Namibia: the failed Dubai of Africa
By Victor Angula |
South Africa is currently going through some terrible complications never experienced before in the country’s 27 years of democracy.
Not only have so much damage been done on the economy, even worse has been done, people have been killed. All for what? All for the fact that inequality is unsustainable.
Mr Jacob Zuma the former president in whose name all of it started, he stole so much money from the government. And some of this money he brought it to the rural areas where he was born. He built himself a hillside villa known as Nkandla where he lived for the past three years with his wives and grandchildren.
A lot of people saw him as a person who took money out of the tall buildings of state power and corporate South Africa, and he brought this money to the rural areas for it to be enjoyed by the poor people there.
Now that the man was thrown into jail for the fact that he stole the money (and refused to admit it), the people of the villages and the poor people in the cities are angry. How did you leave the people who stole money and they ate alone, but this man who stole the money and ate it with us you arrest him?
This is the bottom line of the situation in South Africa.
Even in Namibia we are sitting with the same situation. There is so much inequality; the people who are controlling the economy and those who control state power don’t care about the rest of the people.
It is so strange that Namibia a country of such great wealth, the majority of the people still live in shacks and in houses made out of sticks and grass. Namibia could have been the Dubai of Africa!
Namibia’s diamonds, copper, uranium, timber, fish, zinc, seals, farms, wild game, etc., continue to benefit only a few families (both black and white) who control the economy and the government. Shopping malls and beer production companies are owned by a few families.
This is what fuels the anger of the people. Black people are not mad; they are angry.
This is why Namibia and South Africa are heading the same way as other African countries where abject poverty leads people to rioting, violence and civil wars.
Namibia could have truly become the Dubai of Africa, but it’s heading into the direction of becoming the dustbin (shithole) of Africa.
