Succession: Shouldn’t We Also Think Outside The Box

CANDIDATES have strategies to win the race in Swapo but do they have the strategies to run the country? And do they have the qualities of a leader the country needs?

These are but two of the most crucial questions that Swapo and any delegate to the congress later this year must ask before deciding on the presidential candidate.
Instead too much time and effort is wasted on personalities and character assassination and who will benefit through tenders or prepare the State for collective piracy if their candidate wins.
Even though Swapo was known as the traditional hope of the oppressed and there is a feeling among some of its members that others have no right to poke inquisitive noses into its affairs, ignoring what is going on in the party is as good as cutting the thread that holds the country together. Swapo is the ruling party since Independence and therefore everything it does matters to outsiders also.
With the debate on succession thus limited to the Politburo, Central Committee and the congress, it should be the sole business of everyone else who thinks they are obliged to have a say to use available platforms to try and influence party members on the type of candidate to be elected. It is only right to do so even though it is not written in stone that the Swapo candidate will become the next President of Namibia.
It is a fact that the majority of Namibia has relegated the responsibility of choosing that candidate to around 500 delegates at the congress.
As for now the names of the party’s Vice President Hage Geingob, Secretary General Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana, Information Secretary Jerry Ekandjo, Prime Minister Nahas Angula and Deputy Prime Minister Marco Hausiku are all being touted as candidates to take over the party leadership from President Hifikepunye Pohamba.
All of the above have had their share of time in Cabinet and should by now have shown their capabilities.
Since Independence Swapo has hammered home the message of peace and tranquility. In fact even though former President Sam Nujoma emphasised economic independence towards the latter years of his rule, and Pohamba (being the continuation of programmes) reiterated these words, Namibia now needs a manager as President.
The next President should be able to steer the ship with very clear aims and be able to mobilise Cabinet, top ministerial management as well as the private sector with clear economic goals.
It should be someone who will manage Cabinet in such a way that ministers must present regular reports on progress of programmes undertaken but when they fail to deliver, sideways reshuffling should not be the option.
They should know that even though there are traits of servanthood in their leader, such a person will not tolerate laziness, lack of honesty, and will not hesitate to fire those who fail to carry out plans.
It means someone who is willing to take unpopular decisions in the interest of the nation and not a politically well-connected elite group.
When the second term of President Pohamba started, we were told that he had given each minister a set of goals/targets to achieve. The mistake he made was that those targets remained confidential between him and the ministers.
If he had gone the transparent route of revealing each minister’s target, he would have been more empowered when taking steps against a non-performing Cabinet member.
As it is now, he can keep track of the delegated work, but who says that he is in fact doing that? How do we know that his non-performing ministers face his wrath? And what type of wrath is it that we don’t actually see?
Also, our next President should be someone who will not generalise targets but zoom in on them with short-term deadlines. Even though we have Vision 2030 as an overall goal, there are many short term solutions which can make it a success.
Only a seasoned navigator can steer the ship in that direction.
We have many candidates, some of them even outside the group I referred to earlier.
Therefore, if need be, the delegates must start to think outside the box.

Thousands Without A Place To Call Home

AT Independence Windhoek had a housing backlog for 7 000 people.

At the same time housing was identified as one of the priority areas of development alongside education, health and agriculture.
A decade and a half later the housing shortage in the whole country had reached 80 000 units while we have seen increased mushrooming of informal settlements all over the country.
By then it was already clear that the country’s system was failing to enable the poor to shift from survival mode into the mainstream economy which included affording a proper roof over their heads.
If the trend continues, estimates are that we might be burdened with a housing shortage of 300 000 units by the year 2030. According to estimates in Vision 2030, we will have a population of about three million by that time. It means the country needs roughly 14 000 new houses each year to keep up with population growth.
There are several reasons for the increased housing backlog. When the country became independent 21 years ago only 27 per cent of the population was urbanised.
With increased job opportunities in urban areas, especially the main centres, the number has grown to 33 per cent 10 years later and by last year the estimates were 50 per cent.
The result is that a whopping 75 per cent of the population will be living in urban areas by 2030, if nothing drastic is done to counter the huge migration.
It is no secret, and we don’t need another million-dollar national conference to point it out, that the major factor contributing to the rural-to-urban migration is the search for better social and economic opportunities.
The upward trajectory of housing prices have also fuelled the crisis.
In most cases such high prices were artificially inflated by housing agents (through things such as high commission) and land providers such as the City of Windhoek, Walvis Bay and Swakopmund who prey on the high demand.
Well-off foreigners who buy with cash have also contributed to the rise in prices of housing, especially in bigger towns.
But the snail-like progress in providing proper housing is becoming a real indictment on all those involved in the provision of housing - from the policy-makers right down to the local authorities who over-price erven unnecessarily.
Affordable and decent housing has become a real uphill battle to close the huge housing backlog.
It is worsened by, for instance, high levels of poverty and unemployment, limited capital investment, spiralling building costs and little financial support for low- and middle-income groups.
That is why a conference like the one which took place this week should not look at the education problem in isolation. Since the education system produces a large pool of unskilled and uneducated adults, it has catastrophic consequences for the future of a country whose developmental goals are already being severely hampered by an acute housing shortage.
As a home is usually an individual’s single most valuable economic asset and ownership is a traditional entry point into the formal economy, the provision of services such as land, water and electricity needs to be stepped up.
There is an explicit need to bring about redress and redistribution, but funding allocations have also been skewed in favour of the poorest while the middle class has lost out as cities and towns tend to concentrate a lot on servicing erven for shacks, build-together programmes and for the upmarket sector.
Such cities tend to cash in by servicing land in elite areas to sell at exorbitant prices as well as for the poor at very low rates but forget to cater for the majority of the working class, most of whom struggle to rent a flat, house or room.
So, a cursory examination shows that while some benefits have accrued through build-together programmes and low-cost housing projects, real problems remain as thousands do not have places they can call home.

Deliver Us From Vision 2030

A COLLEAGUE of mine can’t stand words such as ‘stakeholders’, ‘synergies’ and ‘dovetailing’. She has advised reporters to steer clear from those words in their stories. I wish she could do the same with Vision 2030 and people who haven’t read it but continue to week in and week out churn out references to it without contextualising them.

The centre of her target should be veteran politicians, many of whom have not even read the document they are often quoting, as well as some upcoming ones who think they know it all despite knowing nothing!

The Vision is the brainchild of former President Sam Nujoma and a noble idea indeed as it aims to put the quality of life of all Namibians on a par with people in the developed world by 2030.

The blueprint for the country’s long-term national development policy was officially launched six years ago although Nujoma addressed Cabinet on the need to plan for the country’s future already way back in 1998. So it took six years to come up with it.

Trade Minister Hage Geingob recently described Vision 2030 as “a tall order” while the former Director General of the National Planning Commission Peter Katjavivi said “vision is one thing; the process to get there is another thing”.

I agree with both.

That is why I don’t take many people who use the phrase ‘Vision 2030’ seriously.

Many of them can hardly explain the reality, but opt for the cheap way out by making trite statements like “we need to work towards Vision 2030”. They trot them out whenever they want to avoid thinking and it can mean whatever the user wants it to mean!

I actually believe that many use Vision 2030 to make claims about Government achievements that are not true - like that we are on target with things such as information and communication technology goals.

Will Rogers, a United States humorist and showman who died 75 years ago, once said: “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the Government and report the facts.”

I fall in the same category today. This is no joke.

I believe that many speakers do not use Vision 2030 in their speeches to explain a reality, but to avoid doing so.

You turn up at a blanket donation ceremony to impoverished people in Okahandja Park or Ombili and politicians talk about Vision 2030 without even explaining how it links to the occasion. They leave many at grassroots misty-eyed over those big words but get away with blue murder in the process.

As Andre du Pisani said a few years back, Vision 2030 requires “much hard thinking, much doing and much dialogue”.

A quick check on the Vision and targets has revealed the following, among others:

* to significantly reduce unemployment to less than five per cent of the workforce – “close to a condition of full employment”;

* have a social security support guarantee with an acceptable quality of life for the disadvantaged (think Basic Income Grant);

* have a strong and active opposition;

* media that are mature, investigative and free;

* have independent ‘watchdog’ institutions to monitor Government, private sector and civil society organisations and agencies;

* new towns throughout the country, so that the big cities are no longer congested;

* IT training to start at the pre-primary level!;

* There will be a functioning University of Applied Science and Technology by 2005;

* 50 per cent of all Namibian students will study at the University of Applied Science in the areas of electrical and electronic engineering, and computer science;

* by 2005 selected governmental institutions will provide e-business services to the Namibian public and to foreign investors;

* from 2004 win at least four gold medals in international competitions in boxing, cycling, swimming and marathon;

* win at least three gold medals at the Summer Olympic Games of 2004; and

* equip all schools with furniture, water and electricity by 2006.

However, at the current rate land redistribution is going, it will take 40 years before half of Namibia’s commercial farmland will be turned over to black people.

To their credit those who developed Vision 2030 said it is a process and not a plan.

However, a process needs a clear national strategy to give guidance and direction and also people who will be mindful of what they say about the Vision.

The way in which politicians subject citizens to the parroting around Vision 2030, currently amounts to nothing less than verbal abuse.

If there is such thing as the Vision 2030 zeitgeist, it must be now (2010). Two decades should have been enough time to change things around. Or else we will be confined to the dustbin of history.

If not the case, please deliver us from Vision 2030.

* This article first appeared in The Namibian