Pambazuka - Namibia at 20: The limits of liberation

posted by the ghetto intellectual 2/21/2010

Winning the war and losing the postwar negotiations is a distressing trend throughout Africa. GI 


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21 March 1990 marked Namibia’s Independence Day. When celebrating the long awaited moment of our hard won independence twenty years ago, most Namibians shared similar hopes and expectations. Two decades later, while treasuring our achievements, some at the same time look at the limits to liberation in a more somber way. Taking stock of the last twenty years does not, on balance – as painful as it is to say this – give reasons for uncritical enthusiasm.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES

There is no reason to approve of the socio-economic situation and the pertaining class structures. Namibia is still one of the most unequal societies in the world. Poverty has not been reduced considerably. According to economists associated with the Namibia office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), structurally embedded poverty has actually increased. Measured against the annual per capita income, Namibia has remained a lower middle income country. But it continues to have one of the highest discrepancies in the distribution of the economic wealth generated. Put differently, a minority shares the biggest part of the cake, while the majority remains hungry.

Although Namibia recorded positive economic growth rates for most of the years since independence, unemployment in 2010 has been estimated to be over 50 per cent for the first time. According to the annual UNDP human development report, Namibia is among the non-oil-producing countries with the biggest negative difference between its ranking in terms of per capita income and on the human development index. The latter measures, among others things, educational levels, health indicators and access to public goods such as water, electricity and other infrastructure. Due to the devastating effect of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and one of the highest prevalence rates in the world, the life expectancy of Namibians has dropped considerably since Independence.

Those who expected that independence would increase markedly the living standards of formerly marginalised people were disappointed. That goal is almost as remote as it was twenty years ago. There is little evidence of strong political will to change this as a matter of priority. For those who were privileged under settler colonial minority rule, in contrast, little has changed for the worse with respect to their material situation. Rather, ‘business as usual’ might, in their view, count in favour of the continued social stability.

The negotiated settlement between the liberation movement and the former colonial power as facilitated by external actors ended in a process of controlled change. It resulted in changed control. Decolonisation took the forms of an elite pact. National reconciliation was in the first place a reconciliation of class interests between the former haves and the nouveau riche of the new domestic order. The fat cats as the main beneficiaries of so-called affirmative action and black economic empowerment, were the parasites fed from the access to publicly controlled resources. The embezzlement of state funds for private enrichment schemes through quota allocation and concessions, excessive salaries, other fringe benefits and the awarding of tenders as political rewards has become almost chronic. Financial scandals and the misappropriation of other opportunities (such as stipends for studies) seem to have become the order of the day.

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tags: namibia, economics, corruption


[photo: source]