EDITORIAL: Too few to be poor
Namibia has enough for everyone's needs, but not enough for everyone's greed, a remix of what Mahatma Gandhi once remarked about the world.
We were reminded of those words by the new buzz phrase circulating within the Swapo corridors of power – that Namibia’s population is too small to be poor. “We are too few to be hungry,” party presidential candidate Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah said while speaking at Walvis Bay recently.
We couldn’t agree more with her, except that this realisation from the ruling party seems to have arrived rather belatedly.
We are a population of 3 million people, yet we find ourselves entangled in the paradox of poverty amidst plenty. With the gold, diamonds, uranium and copper, poverty is steadily growing – but only among the downtrodden. In contrast, the parliamentary asset register shows that the wealth of politicians and their cronies has grown exponentially.
This country has enough for everyone. It’s the distribution of resources that is skewed, and deliberately so. Namibia is now classified as an upper middle-income country, a status that has only compounded our suffering because many NGOs have packed up and left, because we are deemed a toddler that can now stand on its own two feet.
The Namibian poverty crisis is twofold: It’s birthed by greed and a lack of leadership to deal with that greed. In countries like China, people are at the centre of every state decision. That’s why absolute poverty has been reduced by a massive 98% in China. If China is indeed our ‘all-weather’ friend, as Swapo likes to say, let us replicate their attitude and fortitude in combatting poverty and other challenges.
We were reminded of those words by the new buzz phrase circulating within the Swapo corridors of power – that Namibia’s population is too small to be poor. “We are too few to be hungry,” party presidential candidate Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah said while speaking at Walvis Bay recently.
We couldn’t agree more with her, except that this realisation from the ruling party seems to have arrived rather belatedly.
We are a population of 3 million people, yet we find ourselves entangled in the paradox of poverty amidst plenty. With the gold, diamonds, uranium and copper, poverty is steadily growing – but only among the downtrodden. In contrast, the parliamentary asset register shows that the wealth of politicians and their cronies has grown exponentially.
This country has enough for everyone. It’s the distribution of resources that is skewed, and deliberately so. Namibia is now classified as an upper middle-income country, a status that has only compounded our suffering because many NGOs have packed up and left, because we are deemed a toddler that can now stand on its own two feet.
The Namibian poverty crisis is twofold: It’s birthed by greed and a lack of leadership to deal with that greed. In countries like China, people are at the centre of every state decision. That’s why absolute poverty has been reduced by a massive 98% in China. If China is indeed our ‘all-weather’ friend, as Swapo likes to say, let us replicate their attitude and fortitude in combatting poverty and other challenges.
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