Spoils of independence elude Namibia's 'born frees'

Mar 19, 2010, 15:27 GMT

Windhoek - 'Independence meant a lot to my parents, who suffered under the apartheid regime,' says 20-year-old Julia. 'But to me the most important is to get a job and bring up my daughter with money.'

The young woman, who shares a shack with her mother on the outskirts of Namibia's capital Windhoek, was born in the year the south-west African desert state gained independence from apartheid South Africa.

Julia lives off what her mother is able to make by selling kapana (roasted meat) on the roadside to passers-by. It's not much and with a baby girl to feed there is no money for new clothes, new shoes, let alone wholesome food for the month.

She finished school, but her marks are not good enough for entry to a tertiary institution.

'So what can I do?,' she asks, shrugging in resignation. 'I don't have money to enroll for courses in typing or computers at one of the colleges around town, and everywhere I ask at the stores and supermarkets there are no vacancies.'

So she helps around the house, tends to the little maize patch behind the shack and feeds the chickens, before meeting her friends for a chat and a stroll down the dusty pathways of the neighbourhood of Okahandja Park.

Julia is one of tens of thousands of Namibian 'born frees', who are unable to reap the fruits of independence their parents were promised at the dawn of democracy.

'The destiny of this country is now fully in our own hands. We should, therefore, look forward to the future with confidence and hope,' Sam Nujoma, the country's first president said in his inaugural speech on March 21, 1990.

Thanks to the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO), the former liberation movement that fought for independence and has ruled ever since, Namibians enjoy sovereignty, democracy and non-racial rule.

SWAPO also prides itself on two decades of peace and stability in a country of ten ethnic groups for a population of 2 million. On a continent plagued by ethnic conflict, that sort of stability is rare.

'Our Party will continue to keep Namibia safe and secure,' SWAPO's secretary for information Jerry Ekandjo told the media ahead of Sunday's independence celebrations.

Home to a thriving tourism industry, Namibia also supplies the European market with prime cuts of beef, boasts the largest open pit uranium mines in the world, mines 2 million carats of diamonds a year and exports a host of other minerals such as gold, copper and zinc.

A good roads infrastructure and a small, but well-organised Atlantic Ocean harbour in Walvis Bay have helped advertise the country as a transport turntable for land-locked countries in the region.

But a well-entrenched patronage system means most of the riches flow to those already in senior positions in government and business and their families and friends, leaving most Namibians scrambling to get by on less than three dollars a day.

'It is regrettable that after 20 years of national independence, a nation that had fought to reclaim its lost hopes and aspirations, hopes of guaranteed better medical schemes and treatment, decent houses with sanitation, land reform to benefit all the landless of our people, creation of job opportunities and a free schooling system is today living in a state of despair,' Jesaya Nyamu, previously minister in the SWAPO government and now secretary general of the opposition Rally for Democracy and Progress accused.

Unemployment stands at 50 percent, according to the latest Namibia Labour Force Survey, ranking it among the ten highest in the world. Over seventy percent of the country's youth are without a job or an income.

This, says labour analyst Herbert Jauch, is where action is needed fast to avoid the country slipping into destitution.

'It's been all very well to rest on the laurels of the past, but the young people need a perspective,' he says. 'We need to mobilise resources to improve education, to create jobs to foster economic activity and lower rising crime.'