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Namibia: The Pains of Nation Building - Crossing the Turbulent River

Bernadus Swartbooi

9 January 2009

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opinion

In his lecture to the Royal Colonial Institute in January 1914, Professor Bonn, refering to the then South-West Africa, and in particular the German actions toward our Herero people, had the following to say, as captured in the Report on the Natives of South West Africa and their Treatment by Germany: "We tried to assume to ourselves the functions of Providence, and we tried to exterminate a native race, whom our lack of wisdom had goaded into rebellion. We succeeded in breaking up the native tribes, but we have not succeeded in creating a new Germany."

This exposition decisively points to the enduring difficulties of nation building, even for the then Imperial Germany.

For us, we must interrogate if we have succeeded in building a new Namibian nation, after we "broke apartheid". What are the challenges, the pains that we must overcome toward achieving this goal? Our Founding Father, Dr Sam Nujoma, in the first session of the Constituent Assembly on 21 November 1989 said, " therefore all Namibians, regardless of colour, creed and places of origin have a place in our beautiful country. It is only for us to reach out to one another and mould a new nation out of diversity.." How far are we on that journey?

Nation building is a difficult and painstaking, but necesarry process. Nationhood, to be achieved, is the result of a deliberate nation building effort, through such mechanisms as constitutions, laws, policies, programmes, public pronouncements and state institutional structures. Social institutions such as churches and other voluntary and civil society organisations are also vital mechanisms to garner and maintain a broader social consensus to the nation building effort. While there are a number of theories on nation building, these theories, at least in my reasoned view, fail to speak to the citizenry. It rarely speaks to and confronts the individual, who is the actual object of the nation building process. While I do not herewith pretend to borne a new theoretical strand of nation building, I wish to add my thoughts, albeit in a limited manner, to the aspects that I believe are necesarry in our own nation building effort.

The youth, not only in Namibia, but on the broader African and global landscape, require a fresh discourse, a new direction, a new inter-generational interaction, indeed a new approach and practice to politics and to the national-and-international policy and development agenda. The following are thus the aspects that I consider valuable pillars that we must critically deliberate upon:

1. Collective Chaos and Carelessness

Any group of persons can create chaos. Unemployed youth could demonstrate their frustration and vent their anger against the "system". The aim could be to make a political point, to assert a right, either a historic or economic or social right. These rights could be legitimate or misconstrued. We have seen with the shebeen owners and war veterans' childrens' public display of discontent, an apt illustration of the sustained challenge to the state to respond to their demands. The creation and re-creation of chaotic scenes is utilized as a tool for bargaining, in some instances. When cattle from certain Ohangwena farmers are chased into the Kavango grazing area without consulting the recognised traditional leadership of that area, one reads a sense of arrogant carelessness: the disregard of other's rights and existence.

Any political party or political establishment can create conditions of chaos and demonstrate carelessness. These "conditions of chaos" could be real or artificial. The experience of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, as reflected in the book by Lt.General Romeo Dallaire, titled "Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in the Rwanda Genocide," shows the capacity to generate and distribute chaos, confusion and carelessness. The work of the Presidential Guard, as well as that of the Interahamwe in Kigali in particular, depicted in that book, reveals how a "peaceful" society and a stable state can degenerate overnight into hatred of neighbours and friends. Other reaveling accounts on the genocide include the work by Phillip Gouveritch: "We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families". We are very pleased that Colonel Bogosora and others have been found guilty and sentenced to prison by the UN Tribunal for Rwanda.

Closer to home, the politically orchestrated incident in Outapi and other such incidents, are a telling indictment of the fragility of peace and tolerance, and all of us must learn therefrom, whatever our political convictions. Of course, we know fully that part of the political challenge is that some oppostion parties are rather desperate to capture media headlines, bidding on capturing public and international sympathy and hope to garner moral and material support from the "international community". Such parties seek to generate "crisis" and headlines, even by articifial means, since they are terribly unable to articulate mainstream and people-centric political alternatives. The inability and incapacity to formulate and articulate alternative policies is at the centre of the weakness of many opposition parties, and it frustrates them. Because of this lingering "vision vacuum," accompanied by Swapo-phobia, some opposition parties enter the precinct of tribalism, clan-based associations and regionalism. This latter careless interpretation of democracy runs throughout the discourse of some of the newly formed political cells, for they yet are to become parties. Such political cells incite rather than inspire. Incitement is not nation building, it is nation breaking.

2. Collective Cowardice and Characterlessness

Ethnic and racial chauvinism is a sign of cowardice. It depicts a sense of grave insecurity. Not addressing that challenge head-on is nothing less than characterlessness. Ethnic chauvinism and tribalism demonstrate the incompleteness of our "victory over racism and apartheid" and could reverse the social transformation process. Mamphele Ramphele, in her exciting book: "Laying Ghosts to Rest: Dillemmas of Transformation in South Africa," warns against the temptation of classifying people into "irreconcilable categories in a country where diversity is our biggest strength." In my view, "negative branding" among and between Namibians is part of that "irreconcilable categorisation" , to borrow from her.

Recall the branding of all our white compatriots as racists and unpatriotic settlers. It is wrong, and it limits the collective potential in all of us, as Namibians, to create and entrench a society of constant change and progress. White political and social isolationism is also injurious. The selected economic beneficiation of some Namibians, while excluding other Namibians is wrong. It brands others as either more able and capable for empowerment, more hard working and therefore most suitable for affirmative action and economic empowerment. A Government department publicising a report that suggests in unequivocal terms that Namibians from the Nama descendancy are lazy and mere alcoholics, is flatly wrong. Equally, branding our Kavango compatriots as lazy and alcoholics is flatly wrong. Suggesting that our Ongandjera compatriots are thieves is wrong. These 'negative brands' mean that we ourselves brand Namibia as a country of racists, of thieves, of alcoholics and of lazy inhabitants. A country of racists, thieves, alcoholics and lazy people can never become a nation where sustainable peace and progress is possible. Surely, no racist, no thief, no alcoholic nor lazy men has ever built a nation. Can we build a nation with this negative branding?

Before independence, people lived together. As recalled in the publication: An Investigation of The Shooting at The Old Location on 10 December 1959, 2nd Edition, by Milly Jafta et al.,various ethnic groups attended church service jointly, and albeit frustrating due to difficulties in following the service, it was " very pleasurable for everyone to be together." (ELCRN Archives, Newsletter, undated, c. 1933). Why then, are we negatively branding our collective heritage? And what good lessons can our children and grandchildren take from us?

The re-emerging cleavages between various ethnic groups must be arrested. State policies and implementation practices are esssential to healing past racial wounds and to avoid tribal and ethnic patronage which create intolarable chasms. But we all must do more, individually. While white compatriots have wholly and undeniably benefitted from centuries of exclusive economic empowerment and affirmative action schemes at the expense of black compatriots, our collective future requires us to be inclusive of all races and ethnic groups. After all, "..we the people of Namibia have emerged victorious in our struggle against colonialism, racism and apartheid.." states the Preamble of our supreme law. When some white land owners refuse to make land available for Government resettlement, we fail Namibia. And when we resettle for the sake of resettlement, and make a productive farm instantly unproductive, we fail Namibia. The often visible disrespect and ridicule of the Government among some in our white community is not helpful to our cause. Equally unhelpful is the deliberate exclusion and rejection of great ideas that will actually build a stronger nation, simply because these ideas are from white compatriots. Nation building is about all of us. It is not about some of us against the others: in other words, it is not about blacks against whites, neither about this tribe against the other.

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