The cost of living: The question every ruling elite avoids, why Paris is burning

Lazarus Kwedhi (Public Policy Analyst)

What the political ruling elite avoids telling the public is not rocket science. It is a simple but fundamental question: what does it cost to live?

They avoid it because to answer it honestly would indict their own rule. The ruling elite does not feel the cost of living because they never buy their own bread.

They never use private vehicles to understand the price of petrol and diesel, and never pay taxi fare.

Their children do not attend public schools, they do not go to public hospitals and clinics to see the quality of education and health services, overcrowded classrooms and long queues for medicine.

When they are told bread, cooking oil, milk, diesel or taxi fare increased by 30%, it is a statistic, not a crisis.

Hence the reason Paris is burning, where citizens took to the streets, rioting, damaging property and looting local stores.

When the cost of living hit South Africans and they took to the streets, the ruling elite framed and scapegoated foreigners and illegal immigrants to save face and political careers.

The world framed South Africa as a xenophobic nation. The Eurocentric mind views it as an African problem, that Africans are lazy, violent, unable to govern themselves in a civilized manner. The majority do not bother to ask why.

Europe and the West have always projected themselves as civilized as opposed to Africa, the dark continent, prone to crime, violence, war and underdevelopment, while ignoring the fact that these issues are not geographical or racial.

They are inherent in the nature of state governance itself, because of the arrogance of the ruling elite towards ordinary citizens.

The moment the ruling elite stops listening and ignores the warning voice of citizens when the cost of living becomes unbearable and taking advantage of citizens’ peaceful nature who bear the consumer cost, the street erupts.

That is why today, Paris is burning, with a spillover effect across European cities.

In Namibia, the cost of living is hitting hard, where the majority earn slavery salaries,less than a living wage per month, or nothing if unemployed.

Public servants and the working class are trapped in cash loans. Municipalities, bulk suppliers such as NamWater and NamPower continue to shift the financial burden to the consumer by increasing tariffs to increase their own salaries, benefits and to grant their S&T.

The grand deception

The ruling elite deceives the public, pretending it has no hand in the root cause. In front of the media and cameras, all they do is be politically correct, using their usual tactics: blame-shifting and scapegoating to divert public attention, to save face and avoid accountability.

In France, the elite pretends France is better off without Francophone Africa. For decades France extracted uranium from Niger, gold from Mali, oil from Gabon, and called it cooperation.

When Niger and Burkina Faso expelled France, Paris said it was decolonizing and did not need Africa. But the French treasury knows the truth: without CFA franc control and African raw materials, the cost of living in France rises.

In Europe and America, the ruling elite pretended their nations are better off without Russian and Iranian oil in the global value chain

They told their people sanctions would punish Russia. They pretended free passage through the Strait of Hormuz through which 30% of global oil passes, means nothing and they have an alternative.

But when sanctions finally kicked in and removed Russia and Iran, the first and third largest oil reserve holders, from the European market, inflation rose and the cost of living became unbearable. Thus Europe is potentially burning.

Fuel in France went from 1.40 to 2.20 Euros. Electricity bills doubled. Bread went up by 30%. The green transition they used as a moral story to divert the cost-of-living question. Suddenly, Paris is burning, the question is which city is next.

The same happened in the USA. When American citizens took to the streets chanting “America is not a kingdom,” the cost of living was the silent driver.

As soon as reality kicked in and elections approached, President Trump, the same man who sanctioned Russia and preached to the world not to buy Russian oil, announced America will start buying oil from Russia.

Trump’s decision is not accidental. It is deliberate to save his party and his political career. It is an admission that you cannot isolate oil and free sea routes and keep the cost of living low. The elite’s geopolitics collapsed in front of the supermarket.

The question they must avoid

In Namibia and France, the President and ministers do not pay rent. They do not queue for hospital beds. Their fuel is paid by the state. Their housing is state-owned. Their food is subsidized or free.

How can a ruling elite in Namibia that has received free housing, free water, free electricity, free fuel, free medical aid abroad, free V8 vehicles, entertainment allowances and over N$1 million salary for the last 30 years understand that a domestic worker pays N$1 200 for a shack, N$800 for taxi and N$1 500 for food on a N$2 500 salary?

They cannot. That is why they avoid the question.

From Yambuka to State House

In Namibia, this avoidance has a name and a face: Yambuka.

Recently, President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah handed over two fabricated-material houses in Kilimanjaro and 8ste Laan informal settlements through a private company called Yambuka Housing Scheme.

Against a promise of 10 000 houses per year and a national backlog of over 300 000 houses, the Presidency celebrated two demo units to divert public attention from the real housing crisis.

This reduces the President, vested with executive powers under Article 27, to a mere Marketing Officer of Yambuka.

It is not housing delivery. It is state-sponsored marketing to promote a profit-driven private entity that is directly competing with the City of Windhoek, NHE and Build-Together.

After the State House endorsement, Yambuka reported over 2 500 registrations. If the model is donating free houses as projected in front of cameras, why does the president have to buy the two houses before she can donate them and not let Yambuka donate the next 2 500 for free. It will not, because it is profit-driven.

The President has no constitutional mandate to donate private houses. Her mandate is to mobilize resources and fund state institutions mandated by law: City of Windhoek under the Local Authorities Act, National Housing Enterprise and Build Together Programme under the ministry of urban and rural development.

Instead, the government pumped N$146 million into Shack Dwellers, a private scheme, while NHE has no land and money to build houses for civil servants: police officers, soldiers, teachers with guaranteed housing subsidies.

The three tactics

1. Changing the Subject: When French workers asked about fuel, the elite spoke about green transition. When Namibians ask about housing, the elite speak about Yambuka prefab houses and two donated houses. They give you a box to avoid giving you land with title deeds.

2. Falsifying Numbers: In Paris, the elite says inflation is 4.9%. The family knows its basket is up 30%. In Windhoek, the mother and street vendor who lost her business knows her rent alone went up 100%.

Official inflation is low because the elite’s basket is filled with free or subsidized food, while the poor’s basket battling maize meal, bread, oil and taxi fare price.

3. Criminalizing Poverty: When you cannot pay rent you are evicted. When you protest, you are called violent, far-left, far-right, enemy of the state.

When you get electricity after the City failed to provide serviced land with title deeds for 30 years, you are called an illegal occupant.

Why Paris Burns and Windhoek will burn

Paris is burning not because French people are uncivilized like the West said Africans are or because of foreign immigrants or because Russia, Iran, terrorism, left-wing as projected in the media.

Paris is burning because the cost of living does not respect geography, race or civilization. When bread is unaffordable, when rent is more than salary, when fuel costs more than food, every nation burns the same way.

The ruling elite can avoid the question in Parliament, in SONA, in front of cameras with politically correct speeches. But they cannot avoid it in the streets.

That is why Paris is burning. And that is why, if we continue to treat housing as marketing and cost of living as a non-issue, Windhoek is next.