SWAPO AND THE CHALLENGE FOR ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION

There has been a targeted and deliberate public discourse led by the media, commentators, political analysts and social actors, obviously lacking ideological orientation and sophistication, such that they have misinformed broader society of the main source of our social, political and economic challenges.

In fact, the media has been key in misleading and misinforming broader society, peddling particular political narratives against Swapo and its government at the expense of fairness, neutrality and objectivity. They have been reduced to being proxies within political battles and factions within and without Swapo.

Social and political actors have to an extent come off as labelling the poor as uneducated and incapable of thinking, especially when it comes to why the people continue to believe in Swapo as an organisation of choice, an agent of transformation, and a legitimate leader of the Namibian people and the broader society.

But the people continue to stand principally and in loyalty with Swapo because it is organised, having preserved its legacy of being a mass-based liberation movement. The people continue to view and have confidence and hope in Swapo as it's the only mass-based movement that is occasionally committed and dedicated to maintaining peace, unity of purpose and political stability in its quest to permanently rescue our nation state from the relentless and persistent challenges of poverty, unemployment and structural inequalities.

Generally, sections in our society continue to dismally fail to distinguish between the governing party, the state and our capitalist economic system, which have all been projected as responsibilities and failures of Swapo. These social and economic challenges of poverty, unemployment, structural inequalities, landlessness and corruption are all but a product of the systematic economic mode of capitalism; an oppressive, exploitative, exclusive system where a few control the means of production. This is the system that creates suffering, and maintains these socio-economic inequalities and poverty.

What the media and social actors have failed to address and interrogate is this economic apartheid system, which Namibia and its people inherited as a legacy of apartheid, particularly white monopoly capital (WMC). It goes without saying that political independence without economic independence is meaningless.

The real economic power lies not with Swapo or the government but rests with WMC, those who remain in total control of the means of production.

Using serious corruption scandals as an excuse for our social and economic challenges is misplaced, while productive land, capital, media and the general means of production continue to be vested in the control of a few whites and black economic empowerment (BEE) beneficiaries.

I am not justifying, neither condoning corruption, but take it away and you still will not achieve equality, eradicate poverty, get the economy or land back. We must understand that the Swapo government inherited a system and state already captured by WMC, in this sense, the chiefs and captains of media, science and technology, agriculture, financial and insurance services, mining giants, commercial farmers and those wielding influence in other strategic sectors of the economy, are all organised with so much economic power, such that they continue to influence the economic direction of our country to their exploitative and exclusive benefit.

The biggest enemy of our developmental agenda is WMC, and our fundamental struggle should not be to replace the government, but to eradicate this capitalist apartheid system, in order to attain radical economic transformation.

What is to be done? Ours should rather be to educate, inspire and organise our people against an oppressive and exclusive system. Radical economic transformation should be properly conceptualised, in order to gain momentum and ownership with our people. Fundamental economic, political and social realities and conditions will never change through elections.

The people continue to stand with Swapo, because it withstood the test of the time, its social and economic liberal policies continue to remain relevant, with a leadership collective consistently occupied with the little of their powers, to improve the living conditions of our people.

Again, the biggest challenge of Swapo is not the provision of basic services or addressing the challenges of poverty, unemployment and structural inequalities but an economy with its means of production and media in the control of the minority WMC and the few BEE cadres. Let the debate continue!

• Pendapala Taapopi, is a pan-Africanist Namibian youth, writing from Windhoek and tweets at @mtp_taapopi

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