104 000 Jobs Grand Plan: Hopefully Not Another Empty Promise

TWENTY-one years ago many Namibians had the expectation that ‘all wrongs would be righted’ with the anticipation of ‘houses from heaven’ and jobs for all under a new Swapo-led Government.

Fast-forward 21 years and we are baffled why many, in a mineral-rich country with a population of only two million people, still live in abject poverty, struggle with access to education, jobs, food, a roof over their heads and thus cannot exercise their fundamental rights.
Although we knew that freedom and independence could bring both rewarding yet tough times, a country our size which has an abundance of natural resources should have been able to create thousands of jobs outside Government and afford others the chance to generate their own income through enterprises.
People don’t eat peace, tranquility or independence.
We have done well, in the context of Africa, to look after our elderly through pension allowances; accommodated many former fighters through the peace project which created jobs in the army, police and some ministries; but many other formerly disadvantaged people such as those in northern Kunene, former Bushmanland and even the southern parts of the South have not been assisted.
Over the past couple of years Finance Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila came up with several income tax relief initiatives, for those individuals who have jobs and earn certain levels of income, and pumped billions into the health and education sectors.
But there have always been concerns whether the huge budget allocations for education were improving teaching standards, for instance.
And now for the past three years we see that Government has been going on an unprecedented spending spree in a desperate effort the create jobs.
On Wednesday, we were informed about a grand plan to create over 100 000 jobs within the next three years but there were hardly any details as to how this will be realised.
Also puzzling is why, if it is such an easy thing to do, it took so long to come up with the plan.
Job opportunities, whether self-created or generated for others, is what counts most.
The revolution which we see playing out in north Africa and which seems to be spilling over to the southern parts lately, started in Tunisia with a government overthrow sparked off by the treatment of an illegal hawker.
An official reportedly slapped a young man, Mohamed Bouazizi, and tossed aside the fruits and vegetables he was selling on the street. It was the last straw - he set himself alight outside a government building. This act set off protests by unemployed youth that brought down Tunisia’s dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.
You don’t play with people’s bread and butter!
For the last 21 years, Swapo’s record on addressing unemployment has been woeful if you look at it in the context of the resources we have and the size of the population. If the statistics revealed by the Labour Ministry last year are true (51 per cent), it is in fact calamitous.
Yet, and with breathtaking disregard for reality and pitiless contempt for the plight of the unemployed, we seem to push and pull self-employed people like hawkers around towns and cities.
I get the impression that too many senior politicians seem to occupy two distinctly different worlds.
In the real world they are rich and privileged, being driven around, getting travel allowances (which enables them sometimes not even to touch their monthly salaries) and living in posh areas. In the imaginary world they are either villagers who pound mahangu during weekends or working class (comrade) heroes.
In the real world, Namibia’s poverty and unemployment rate is high and can be solved by taking bold decisions. In the imaginary world, all our problems can be politicised and shouted down with party slogans.
Although Minister Kuugongelwa-Amadhila’s grand plan for jobs is to be applauded, one hopes it is not in the same league of ‘houses from heaven’.
The citizenry won’t have the patience to wait another 21 years.