Namibia: After Colonialism – On the Grammar of Politics

André du Pisani writes:

The post-colonialist world is contradictory and vibrant.

In Namibia, nationalism, understood in political terms, seemingly provided(s) a space and relatively safe haven based on claims to "sovereignty", from the turbulent challenges of globalization. Anti-colonial Nationalism is/was pre-eminently symbolic, as expressed in the bold mantra of "One Namibia, One Nation", borrowed from other African countries.

With the invocation of the more recent architectural metaphor of the "Namibian House" clothed in the Afro-centric clarion call of "Harambee" – pulling together – it attempts to offer ontological certainty, national­ values and agency – all guided by the magical realism of President Hage G. Geingob and his "Harambee Prosperity Plan" (HPP) with its five pillars.

Since the partial demise of the earlier version of nationalism, so prevalent, and legitimate during the lengthy liberation struggle and its immediate aftermath, the arbiters of political and social morality have how­ever had a more difficult time due to the loss of the former apartheid enemy. In retrospect, such difficulty provided space for imagining a "new Namibia" through the lenses of the politics of "national recon­ciliation", statehood and nationhood, with a dash of Pan-Africanism thrown in for good measure. These became the new dicta at independence and for the past two decades dominated the grammar of politics.



FILLING THE BLANKS

There are indications, however, that the old certitudes may have lost some of their traction, evidenced by a need for greater self-reflexivity, pausing to understand, to not repeat some of the mistakes of the past.

This turn of events was initiated by the very uncertainty as to how to respond to the enduring dual legacies of earlier German colonialism and more recent South Africa apartheid history. For to invoke, Bhabha, “the present, signified in the gap of the blank - is the attenuated ground for political decision - its incomplete­ness, it''s not quite being there; but this very indeterminacy also makes the disjunctive present the basis of political action” (1997:447).

This was the context within which new initiatives for responding to "the gap of the blank" were spawned.

First, there was the language of the "second independence or economic liberation", embedded in notions of "empowerment" and "entitlement", often expressed in partial and largely opportunistic iterations of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). The latest iterations of such responses to Bhabha''s "gap of the blank", is the contested draft New Economic Empowerment Framework (NEEF), itself now subject to further refinement, and the rather ambitious linguistic turn form "poverty reduction" to "poverty eradication".

Notwithstanding the near-iconic status accorded to the “Harambee Prosperity Plan" (HPP), by the governing elites, the more recent political grammar, however, emerged from uneven and unequal cultural and socio-economic locations, is characterized by spatial and temporal time lags, and to many Namibians, has on account of its elitist charge, a precarious existence, as evidenced in counter claims of cultural, ethnic, regional and symbolic "exclusion" from the "Namibian House", at the very least from the "High Altar", to invoke another architectural metaphor.



THE TEST

Notwithstanding the symbolic potency of the metaphor of "the Namibian House", it is a metaphor that will be put to the test in the hard world of actual politics.

Then there is the sizeable "lost generation" of mostly younger Namibians without jobs, inadequate education and limited prospects of finding meaningful employment.

There is also a section of the population who fetishizes violence, living lives of seemingly moral inverte­brates, marching to their own music, as evidenced in obscene levels of gender-based and familial violence and staggering carnage on our roads. Alcohol abuse, too, is yet another dark side of the national character.

These are graveyards for our collective illusions; referents to our collective recklessness as an imagined nation.

Namibians have a healthy scepticism of what the late Bessie Head, a writer­ from Botswana, called “expect­ed disillusionment”; a scepticism towards inflated political promises. Post-colonialism is trans-historical in its suspicion of cosmetic change, and recognizes personal agendas for what they are. It is self-reflexive, and this can often exacerbate alienation from the state and government and its development efforts.

Is this precisely where the Namibian political grammar finds itself?

The narrative runs the risk of losing its resonance with the people of the country, particularly if it turns out to mask a new form of trickster politics, unhinged from ethical and social considerations and used for selfish ends. In essence, it needs to be remembered that post-colonialism is not always a politically correct genre. For the state may turn out to be less caring, more repressive, captured by elite interests, embedded in deceit; an uncertain training ground for building the national character.

Note:

Bhabha, Homi K. “Editor''s Introduction: Minority Maneuvers and Unsettled Negotiations”, Critical Inquiry 23, No.3, (Spring 1997), pp. 431-459.

* André du Pisani is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Namibia (Unam). The views expressed in this article are entirely his own.