This is a story for all those who moan over minor ailments, obsess over financial problems and bewail their heavy responsibilities. For those who do not read the Namibian Sun, here is the link from a couple of days ago:
http://www.namibiansun.com/local-news/cancer-hit-granny-feeds-17.75758
It is the terrifying story of a 69 year old lady, in constant pain from breast cancer, who had six children, who have mostly run away, except for leaving her their own progeny to look after, which makes 17 grandchildren in all. Obviously her husband has run away as well, several years ago ago. With only her monthly pension of N$ 600, supplemented by a few charitable donations, she manages to feed these children and send them to school.
She seems to receive no other help. If true, this is a scandalous situation in a country which claims to have a developed social infrastructure. Firstly, cannot some of errant adult children, some of whom at least seem to be working, be called to account, legally, and forced to contribute to the grand-children's care? Secondly, could the lucky affluent rest of us not donate a few dollars a month to help this lady's plight? I called the Sun's newsroom to express my concern and an offer to help - unfortunately my call was not returned. If someone knows more details or the contact information for the charity which in contact with the lady (the Family Hope Trust - not in the phone book) I will publicise it.
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Thursday, January 15, 2015
The distance between Paris and Baga
This has been a momentous week for France – as momentous as any in its history, according to most mainstream commentators. Really? What about the 3 million Frenchmen killed in the first world war? Or the Nazi occupation of Paris and most of France, lasting four years?
Amid the self-congratulatory solidarity-fest, the impressive spectacle of world leaders walking hand in hand, the reputed million marches, and the wall to wall media coverage, some basic questions were never asked, such as: What is the main event colouring and poisoning France’s relations with its muslims? Why has France such a high Muslim population? What was the last massacre on the streets of Paris? What was the significance of the name of the ‘fourth suspect’, who attracted a frenzy of media attention just because she was female, although it later transpired she was not even in the country when the attacks took place.
The answers to these questions are interesting but simple, being based on one word: Algeria. For eight years, from 1954 to 1962, fought a bloody war against insurgents to retain a hold on its colony which indeed it regarded and governed as an integral part of France. Something like a million Algerian Muslims were killed by military forces, the situation being compounded by recalcitrant French settlers who formed their own secret army to terrorise the local population. General de Gaulle came to power in France, and granted Algeria its independence, amid another orgy of bloodletting which involved another million people, the majority of the French settlers and collaborators fleeing to France. The last massacre in Paris? It was in October 1961 when the French police and military gunned down 500 Algerian demonstrators. The significance of the female 'terrorist', Hayat Boumedienne. Try the strongman and dictator of Algeria in the 1960's and 70's - Houari Boumedienne. Any possible relation?
Such is the background of French, muslim relations.
And of course few commentators pointed out that on almost the same day as the Paris attacks, some hundreds or thousands - it may never be known - perished the victims or terrorism at the hands of Boko Haram, without millions of solidarity marchers, presidential speeches or hashtags. You get a lot of attention if you are a European victim of terrorism, but African victims die alone. See http://www.namibian.com.na/indexx.php?id=22033&page_type=story_detail for a very moving piece.
Amid the self-congratulatory solidarity-fest, the impressive spectacle of world leaders walking hand in hand, the reputed million marches, and the wall to wall media coverage, some basic questions were never asked, such as: What is the main event colouring and poisoning France’s relations with its muslims? Why has France such a high Muslim population? What was the last massacre on the streets of Paris? What was the significance of the name of the ‘fourth suspect’, who attracted a frenzy of media attention just because she was female, although it later transpired she was not even in the country when the attacks took place.
The answers to these questions are interesting but simple, being based on one word: Algeria. For eight years, from 1954 to 1962, fought a bloody war against insurgents to retain a hold on its colony which indeed it regarded and governed as an integral part of France. Something like a million Algerian Muslims were killed by military forces, the situation being compounded by recalcitrant French settlers who formed their own secret army to terrorise the local population. General de Gaulle came to power in France, and granted Algeria its independence, amid another orgy of bloodletting which involved another million people, the majority of the French settlers and collaborators fleeing to France. The last massacre in Paris? It was in October 1961 when the French police and military gunned down 500 Algerian demonstrators. The significance of the female 'terrorist', Hayat Boumedienne. Try the strongman and dictator of Algeria in the 1960's and 70's - Houari Boumedienne. Any possible relation?
Such is the background of French, muslim relations.
And of course few commentators pointed out that on almost the same day as the Paris attacks, some hundreds or thousands - it may never be known - perished the victims or terrorism at the hands of Boko Haram, without millions of solidarity marchers, presidential speeches or hashtags. You get a lot of attention if you are a European victim of terrorism, but African victims die alone. See http://www.namibian.com.na/indexx.php?id=22033&page_type=story_detail for a very moving piece.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Atrocity in Pakistan
Two days ago, if you were listening to the international news, it was all about the 'siege' in a chocolate shop in the rich financial centre of Sydney Australia. It was perpertrated by a lone disturbed gunman with a shotgun, holding hostages inside the shop, and was startling, though not very dreadful, until the police stormed the shop at 2 in the morning, killing the gunman and two other hostages.
The very next day this incident was dwarfed by an attack in Peshawar, Pakistan. In an act of the utmost barbarism, even by Pakistan's violent standards, heavily armed militants stormed a school run by the army for children of military personnel, not to take hostages and demand ransoms, though that would have been bad enough, but with intent purely to massacre as many children and teachers as possible. They burst into the morning assembly, where over 100 pupils were gathered, and shot nearly all of them, and then worked their way from classroom to classroom. By the time the Pakistani army regained control, and killed the militants, 145 were dead, including 136 children.
The Pakistani Taleban claimed responsibility, claiming that it was in revenge for the fairly successful military offensive against their tribal strongholds in the last few months. Will this mark a turning point, a sea change, in the fight against the Taleban in the region? Pakistan is the wierdest of countries, officially with a pro Western Government, but with factions of the military and certainly the secret sky agency (ISI) with sympathies to the Taleban. The attention of the world has been focussed on ISIS in Syria and Iraq, but the old problems remain.
Will it make a difference, will the Taleban and other extremist groups ever be rooted out, or will the politics and violence in the region continue as it always has done?
Meanwhile, forget about your family and financial problems this festive season. If you have an illness, forget about it. Just hold your children tight, and give thanks they go to school in a peaceful part of the world.
The very next day this incident was dwarfed by an attack in Peshawar, Pakistan. In an act of the utmost barbarism, even by Pakistan's violent standards, heavily armed militants stormed a school run by the army for children of military personnel, not to take hostages and demand ransoms, though that would have been bad enough, but with intent purely to massacre as many children and teachers as possible. They burst into the morning assembly, where over 100 pupils were gathered, and shot nearly all of them, and then worked their way from classroom to classroom. By the time the Pakistani army regained control, and killed the militants, 145 were dead, including 136 children.
The Pakistani Taleban claimed responsibility, claiming that it was in revenge for the fairly successful military offensive against their tribal strongholds in the last few months. Will this mark a turning point, a sea change, in the fight against the Taleban in the region? Pakistan is the wierdest of countries, officially with a pro Western Government, but with factions of the military and certainly the secret sky agency (ISI) with sympathies to the Taleban. The attention of the world has been focussed on ISIS in Syria and Iraq, but the old problems remain.
Will it make a difference, will the Taleban and other extremist groups ever be rooted out, or will the politics and violence in the region continue as it always has done?
Meanwhile, forget about your family and financial problems this festive season. If you have an illness, forget about it. Just hold your children tight, and give thanks they go to school in a peaceful part of the world.
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Torture and denial
The most bizarre international news this week was the admission by the US that it had used 'extreme interrogation techniques' otherwise known as torture on captured prisoners suspected of involvement in the 9/11 attacks. This admission could not have been more high profile, taking the form of a two hour speech by a lady in the US senate, broadcast in full on CNN - actually Dianne Feinstein, the chairman of the senate Intelligence committee, and the report was the result of a four year investigation, trawling through some 6 million pages of CIA - the US central intelligence agency - documents. In so doing they found ample evidence of these interrogation techniques. Of course, much of this is not new - everyone has heard of waterboarding and seen the pictures of the humiliated prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Everyone knows that the CIA, once an abstract intelligence gathering organisation, had morphed into a kind of secret police force after 9/11.
The first point was that the CIA had never denied that these 'techniques' had taken place, but had justified them on the grounds that in the wake of 9/11 it was urgently necessary to obtain information from captured suspects to possible future or imminent attacks on the US; the assumption being that such information was obtained, to prevent further attacks, and that the extreme techniques were therefore justified.
But this was exactly what was refuted in the Senate report, which said that no information obtained by torture had been useful or valuable in stopping attacks, and that counter-terrorism intelligence had been obtained by more conventional means. To an ordinary person, this seems obvious - any 'information' obtained under torture is likely to be of low quality - the prisoner will tell the torturer anything he wants to hear. So that even the expedient justification for the extreme interrogation techniques falls away.
The next point is that the report sought to exonerate the previous US (Bush) administration, to some extent, by implying the the CIA ran a 'disinformation' conspiracy which destroyed evidence, emails and tapes, and kept its activities and methods hidden from the President.
The third point is that of course these kind of admissions and disclosures are highly unusual, especially for a major power like the US. (Can you imagine the Russian or Chinese governments coming out with an account apology for mistreatment of inmates in its prisons, let alone treatment of political prisoners, or even admission that they had any? It should have been hoped that these disclosures would be a cathartic experience for the US - one where responsible political leaders from both sides of the spectrum in the US came together, acknowledged previous faults, and vowed such treatment of prisoners would never happen again. It would have captured the moral high ground for the US and redounded greatly to the country's credit. Indeed, John McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate and corm Vietnam vetern who was capture and tortured by the north Vietnamese, made a statesmanlike speech in which he broadly accepted the report's findings and said that the matter was more about us than the alleged terrorists.
Of course, this did not last - immediately the matter degenerated into the usual Democratic-Republican partisan battle, with the Republicans bitterly disputing the findings of the report, questioning its timing (with the Republicans about to take over both houses of the US congress) and claiming that it would put US personnel abroad at risk, although of course US personnel are always at risk from jihadists. The CIA were drawn in, with both the present and previous directors defending their tactics and claiming the interrogation techniques did yield useful information, for instance leading to the discovery of the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. A furious row erupted as to whether former president Bush was fully informed as to what was going on, with his loyal extreme conservative vice president Cheney claiming that he did. So that instead of salvaging the US's international reputation from this episode, it has probably made it worse.
Meanwhile, there is an embarrassed silence from America's allies. Why they must be asking, did the US have to spill the beans? The countries which houses the CIA's secret prisons? Britain, which during the Iraq war, followed the lead in everything the US did, so must have knowledge of the US torture techniques, or even imitated them with some of its own. Calls for disclosures are being made, but Britain has a tradition of bureaucratic secrecy probably surpassing that of every other nation. It has not released a long promised inquiry into the Iraq war, and already the official curtains are being drawn. Back to business as normal.
The first point was that the CIA had never denied that these 'techniques' had taken place, but had justified them on the grounds that in the wake of 9/11 it was urgently necessary to obtain information from captured suspects to possible future or imminent attacks on the US; the assumption being that such information was obtained, to prevent further attacks, and that the extreme techniques were therefore justified.
But this was exactly what was refuted in the Senate report, which said that no information obtained by torture had been useful or valuable in stopping attacks, and that counter-terrorism intelligence had been obtained by more conventional means. To an ordinary person, this seems obvious - any 'information' obtained under torture is likely to be of low quality - the prisoner will tell the torturer anything he wants to hear. So that even the expedient justification for the extreme interrogation techniques falls away.
The next point is that the report sought to exonerate the previous US (Bush) administration, to some extent, by implying the the CIA ran a 'disinformation' conspiracy which destroyed evidence, emails and tapes, and kept its activities and methods hidden from the President.
The third point is that of course these kind of admissions and disclosures are highly unusual, especially for a major power like the US. (Can you imagine the Russian or Chinese governments coming out with an account apology for mistreatment of inmates in its prisons, let alone treatment of political prisoners, or even admission that they had any? It should have been hoped that these disclosures would be a cathartic experience for the US - one where responsible political leaders from both sides of the spectrum in the US came together, acknowledged previous faults, and vowed such treatment of prisoners would never happen again. It would have captured the moral high ground for the US and redounded greatly to the country's credit. Indeed, John McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate and corm Vietnam vetern who was capture and tortured by the north Vietnamese, made a statesmanlike speech in which he broadly accepted the report's findings and said that the matter was more about us than the alleged terrorists.
Of course, this did not last - immediately the matter degenerated into the usual Democratic-Republican partisan battle, with the Republicans bitterly disputing the findings of the report, questioning its timing (with the Republicans about to take over both houses of the US congress) and claiming that it would put US personnel abroad at risk, although of course US personnel are always at risk from jihadists. The CIA were drawn in, with both the present and previous directors defending their tactics and claiming the interrogation techniques did yield useful information, for instance leading to the discovery of the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. A furious row erupted as to whether former president Bush was fully informed as to what was going on, with his loyal extreme conservative vice president Cheney claiming that he did. So that instead of salvaging the US's international reputation from this episode, it has probably made it worse.
Meanwhile, there is an embarrassed silence from America's allies. Why they must be asking, did the US have to spill the beans? The countries which houses the CIA's secret prisons? Britain, which during the Iraq war, followed the lead in everything the US did, so must have knowledge of the US torture techniques, or even imitated them with some of its own. Calls for disclosures are being made, but Britain has a tradition of bureaucratic secrecy probably surpassing that of every other nation. It has not released a long promised inquiry into the Iraq war, and already the official curtains are being drawn. Back to business as normal.
Monday, December 08, 2014
Opposition what opposition?
Now that the dust of the national election has settled, the fact that will strike most outside observers is the total dominance of Swapo, who took more or less 80% of the vote, and the multitudinous opposition parties who shared the remaining crumbs between them. This is not good for democracy, as, from the outside again, it makes Namibia look like a banana republic in which the vote is ridiculously rigged in favour of a ruling junta, whereas everyone knows the vote is free and fair: it is just that the opposition is rubbish.
As the nominal runner-up in the presidential race, McHenry Venaani admitted, the ambition of so-called opposition politicians is not to advance alternative paths for the country, but simply to get a parliamentary seat, again, not as a platform for their political voice, but simply to be assured of a nice pension and a seat on the gravy train.
Alarmingly, some of the 'parties' seem quite satisfied with their sub 1% support from the electorate. What are they there for? There was no NBC debate between presidential candidates, and without trawling some old documents or obscure websites, it is impossible to know what these parties actually stand for, if anything. What would they do, differently from SWAPO? Mostly, they seem to be ethnically or regionally based, and date from the pre-independence political era. So to someone versed in Namibian political history, these parties may have some cultural origin or meaning, and have a vaguely socialist political flavour, but to an outsider they are incomprehensible.
The only glimmer of hope (from the opposition point of view) is that these parties over the weekend schedules a closed door meeting. It should have been done long before the election. Hopefully, the intent, although it is very doubtful if it will be realised, is to forge a common policy and name - maybe a Democratic Alliance, along the South Africa model, based on an open market economy, totally non-racially based, and with a commitment to combat corruption, Such a united alliance may have some political prospects and hope, Otherwise the Namibian opposition will be doomed to irrelevance.
As the nominal runner-up in the presidential race, McHenry Venaani admitted, the ambition of so-called opposition politicians is not to advance alternative paths for the country, but simply to get a parliamentary seat, again, not as a platform for their political voice, but simply to be assured of a nice pension and a seat on the gravy train.
Alarmingly, some of the 'parties' seem quite satisfied with their sub 1% support from the electorate. What are they there for? There was no NBC debate between presidential candidates, and without trawling some old documents or obscure websites, it is impossible to know what these parties actually stand for, if anything. What would they do, differently from SWAPO? Mostly, they seem to be ethnically or regionally based, and date from the pre-independence political era. So to someone versed in Namibian political history, these parties may have some cultural origin or meaning, and have a vaguely socialist political flavour, but to an outsider they are incomprehensible.
The only glimmer of hope (from the opposition point of view) is that these parties over the weekend schedules a closed door meeting. It should have been done long before the election. Hopefully, the intent, although it is very doubtful if it will be realised, is to forge a common policy and name - maybe a Democratic Alliance, along the South Africa model, based on an open market economy, totally non-racially based, and with a commitment to combat corruption, Such a united alliance may have some political prospects and hope, Otherwise the Namibian opposition will be doomed to irrelevance.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Have a good weekend but vote first
Friday is Namibia's general election, and has been declared a public holiday (was the last election day a public holiday?) , Anyway, the day is a Friday, and coupled with the fact that it falls at the end of the month, the temptation may be to utilise your hard earned pay packet to do some plentiful 'shopping' at the local bottle store, and head off for a pre-Christmas long weekend - maybe just you and your special other, not all the extended family and kids whom you will have next month.
You are quite entitled to do that, and I wish everyone a great weekend anyway, but, should you hopefully be registered on the voters' roll, please cast your vote first. Just a week or so ago, there was a bye-election in Windhoek West, where the winner was elected on a 12% turnout. Please be advised, our fighters for democracy did not put their lives on the line for the sake of 88% 'no-shows' or 'don't cares'.
For those cynics who say that their single vote doesn't matter, recall the infamous 2000 US election, where, after weeks of confusion and re-counts, it appeared that George W. Bush won by a margin of 9 votes in a nation of nearly 300 million. We all know what happened thereafter - 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq etc etc.
Of course, the Namibian election will not be so close, but even, as often happens in new African democracies, where there is a hugely dominant ruling party, and a weak opposition, one must vote anyway.. Even if you are an opposition supporter, totally disillusioned by the fragmentation and triviality of the so-called opposition parties, where such parties often seem to consist of little more than three initials, a flag, the leader, and his dog, you should turn up and put your paper in the box, or press the button on the voting machine, as the case may be. When you get turnouts of 80%+, governments have to listen, and it is much better than street riots, as in the case of Burkino Faso. 12% turnouts mean the slow, or not so slow, death of democracy.
You are quite entitled to do that, and I wish everyone a great weekend anyway, but, should you hopefully be registered on the voters' roll, please cast your vote first. Just a week or so ago, there was a bye-election in Windhoek West, where the winner was elected on a 12% turnout. Please be advised, our fighters for democracy did not put their lives on the line for the sake of 88% 'no-shows' or 'don't cares'.
For those cynics who say that their single vote doesn't matter, recall the infamous 2000 US election, where, after weeks of confusion and re-counts, it appeared that George W. Bush won by a margin of 9 votes in a nation of nearly 300 million. We all know what happened thereafter - 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq etc etc.
Of course, the Namibian election will not be so close, but even, as often happens in new African democracies, where there is a hugely dominant ruling party, and a weak opposition, one must vote anyway.. Even if you are an opposition supporter, totally disillusioned by the fragmentation and triviality of the so-called opposition parties, where such parties often seem to consist of little more than three initials, a flag, the leader, and his dog, you should turn up and put your paper in the box, or press the button on the voting machine, as the case may be. When you get turnouts of 80%+, governments have to listen, and it is much better than street riots, as in the case of Burkino Faso. 12% turnouts mean the slow, or not so slow, death of democracy.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Running out of energy
Initially expecting a routine procession of Powerpoints, I soon smelt the dissent in the air. Were the main players in the country's energy industry simply manning their long-standing barricades, or were new policy conflicts emerging?
We had the Hon Minister of Trade and Industry showing that Namibia had the most expensive power in the SADC region, with the possible exception of Mauritius - an island 2000km out in the Indian ocean, and twice as expensive as our land-locked neighbour Botswana.
We had Dr. van Pletsen representing the private investor and his role in national energy policy, presenting his plans for a wind farm in Luderitz, but mainly lambasting Government for its penchant for encouraging private investors to spend their money in researching and piloting power schemes, but refusing to provide them with adequate guarantees (principally that it would purchase their power, and safeguard them against force majeure events, in other words problems arising which were outside the private company's control). We had Mr Vernetti presenting plans for the '250 megawatt' project (Namibia's current peak demand is about 560 MW, excluding certain mines) - this is apparently a hybrid scheme of diesel, solar and gas generation.). Then there was Mr. Gschwender, the team leader for the biomass project, proposing to turn invader bush into fuel for conventional fuel power stations, such as van Eck in Windhoek.
Then, when it came to question time, Dr. Hangala upset the apple cart by laying into the Kudu gas project, now in an advanced stage of planning (but how advanced is advanced?). He said it was unviable, and he probably meant that in the era of cheap gas, driven by American fracking, Kudu gas will probably be otally uncompetitive.
What puzzles me is that, when I first came to Namibia shortly after independence, the existing power stations of course were the ones from the colonial era - Ruacana, the coal fired station in Windhoek, with its landmark twin chimneys, and a small station in Walvis Bay. Nearly twenty five years later, we still have the same power stations, with the country's greatly increased power consumption filled in by ad hoc imports. There must have been innumerable conferences, proposals, feasibility studies and policy documents on energy - and nothing to show for it. How is this possible?
But the next day, the Minister of Mines and Energy travelled to Omaruru to break the ground for a solar photo-voltaic system backed to the tune of N$84m by the French company Innosun, to add a modest but useful 4,5MW to the country's grid. "Other investors just talk but nothing happens" said the Minister, spade in hand. The price of the solar power will be expensive, but at least there will be literally something on the ground by next year. An extra 4,5 MW of locally generated power since 1992.
Other investors just talk but nothing happens.
Other investors just talk but nothing happens.
Other investors just talk but nothing happens.
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