Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
ANOTHER Workers’ Day has come and gone. Without much to write home about. This is despite the downward spiral trade unionism in Namibia has been seeing since independence. Year by year the trade union movement is losing its momentum, let alone its radicalism.
It is not as if workers by any measure have, since independence, gained much ground. That is if gaining any ground and/or hold in an independent Namibia was and has been by any means the reason for the continued existence of the unions. This is exactly the problem of the union movement in the country. Their birth has never been clear. In view of the fact that with their birth, right in the peak of heat of the country’s struggle for independence in the early 1970s to mid-1970s, not to mention their very emergence and/or birth, which, more than anything, could not be said to have been solely, if at all, about workers’ rights.
But, more than anything, so much about the workers’ disdain for colonialism. In this regard, the workers’ political consciousness, especially their nationalism and patriotism and thus their vivacity and vigour, had more to do with ending colonialism. In this regard, their rights were perceived more in the context of colonialism and not necessarily in the context of capitalism.
As a result, early in its formative years, before the trade union in Namibia was able to ground itself ideologically, it became entangled in the quest for freedom and justice from colonialism, perceiving the rights of workers as one and the same as those of every colonised person then.
With the rights of all colonised people perceived as the same and one, as a result of colonialism. Once colonialism has been done away with, then everyone’s rights in an independent Namibia will not only be realised but also upheld and respected. It mattered little that various people had different rights that they wanted to be realised.
All that mattered is that colonialism was denying each and everyone her/his rights, and unity in this regard was necessary to deal with one common enemy, this enemy being colonialism.
In this vogue, workers believed that once colonialism, especially apartheid colonialism in the then South West Africa, which was equally applicable just like in the then apartheid South Africa, had been done away with, their rights as workers would automatically not only be restored but also enshrined in the independent country’s laws and, thereby, protected for the workers to realise and enjoy them freely.
“Trade unions have lost vivacity and vigour” was the headline of a local English weekly last Thursday in an article in which one of the founders of unions in Namibia, Ben Ulenga. But is it a matter so much of the unions losing vivacity and vigour?
No, because the vivacity and vigour workers demonstrated then was not intrinsically and solely for their rights as workers, which in the parlance of unionism and workers’ rights are more about economic rights, as opposed to political and civil rights. As much as economic rights can also not be exercised in the absence of political and civil rights. With all the different rights somehow intertwined, if not commingled in one way or another.
There’s no denying the fact that during the struggle for colonialism, which essentially for the workers started as a struggle for their rights, given the genesis of their agitation in South West Africa then, which was against the contract labour system, the struggle for the rights of the workers became subsumed, if not submerged, in and by the broader struggle for freedom and independence, essentially a political struggle, as opposed to an economic struggle. Because the economic intent of the political struggle then was, and to this day is, never clear.
Yours Truly Ideologically cannot but be reminded of the dictum of Ghana’s founding president during the struggle of Ghana’s independence of first seeking the political kingdom. With hindsight this may and must also have been the disposition of Namibian trade unions.
As a result, trade unions, swayed if not swooped along by the independence wind sweeping across Namibia then, never had the luxury of finding any ideological grounding. To see that independence and the end of colonialism were and would not automatically bring about their rights as workers. Let alone that it would mean the end of capitalism, which is the cause of the plunder of the resources of the country and their exploitation as workers.
The political kingdom, just like in Africa, where it has wrought little in terms of economic emancipation and the rights of the workers, equally in Namibia has done little to nothing in terms of economic emancipation and, by extension, that which can halt the plunder of the country’s natural resources by foreign investors and their multinationals. Thereby also ending the exploitation of the workers and engendering the full realisation of their rights.
It then goes without saying that with independence the trade union movement in Namibia must have done some recalibration. Including defining itself and its role in the post-independence era. Which essentially has economically continued a capitalist era of tripartism. Which is all about smoothening the continued exploitation of the workers.
This year’s Workers’ Day was apparently a tripartite affair. Which is nothing more than an affirmation of capitalism and the continued exploitation of the workers. With the trade unions embracing the tripartite observance of Workers’ Day, as if eventually and ultimately heralding the emancipation of the economy and the workers. Instead of continuing to use the day to reflect on the plight of the workers and how it can break the umbilical cord of tripartism that has been keeping the worker hostage to the capitalist status quo.
