resources, unlike in the old bad colonial capitalist times, this time around they are not for “total” wholesale but there are some benefits to the country and its citizens, how negligible such trickle downs may.
Because unless the citizenry, other than those currently at the forefront of making the investors aware of the potential of the country for investments, simply because of its untapped raw natural richness, for investments, benefits to the locals shall remain negligible as it has been. The doctrine of historical materialism bears as evidenced in Namibia, or any other former colony bears empirical evidence to this. Till this very day in Namibia.
Currently, rightly or wrongly, we continue to blame colonialism for many of the socio-economic ills scorching the country all over, from the urban areas, where we now have the scorch of urban influx, to our rural areas where almost every remote part of the country is an economic backyard and ruin.
Partly because of capitalist underdevelopment during the colonial period. But colonialism is no more. But not capitalism which remains intact in Namibia. Instead of arresting the situation has been worsening.
Both in the urban and rural areas. Admittedly independence has brought rights and freedoms. Because during colonialism there was strict control of urban influx. Thus, there was little pressure in terms of services in the urban centres. To the same extent we are seeing today. Likewise rural areas as much as underdeveloped as they were they were of no consequence to the colonial political authorities. Because they were predominantly inhabited by inconsequential people, the natives.
Thus, who would care and/or bother whether they are developed or not. For colonial capitalist standards they were developed and being developed.
But today all these are supposedly in our own hands presumably. We are in charge of our own destiny. Meaning, granted the socio-economic deficit inherited from colonial capitalism, everything should be in our control. Given the vigour shown by our investment hunters so that growth could be stimulated, this vigour cannot be a standalone.
Confined to only making the country conducive to investment. But equal and parallel efforts must expended in ensuring that such investments take cognisance of the historical colonial capitalism socio-economic deficit. This is a onerous task that the country, if true o its mission of a Namibian r Revolution, can only take for granted at her won peril. As our Southern neighbour, South African seems to be learning the hard way, even to the extent of the country reverting in the hands of Apartheid adherents like the Democratic Alliance (DA).
But Namibia is not only forewarned but must take a serious note that investment flows, where and when realised, thanks to the untiring endeavours of those responsible for bringing them in, are not left to their own devices but that that there are in-built quarantees that the country and here people comes first. Meaning parallel to efforts to attract investments, there must be concerted and vigilant efforts ensuring they benefit the country and her people. Which much must be an independent and separate function.
