What development can there be with capitalism as its base?

Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro

It is a hard and undeniable fact and truth that Namibia, since independence, when she is supposed to have gotten rid of colonialism, is still very much under colonial rule 36 years after political and/or flag independence.

Call it what you may wish to call it, whether neo-colonialism, globalism, bilateralism, and/or multilateralism, the line between all of them has never been thinner than Namibia and her leaders, let alone the masses, including the working class, would wish to admit.

Take and make your pick between and among all of them, but in one way or another, all are a manifestation and represent, each in its own way, if they can be seen differently from one another, the unequal relations in the chain of production and the ownership of the means of production.

As much as Namibian leaders may not only wish but also pretend that the relations, just because of independence and freedom, are ones of equality between sovereigns, they are not more than what they practically are, between a former colony on the one hand, which Namibia was and it is not certain if she no longer is, and a host of other players in the said relations, whose denomination is difficult to pinpoint.

But relations that, in one way or another, are a mere continuation, if not altogether an entrenchment, of the pre-colonial era relations.

The essence of Namibia’s, actually South West Africa’s, colonial relations with Germany in the beginning, and subsequently apartheid South Africa, was the siphoning off of her natural resources, not to her benefit and that of her people, but for the benefit of the colonising powers and their peoples.

Reference to the pre-colonial period is made with the utmost caution and hindsight in this regard.

This is in view of the fact that materially, substantively, and fundamentally, political innuendoes, imageries, and imaginations notwithstanding, no change has taken place in what should matter most, in the relations of production, which is the determinant of the material welfare and well-being of the masses, including the workers.

Notwithstanding the attainment of flag independence, presumably ushering in sovereignty, whatever this means and may mean, there is no denial: Namibia is still very much deeply steeped in colonial relations.

Colonial relations in the sense that despite being politically nominally free and independent, it has by no means even started to assume and/or pretend to have taken charge of her economic affairs.

Whether the nationalists and/or patriots that be may wish to admit it or not, the country is not in charge of the relations of production, as would pertain in a command economy.

It cannot be said with certainty, let alone if the country has moved away from colonialism, and/or where it currently finds herself in the various stages of imperialism, and thus of capitalism.

As matters have been seeming since independence, instead of progressing and metamorphosing towards economic independence, Namibia has instead slowly but with no holds barred not only been entrenching herself deeply into the given and usual isms from which, with the struggle for independence, she purported to extricate herself, but seems inextricably and irreversibly stooped into colonialism, neo-colonialism, imperialism, not to mention capitalism.

All in the name of development. This raises the pertinent question that Namibia has ever seemed reluctant to confront: if her perceived development, development which for that matter has never been defined, can be achieved with the given status quo, the base and/or foundation thereof being all the given isms.

All the given isms, as there seems no certainty what Namibia is today and where it is in terms of the various stages of capitalism as alluded to and enumerated earlier.

Call it development, the easy way out. But development for what, from what, and towards what? These are the fundamental questions that the country must have answered but has not, let alone even dared to raise and confront.

Conveniently so, that she continues on the path of whatever she has been continuing since independence, a path that has never been defined for the broader masses of the country but is known to the political elite.

Political leaders from every political sphere, not to mention ideological sphere, if ever there is and has been any ideological sphere on the Namibian political landscape to speak of and about, with regard to each and every political formation since the presumed end of colonialism and the taking over by the indigenous political elite of the reins of power, nominal political power.

This simply means that the country has since been on an undefined and ambiguous development trajectory. A development trajectory the political elite would make the country believe.

This trajectory being none other than the elite putting themselves in and assuming the role of running the country’s affairs after believably replacing the colonial political elite, a process in and during which the economic affairs have remained the same.

With business as usual on the economic front, where, if anything, foreigners have conveniently been continuing to run the show and pull economic strings there are and have been to pull.

With a handful of indigenes, who presumably have taken over the political reins, propping up the system, which has essentially remained the same exploitative system, whose main goal remains the plundering of the raw resources of the country, shipping them in raw form to Europe for re-exporting back into Namibia as finished and/or industrial/processed products.

The best both the political and economic indigenes have been able to do is to continue to aspire to being capitalists themselves at the expense of developing the people.

Thus, development has become synonymous with continued exploitation, and as Walter Rodney would write in his book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, capitalism fronted by the nationalist bourgeoisie is pretending to develop Namibia while what is happening and has been happening instead is her underdevelopment!

As there can be no genuine development, especially in the mould of egalitarianism, with capitalism as the base and/or foundation thereof!