Die Boer - The importance of organised agriculture

Dr. Joseph Diescho, Politcal analyst - I recently had the honour of being invited to give the keynote address at a dinner in Otjiwarongo to celebrate 80 years of the existence and, let me hasten to add, the contributions of the Farmers’ Union, to be exact, the Otjiwarongo Boerevereniging in the Otjozondjupa Region. This is the second time I had the privilege to speak to organised farmers in Namibia. It is a humbling experience. Sitting there and listening to heartfelt statements by the leadership of the farming community made me wonder about the meaning of agriculture generally and white farmers specifically in this, our Motherland.I immediately thought about the axiom by the French philosopher, Rene Descartes, who once said: Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I am), and appreciated how this was essentially the white people’s worldview which evolved throughout their history which valued individual thought, innovation, ingenuity and difference. This worldview anticipated hardship and trouble for which human beings had to prepare. As preparation for unknown future troubles and climatic uncertainties, they had to plan and get ready. This reality led to a cultural perspective of innovation and the celebration of individual ability to invent solutions to problems now and in the future. In order to prepare better for the future, the idea of research and analysis grew as a method by which to interpret, understand the part better, so that the lessons of the past would be instructive in either knowing what mistakes not to repeat, or how to improve on previous experiences for purposes of a better life. These experiences, good and bad, would be recorded as data to assist others and future generations to know and learn about the past. Out of these experiences came different moments and epochs in history that shaped human civilisation to date, such as the Renaissance, the printing, libraries, museums and subsequent trends in medical sciences and technological revolutions.African worldview of UbuntuI then returned to the African worldview of Ubuntu which is predicated upon human relationships. Ubuntu is the African version of the golden rule, namely that you treat others as you wish to be treated by them. The good side of Ubuntu is the assumption that we need one another at all times and that one person’s wellbeing proceeds from and is dependent upon the wellbeing of each and all in the community “I AM BECAUSE YOU ARE and WE ARE BECAUSE OTHERS ARE”. The downside of this philosophy is that it discouraged differences and looked down upon individual innovation and success. Hence Ubuntu collapses under the weight of private property and taxation, and is therefore unsustainable in a mixed or capitalist economy. Ubuntu works well in a subsistence economy where people produce for living and not for sale or storage.When the collectivist or communalist tenets of Ubuntu meet with the capitalist realities that have taken over the whole world, especially after 1989 with the discrediting of the alternative communist system, Africa becomes unable to hear or understand itself.Listening to the commitment of these farmers and their commitment to growing the economy I appreciated the need to bring the western world of innovation, which is vital for development, into constructive dialogue with the African view of meaningful relationships, without which peace and stability are not possible.I recalled what I learned in my studies of African Political Economy at Hamburg University in Germany when we read the works of the Swedish Africanist scholar Goran Heydn who in the 1980s already opined: “Turning the despair and pessimism that affect large sectors of the African people into hope and optimism will require of the planners of African development to reinspect the premises upon which they have based their planning to date. No one escapes this challenge… . There are no shortcuts to progress…”The picture becomes clear when one looks at the white settler economies of then Rhodesia and South Africa (and Namibia) which were developed by agriculture in which the state invested heavily. This explains why South Africa as a white economy is the strongest economy on the entire African continent, so much so that for all these years, the GDP of one South African province, Gauteng, dwarfs that of Nigeria with a population of over 150 million people. It is organised agriculture to buttress mining and other sectors that made South Africa surpass African countries with larger populations and greater reservoirs of natural resources. I appreciated more directly the late wise statesman of Tanzania, Julius Kambarage Nyerere, who, when visiting the new South African President Nelson Mandela in September 1994, offered him counsel not to repeat the mistake he and many African leaders made when they became rulers, namely to chase white people away. Nyerere advised Mandela to manage South Africa with an honesty that was cognisant that there are aspects of development that white people were better at, such as economic planning and maintenance. By extension we have to admit that the state of our economy and infrastructural development in Namibia are in large measures thanks to apartheid colonialism. This is a painful admission to make. We are fortunate to have inherited an economic rectitude base which white people established, not knowing that we would rule this country one day. There is no way a black government would have laid the tar roads, the railway lines, built the banks, and structures and edifices of development that we have today and which makes us the envy of many and older states in Africa. This is not to say that African people are worse than European people - we are just wired differently. Futuristic strategic planning and infrastructural maintenance are not intrinsic attributes of African leaders’ “DNA”. African leaders worry about other things and mostly in the immediate – their honour, their security, their status, and their desire to be feared so that they are the only elephant in the room. The desire to distribute resources to others, especially the unknown, is not an immediate interest of an African leader.An African leader eats on behalf of his followers. If he eats well, feels safe and secure, it rubs off on his subjects, who must give way to him at all times. White people believe in the principal of social justice by which they accept the leader’s authority comes from the will of the people. In Africa ordinary people as subjects have no will, they only have respect for the leader who yields authority and unfettered power over them. That explains the Nkandla conundrum in the heartland of poverty stricken Zululand where the leader’s dwelling place is of no offense to the rural neighbours who instead defend the leader who they believe must live better than all of them because they are not leaders. Role of white farmersThis brings me to my fundamental question: What is the role of white farmers in post-independent Namibia?First regardless of how they came to settle in Namibia before independence, their role in a free Namibia should be seen outside of the politics of yesterday – the politics of apartheid, the politics of race, politics of us versus them, the politics of white versus black, the politics of guilt on the one hand and self-righteousness on the other, and politics of entitlement and Our Time To Eat. History of developed economies shows that agriculture was/is the driving force towards industrialisation. If we are serious about achieving the goal of Vision 2030, namely to be an industrialised nation, we ought to appreciate that we cannot be industrialised without the push of agriculture--organised agriculture as the basis of food security and meaningful self-reliance. A nation that cannot feed itself cannot be successful. With a strong agriculture we stand a better chance to do other things. A recent United Nations study under the aegis of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) makes the case that development and stability grows more and faster where organised agriculture is recognised and the nation’s farmers have a voice in planning the overall national economy. Food security is an essential ingredient of and necessary condition for sustainable economic development and peace and stability. It is when people, ordinary families, have food that they defend democracy because they too, not just political leaders, stand to lose something, everything, if the Government and by extension national stability of the country is threatened.Agriculture is the biggest employer in Namibia incorporating gender equity, and there is no doubt that the country would make a faster pace along the road of sustainable development if we could spend more time and efforts in beefing up the agricultural sector and in so doing tackle the terrible indictment that Namibia’s genico-efficiency is one of the worst few in the world. We are not poor—it is our minds that are poor! In as much as one can understand the superficial frustration of our political leaders by the absence of white farmers specifically and white citizens generally from political events, we need to be mature enough to appreciate that serious farmers, like priests and serious academics, cannot be expected to be at political party rallies as they are busy developing solutions.We are in charge now. We are both the agents as well as the primary agency of change and transformation for the better. White farmers need and deserve state and community support, government subsidies and protection from crime as long as they do not act to frustrate the democratic government’s efforts to transfer skills onto the previously disadvantaged communities in the country. I was very encouraged to see a handful of black Namibian farmers who are breaking into the industry as serious farmers, not those elite folk who obtain farms at a discount only as a hobby and a status symbol. It is reassuring to hear that white farmers are committed to supporting the democratic government with skills transfer to and mentoring of upcoming black farmers in the short and medium terms. We need to support and grow black farmers as part of our economy. This is so because given our history; it will take a while for black Namibian communities to see mushroom, garlic and fertiliser farming as respectful and essential parts of successful participation in the economy, and not laughing stocks in their own communities. Finally, it must be said that farming is a serious business and should not be confused with political leadership or success. In other words, let farmers do the business of growing our economy by producing food for the nation and let politicians do their political work, and the two are not always related. The Government deserves Omake for its engagement of the (white) business leaders and farmers, particularly organized agriculture. It places our Government in good stead when it treats these vital engines of Namibia’s economic development as Namibians with equal rights and equal obligations. This only augurs well for our already most peaceful and most stable small country, and gives credence to the World Economic Forum’s recent recognition that Namibia could become the most competitive economy in the SADC region in 2017!

Die Boer - The importance of organised agriculture

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Die Boer - The importance of organised agriculture

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