17 Jun 2013
By Udo W. Froese
IT is not the fault of the people that they are of a different background, colour, or creed. Moreover, it is definitely not their fault that they are poor. The owners of the economy, the so-called captains of industry, the unscrupulous plunder barons, the architects of colonial-apartheid and elitism have gone to great lengths to viciously screw and violently abuse the general public to keep what they took from this continent. This is the indefensible, brutal insanity, also known as the status quo.
Africa’s population has deliberately and intentionally been structured into poverty and landlessness through orchestrated tribalism, xenophobia, civil and tribal wars, a fraudulent banking system and corruption. This is the real genocide and destabilisation. The great majority of the Namibian population, and Africa’s population, has no say in matters of ownership and participation in the economy. This has caused a major constitutional crisis, which is most difficult to balance and control.
Naturally, the media justifies it through consistent propaganda, propping up the status quo. In fact, there is simply no care for human lives. But, they market themselves as the white knights in shining armour, protecting the poor, always knowing what is best for them. This is patronising at best. This form of racism also causes continuous friction and upcoming pockets of unrest. The elected political leadership and the governmental administrators find themselves between a rock and a hard place.
On the one hand, a hostile local and foreign economy remains closed and exclusive. It shows its false mask of delusional ‘patriotism’, creating compromising investment and employment, abusing protective tokenism through Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE). At the same time the investors threaten with legal action, disinvestment and economic hardship, if not protected by the state, receiving all sorts of favours in whatever form. They often attempt to hold the ruling class at ransom.
On the other side, it has led to certain political leaders being over-compromised. In return, such politicians would be lobbied and pushed into strategic leadership positions not to necessarily serve their constituencies, but rather their new ‘managers/investors’. It would thus be predictable and arbitrary, when certain politicians would resort to a Leninist shuffle to the left, which all agent provocateurs do to win support.
But their lifestyles actually give them away, as it would be typically rightwing and ostentatiously materialistic. The West looks after the interests of the West. When it conquered the African continent, it was not done for the sake of protecting and enriching the indigenous people. The contrary was the case. Even the demarcation of Africa’s borders at the colonial summit in Berlin, Germany, in 1884-5, divided African nations into two and more colonies. The Ovambo people in the north of Namibia and the south of Angola are a case in point.
In their war against colonial occupation, struggle movements have not addressed the division of their people. In fact, Western culture and standards have conquered African codes, customs and lifestyles, despite lengthy bloody wars against the former occupiers. Throughout the world and more particularly in the West, corporatisation has taken over governments. The owners of the corporate world are known to stop at nothing. They focus on the jewels in the economic crown and are hell-bent to get them. The end justifies the means. This too is not African culture.
As the Swapo Party has not accepted such complicity in corruption and remained a peoples’ movement, it is to be expected that the media and civil society, more particularly its owners, would lash out at any given opportunity and time to discredit and undermine its leadership, in order to ‘discipline’ it. This is a daily challenge, as the ruling party has accepted power and all the responsibilities that come with it.
So far, the Swapo Party seems to have done a good job, and regional observers and many tourists are full of praise for Namibia, its functionality, peacefulness and cleanliness. This is a feather in the cap of the ruling party, its government and the people of Namibia.
• Udo Froese is a non-institutionalised, independent political and socio-economic analyst and published columnist, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Follow my Titter: @theotherafrika
Visit my Blog: theotherafrika.wordpress.com
Labels: LAND REFORM, NAMIBIA, POVERTY, UDO FROESE
posted by MrK @ 4:05 PM
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