Haver- March 2

Some mornings I go to the shop to buy milk, bread rolls and a paper. A litre of milk costs me N$13 dollars, the rolls N$7 and the newspaper N$3. So N$23 dollars spent before breakfast. At current exchange rates that’s about £2. The vast majority of Namibians, however, live on less than £1 a day.

 

We live a fairly frugal lifestyle here compared to the standards at home. The VSO allowance is modest but the cost of food is no cheaper than in the UK and as there’s a family of us to feed, we are reliant upon our savings (can you hear the violins yet?) but even with our canny approach to cash the fact of the matter is that we spend more in a couple of days than many households here do in a month.

 

It was difficult, at first, to work out how people survived. Clearly the fact that 25% of children are malnourished suggests that for many simply having enough to eat is a significant challenge, but gradually the answers have became clearer.  In the rural areas, particularly in the ‘communal’ areas (commonly owned land administered by ‘traditional’ authorities) where most of the people live, there are no rents and no mortgages to be paid, everybody building their own home, mud huts for many, bricks and mortar for some. Also, the majority of people are involved in subsistence agriculture, so food is grown and livestock raised. But for most it’s simply not enough, so young men and women leave their homes to seek work in the city, sending remittances back to the villages, family, in turn, sending food to the city. There is no unemployment benefit or income support and for the 50% of the workforce that is unemployed it is the wider family that provides essential support. Survival, therefore, is in the family.

 

Clearly not everyone here is poor. The security guard on N$3 dollars an hour, good work if you can get it, may well work a twelve hour shift at his boss’s luxury home. Mercedes Benz have showrooms in Windhoek, there are designer outlets at Maerua Mall and the physically revolting Hummers (enough to make a VSO cyclist retch), but popular amongst the nouveau riche patrons of ‘The Wine Bar’, demonstrate that someone’s making a bob or two.

 

Without doubt things have improved since independence and nobody except the most dyed in the wool Afrikaner would pretend otherwise. In terms of education and healthcare it’s a different world, universal old age pensions have been introduced (about £45 a month), maternity leave is guaranteed, and for orphans the carer receives N$230 a month for the first child and N$100 for the second (crucial in a country of 2 million with 150,000 AIDs orphans). Despite these improvements, Namibia remains ‘officially’ the most unequal country in the world, the pattern of wealth largely reflecting that of the apartheid era and although huge voting majorities demonstrate the affection that the people hold for SWAPO in waging the liberation struggle, there are growing voices for a greater redistribution of wealth.

 

Fundamental to this is the land question. When Ben Boyes, the Head of Education in Hardap Region, one of the speakers at a VSO training event and a former soldier in the fight for liberation, was asked by one of the volunteers what motivated those that went to fight, he took a handful of sand and let it run through his fingers.  And for Ben’s grandfathers it was the German authority’s declaration that Africans in Namibia would have to sell 75% of their land to white settlers that was the final straw leading to the genocidal wars of 1904 to 1907, when the Nama lost 50% of their people and the Herero 75%.

 

Much blood has been split over the dry lands of Namibia and land is still at the heart of wealth in Namibia today. It was interesting to hear Mrs Lange’s response, a commercial farmer and owner of the lodge where the VSO training was held, when I asked her about land reform. “I should not be a victim of the crimes of my ancestors” she said, supporting the Government’s line on ‘willing buyer-willing seller’ and opposing any suggestion of compulsory purchase.  Naturally I was too polite to comment but it is a fact that the descendants of the colonialists own the richest and the most productive land. 75% of all Namibia’s agricultural land and 90% of commercial farm land is owned by just 4,500 white farmers, figures which are even more surprising when you consider that just 5% of the Namibian population is white. Clearly the crimes of the ancestors continue to benefit some.

 

Many observe that the inequality here isn’t sustainable. So what is to be done? I saw a beautiful glimmer of hope in the following interview, from the excellent Sister Namibia magazine, with an elderly Nama lady resettled under the Government’s farm redistribution scheme. Under this scheme some 200 farms have been purchased, taken into community ownership, sub divided and leased to qualifying households. There are 250,000 households eligible but in 20 years less than 30,000 have been resettled.

 

Maria Witbooi applied for resettlement in 1996 and not much later received a piece of land. She settled on a cattle post and had to build her own house. She has always been an enthusiastic farmer. "I know what goats and sheep need and I know how to treat them," she explains. Before, she had lived on communal land further south, owning about 50 goats. But there it was difficult and frustrating. "There were no camps (fenced enclosures) and I had to run after my stock all the time," she remembers. "When I got older I could not do that anymore so I decided to apply for resettlement." She also disliked the crowded conditions in the communal area. "We were sitting on top of each other and this created many problems. People were fighting."

 

Today Maria Witbooi has her own place and her herd of 50 goats has increased to 145. Her children and grandchildren help her with the more strenuous tasks, and there is enough space for them to stay with her. Having her own farm did not provide Maria Witbooi with a life without challenges. She is forced to sell some young animals because of the drought. "A good farmer sells animals while they are still strong" she explains.

 

"I am very content here," she says at the end of the interview. "Here I feel free, I am independent, and most of my problems have been solved." Does she have any wishes for the future, I ask and our guide translates my question into Nama. The old woman seems to be embarrassed about this strange question after what she has just told us. She slowly shakes her head and smiles. "No, no more wishes."

 

Have a good Easter everyone. And watch out for that weather!

 

Alan

havering- March 1

Dear Friends

 

Cameron was 11 last Tuesday. “What would you like for your birthday son?” I asked. “A fish supper” he replied. So on Tuesday night we took Cameron and his pal Raul, to ‘Luigi and the Fish’ (the only restaurant in Namibia, according to Cam the connoisseur where the fish and chips are ‘nearly’ as good as Romano’s, the Burntisland chippy) where Cameron and Raul ordered……..pizza.

 

I recounted the tale to Fenny, my very bright and articulate colleague who at 26 is expecting her first baby, quite old for a first time mother in Namibia. “11 years” she said “does it seem like a long time?” “It seems like yesterday” I replied, each year of course passing more quickly than the one before. “You know” she said “I’ve been thinking how different it will be for me, compared to my mother”.

 

Fenny was born in exile in Angola and she has a favourite picture of her mum, a striking young woman in combat fatigues holding an AK47. Fenny’s mother was the oldest of four children, living with her grandparents. Some days the soldiers would come, some days they wouldn’t. When they came they would beat her grandparents in front of the children, and if they wished they would beat the children too, and sometimes worse. At 13 Nangola had had enough, this had to stop. So she decided to join the SWAPO fighters and walked the ninety miles to the Angolan border. The border was a cleared strip of land maybe three hundred yards wide, mined and heavily patrolled. Nangola waited until nightfall and a gap in the patrols, she ran as fast as she could through the darkness. Her movement was detected and she could hear the whistle of bullets through the air. Nangola kept on running, straight through the minefield and across the border into Angola and on to the first village she found, where she fell exhausted. A kind old man gave her food and shelter, and put out word for the SWAPO soldiers to come. She was taken to a special SWAPO camp for women and children, highly organised where there was food, accommodation, education and medical supplies. For the first time in a long while Nangola felt safe.

 

The South African Army, however, did not distinguish between camps with women and children and camps with fighters. One day Nangola heard helicopters and saw the Caspars, the armoured vehicles of the South African Defence Force encircling. Everybody was running and screaming, the South African soldiers firing at the fleeing women and children. Nangola held the hand of her best friend and they ran in terror as fast as they could. In the panic her friend had tripped, or so Nangola thought, she too fell to the ground and turned to look. Her friend had been shot through the back of her head, she no longer had a face. Nangola let go of her friend’s hand and ran on down to the river with the others. Children were running into the water, most couldn’t swim and there were crocodiles. She stopped, knowing that if she went into the river she would die, she couldn’t fight and she couldn’t run, all she could do was hide. Amongst the screaming, the crying, the terrible noise of the helicopters, the firing of guns she lay down amongst the dead bodies on the river bank and closed her eyes. Many hours later and a long time after the shooting and the screaming had stopped, she could hear voices, Afrikaans. Soldiers were walking along the river bank, their bayonets fixed, striking at each body, making sure the job was done. The soldiers came nearer, she lay motionless, then more shouting and, thank God, the soldiers were called away. For two days Nangola lay too frightened to move, bodies became bloated in the heat. Then on the third day there were Oshiwambo voices. Nangola stood up to be lifted by a SWAPO fighter “You poor child” he cried, tears in his eyes. Four years later Nangola had a child of her own, Fenny, who tells me she was one of the lucky ones because both her parents came back from the fighting. 

Its twenty years since the end of the war this coming weekend and we felt honoured to attend the Namibian Business Awards on Thursday night where the guest of honour was Dr Sam Nujoma, leader of SWAPO throughout the liberation struggle and the official ‘Founding Father’ of the nation. Like all revolutionaries he spoke far better when he put down his notes and spoke off the cuff. He espoused the need for education, saying it was essential for Namibia “to train our own marine biologists to safeguard the richness of our fishing grounds, to train our own engineers to add value to the minerals we take from our land, farmers to grow our food and doctors to care for our people.” Interestingly, although he no longer has any direct role in Government he suggested to the Minister of Education, who also attended the event, that this year he felt spending on education should be a minimum 6% of GDP. Something tells me it will be.

 

After his speech some of the school pupils attending, all of whom called him ‘Tate’, meaning father, asked Sam Nujoma to dance. To their delight he did, holding his clenched fist aloft as he swayed to the sounds of the Old Location Band, some of whose members where older even than the Founding Father himself.

 

On Friday I met with another leader, this time a musician, Leonard Zhakata, the King of Zim Rumba. He plays “a fusion of Zairian rumba, traditional Zim rhythms and township grooves all stirred in with a little love, brother, a little soul” In 1995 Leonard set the record for the first Zimbabwean recording artist to sell more than 100,000 copies of an album. A record broken just two years later when 150,000 copies of an album was sold by ……..Leonard Zhakata. For the last ten years or so, he and his band have been working with youngsters from the informal settlements around Harare and in the rural areas, teaching kids who previously had only played homemade instruments how to play electric guitar and how to compose music. Selecting the most talented he works with them to make demo tapes which he sends on to record companies. Of course they listen to tapes recommended by Leonard Zhakata and in this way he has launched the careers of dozens of young Zimbabwean musicians. He had heard about OYO and now wants to work with us. Next month he’ll perform with some of the young people we work with at a performance in Cape Town, to parliamentarians from all the southern Africa countries. When he left for the airport on Friday I offered him my hand holding my right elbow with my left hand, the traditional way of showing respect and deference to another in Namibia. Leonard responded by clenching his left hand over his heart as he shook my hand. “We are all brothers now” he said.

 

Have a good week everyone.

 

Alan