Has the Petroleum Bill really been passed with good intentions?

Kae Matundu Tjiparuro

The National Assembly (NA) approved the Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Amendment Bill’s second reading when it passed with 50 votes of the Swapo Party of Namibia, including one vote of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).

Members of the opposition parties within the NA walked out of the august house and thus did not vote for the Bill and can claim unaccountability for it. But what did the members of the NA actually and in essence vote for, and/or not?

Those who voted in favour of the Bill cannot and should not deny complicity in the continued exploitation of Namibia – her natural resources, in this case oil – even if such complicity may be by default.

Equally, those who walked out walked away from complicity in the continued exploitation of the envisaged Namibian oil – again, even by default as it may be.

Complicity by default because those who voted in favour did not do so as a matter of ideological conviction. As intrinsically the Bill does not speak to the exploitation of Namibia’s oil in the best interest of the Namibian people.

The best interest of the Namibian people means that the Bill does not speak to how the Namibian people shall equitably benefit from this resource. For equitability is one thing, pivotal as it may be, that the Bill does not and cannot provide for.

As it has not been designed and intended to provide for equitability. As equitability is not anything capitalism readily renders itself to.

For the regime that the resource has been explored under, and shall henceforth with its discovery and exploitation, is the same regime of capitalism under which many other natural resources of the country were explored and eventually extracted and exploited during colonialism.

When those with presumably most shares amassed exploitative and plundering dividends. Disproportionately so, the rule at play is the continued maximisation of profits.

Which has got nothing to do with the ownership of the oil resource by the people, ultimately, and/or in the interim, let alone by the State, on behalf of the people, thereby guaranteeing the elimination of the maximisation of profits, and thus the continued exploitation of the oil resource by big corporates, the so-called investors, and the dis-appropriation and alienation of the people from what is essentially their resource.

Thus, whether both the ruling Swapo Party and the opposition parties have voted and/or not voted for the Bill is inconsequential.

As the intent of and with the Bill was, is, and has not been not to prevent the exploitation of this resource, oil. Just as much as the country’s other resources have not been explored, extracted, and exploited in the best interest of the people.

Thus reducing the people to mere beggars in their own country despite her (theirs, in fact) said natural resources, and riches in terms of her minerals and what you have, have not been explored, extracted, and exploited in their best interest, but that exclusively of foreign corporations and their foreign so-called investors.

Thus, ideologically, the hullaballoo surrounding the passing of the Bill, and who have voted and/or not voted for it, is as immaterial and inconsequential.

As the Bill itself does not at all address the relations of production within the country. Instead of just shifting the furniture within and surrounding the grand scheme of capitalist exploitation.

Therefore, between the Swapo Party and the opposition political parties within the NA, as far as this Bill is concerned, neither can claim any moral high ground.

Moral high ground for what if the intent has not been about cushioning the envisaged oil in Namibia against the continued exploitation by foreign corporations and investors?

But on the contrary, as it seems, allowing and aiding and abetting the exploration, extraction, and exploitation to the same extent and scale as has been already happening with other natural resources.

By the same and/or similar foreign multinational corporations as during colonialism, joined by others after independence.

Thus, Yours Truly Ideologically cannot but be extremely perturbed by a video podcast on Facebook recently confusing and likening the Bill to communism.

Unless of course communism means to the podcaster anything else other than a political and economic ideology “where the major means of production are owned and controlled by the public rather than private individuals.”

The intent of the Bill is simply to shift exploitative regulatory control, as far as exploration and production is concerned, from the minister of industries, mines and energy to the President.

How this, which is not about ownership and/or structural realignment, let alone about ownership regulation and control, can be confused for and with ownership and/or shareholding by the people, defies logic, let alone any ideological understanding.

Looks like the podcaster is driven more by his superficial MAGA-inspired and driven ideology, if not fascism.

The Namibian President, in whom the exploration and production of the envisaged Namibian (or is it foreign) oil shall now be concentrated, is by no means known for her socialist beliefs, let alone inclinations and/or sympathy or empathy.

How her control of oil exploration and production can be confused for communism is beyond comprehension.

What we see here at play is the concentration of the management of the production of such a vital resource in one individual.

As much as the President is constitutionally mandated with the protection and preservation of the country’s natural resources, the way in which the Bill seems to have been bulldozed into approval in the NA does not at all inspire confidence in the genuine intentions of the Swapo Party in entrusting – that is, if entrusting is for that matter the correct word in this regard – with overseeing production.

That is, it is all about oversight. Concentrating such powers in the President, not to mention the way in which this has been done, not allowing for a matter of its nature, and especially its magnitude, to be robustly debated in the NA, but hurried through it, smells of worse things to come, now and in the future when the oil starts to flow. As the saying goes, Roman roads were not built with good intentions.

Has the Petroleum Amendment Bill really passed the second reading with good intentions?