Development Plantation: The Bourgeoisie versus Proletariats
By Shivute Kaapanda [Think Tank Afrika]
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders.
In ancient Rome we had patricians, knights, plebeians and slaves; in the Middle-Ages we had feudal lords, vassals and guild-masters.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms but it has established new societal classes, new conditions of oppression and new ways of struggle replacing the old ones.
For those that did not catch up earlier with literature of politics on revolutionary struggle, ‘bourgeoisie’ means the class of modern capitalists, the owners of means of production and employer of wage labour.
Whereas ‘proletariats’ mean the class of modern wage labour who have no means of production of their own and are reduced to selling their labour power in order to make a living (the working class/waged people).
In parading this historical analysis of socio-economic classes is an attempt to teach society of social ills and the economic oppression that has befallen Africa and Namibia in particular due to the bitter fruits gained at 1990 political independence which were virtually not in favour of the indigenous people but rather negotiated in bad faith so that the postcolonial states in Africa remain in slavery and permanent economic bondage.
The weight of colonial violence is considerably visible in post-colonial African developmental states, indeed colonialism has ended but coloniality remains in our realities, imagination and state institutions given this popularised development.
The colonial expansion and posture of modern cities, towns and other urban settings is inherently problematic especially how what in Namibia we term ‘development’ is imposed on common people.
The modern bourgeoisie syndrome and their ‘modus operandi’ has shown little mercy especially on the development of towns in rural Namibia.
In his 2014 book “Truth is Truth” Namibian famous Activist and Professor Job Shipululo Amupanda introduced a term “Development plantation” to the political discourse. He defined development plantation as implementing development in one area as copied from another with little or no regard of an area upon which the copied development is to be implemented.
He narrated “… When capitalists want to build a town, villagers are forced to make way for development which is said to be good for the people. The ones whose animals will no longer have a grazing area to feed on, the ones who have to leave their birthplaces, the ones that have to leave the land that belonged to their ancestors for generations are expected to celebrate and not to oppose the arrival of the said development by those who know better”.
In a typical capitalist state like Namibia whose leaders by the way of armed struggle in the pre-independence era fought as “Socialists” and fought for independence particularly for land, now impose to the common people the exact colonialism typical of what the former colonial administrators had once imposed on the natives.
It therefore appears literally that there was no point of going for liberation wars for nothing really changed as far as the land question is concerned in Namibia, the war which the state has declared to maintain the redline as well as “development plantation” are the case studies to note in Namibia as far as the land question is concerned in post-independent Namibia.
Let us look at the following scenario for ‘development plantation’.
Imagine in a capitalist town such as Outapi a person who owns a field near the town (land owner) leaves his five hectares ancestral plot for a mere N$200 000 allegedly for town expansion; this plot now belongs to the Capitalist Town Council and is divided into 100 sub-plots each sub-plot is priced between N$60 000 to N$100 000.
If for instance each plot is sold at N$70 000 the capitalist town council will make N$7 million. The native owner received a mere N$200 000 while the capitalist town council makes N$6.8 million.
It is a scandalous capitalist exercise, the most degrading of all in the human history of modern development.
With this capitalist practice most people are forced to move and make way for development or turned into urban slaves; the capitalist tentacles in forms of rent, municipal taxes, a life without farming becomes the harsh realities which only benefit the ruthless bourgeoisie.
Imagine no communal farming is allowed in municipal land; meaning you cannot keep goats, cattle, chicken or sheep, you cannot produce mahangu, maize or groundnuts as done in villages.
Basically the capitalist town council has castrated the people’s rights of farming for life for a mere N$200 000 and one is now forced to buy mahangu flour, meat and maize in capitalists shops such as Pick ‘n Pay, Choppies, Shoprite & Woermann Brock instead of working them freely in the communal land field.
Development plantation is a repressing state of affair not only limited to land acquisition but also in other domains of life such as in law.
At another level of socio-economic analysis, Capitalism becomes an enabler of poverty and violence because society is structured in such a deliberate and cruel way to create societal classes; the propertied class or those who own the means of production and the ‘have not’ or the proletariats and in between the ‘petty bourgeoisie’ or the middle class.
Given the development plantation, Capitalism is a seed for structural violence because it subjugates the common people castrating on their freedom of property (ancestral land) and cutting off their natural means of survival (farming).
When indigenous people protest this development implantation they are reminded of their worthless dwelling on ‘communal land’ of which they don’t own title deeds but rather just ‘permission to occupy’, and so the capitalist government invites the law (Roman-Dutch law) to legitimise the post-independence-oppression of ‘development plantation’.
The courts have prosecuted many indigenous people over cases of urban expansion undermining the natives ancestral land rights.
Development plantation is the post-independence assignment of the ruling class in collaboration with the former colonial empires, in fact the ruling class is just a subsidiary of the former colonial masters whom people elect to further the interest of the world colonial powers that still remote-controls African resources.
That Namibian people’s power is vested in the constitution, parliamentary representation, elections and law is one of the biggest post-independent myth people ever came to believe in, the game is rigged, the law only made to favour the powerful class.
The bourgeoisie are on their own and so the proletariats and the rest because capitalism means every man for himself and god for the rest.
Despite a deliberate capitalist agenda by the propertied class, the creation of the socialist state in Namibia is quite viable. A classless society is the one in which the land and all other means of production is in the hands of the state.
A capitalist state is by nature a corrupt state because absolute power is vested in the hands of the few elites whose personal agenda is self-enrichment through exploiting the working class, and as a saying goes “when power corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
Capitalism has brought the Namibian state into disrepute because people get into power, and masquerade as leaders not to serve the masses but to serve personal interests.
There is certainly a leadership crisis when rich people begin to contest for power; the ruling party is the latest example in Namibia, it has been infiltrated and relegated into a ‘club house’ of corrupt and filthy rich politicians turning the country into a movie wherein the poor are in the pockets of the bourgeoisie.
In Namibia there is a need for a working class struggle (the proletariat revolution) and a total regime change. With the current elites and gatekeepers of western interest, the status quo of high unemployment and poverty rates will never change anytime soon.
Capitalism has significantly since time immemorial placed many African countries in a state of calamity and despondence.
There is a need to act upon this calamity as a state of emergency in Namibia so that the next generations will not suffer the same fate but enjoy the fruits of the coming revolution.
The development of towns and cities in Africa should not be at an expense of human dignity and should be corrupt free. We need courageous activists in leadership and not capitalists, sell-outs, dancers and fly-by night politicians.
In fact we need a socialist leadership in place because history clearly tells us that poverty is a parent of revolution and crime.
– Shivute Kaapanda is an activist writer from Eyanda village. He authored a book titled “The Conscious Republic” published in 2020. He can be reached at iskaapanda@gmail.com
