Henning Melber

The following reflections are based on the assumption that the current mainstream model for socio-economic development in Southern Africa is elite oriented and therefore inadequate. To serve the interest of the majority of the people, fundamental new approaches are required.

Namibia ranks among the top performers on the African continent in surveys measuring good governance on the basis of democracy and human rights criteria. In marked contrast, the country also holds the negative record of the longest serving political prisoners in the SADC region.

Two decades into independence, too little has changed for most Namibians in terms of their socio-economic realities. Their society remains stigmatised as the world’s most unequal in terms of income distribution. In contrast, a new species of ‘fat cats’ has thrived.

On 12 May 2009 Sam Nujoma turns 80. As the outstanding Namibian leader for half of a century, he personifies like no one else in the country’s contemporary history the patriarch heading the family.

On 9 December 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the ‘Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’.

Being invited to contribute to the 400th issue of Pambazuka News is like receiving a tremendously prestigious award. This weekly forum is in a remarkable way of illustrating and living the meaning of solidarity since the beginning of this century in the wider African, if not global, context.

The violent nature of the new elite in control over the state displayed similiar features to the mindset of those “Rhodies” they were fighting against during the “chimurenga”.

Anyone who under the given circumstances would blame Tsvangirai for his withdrawal would not only be carelessly naïve, but either Machiavellian or hypocritical to the extreme.

1. Manby, B. (2008) 'African Peer Review Mechanism: Lessons from Kenya', Pambazuka News, no. 362, 16 April 2008.