Namibia: a trust betrayed - again?

As Namibian youth, and as Africans, you must therefore be on the full alert and remain vigilant against deceptive attempts by opportunities and unpatriotic elements that attempt to divide you. As the future leaders of our country, you should act with dedication and commitment; to always promote the interests of the SWAPO [South West African People's Organisation] Party and the national interests before your own. It is only through that manner that the SWAPO Party will grow from strength to strength and continue to rule Namibia for the next ONE THOUSAND YEARS. (Sam Nujoma, Founding Father of the Republic of Namibia, in a speech to the SWAPO Youth League in 2010). Such faith-based antics document not only ignorance over the analogy to the failed empire building of a Third Reich caliber ending in the Holocaust and the Second World War. Twenty years into Namibian Independence, the above gospel stands for a mindset obsessed with maintaining political power and control literally until eternity. Liberation from colonial rule is perceived as a kind of 'end of history'. It resulted in a political project devoid of any meaningful agenda for socio-economic change beyond the pursuance of own narrow interests by the party leadership and its clientele. Namibian elite politics of a new class in the making has perpetuated deeply rooted, structurally anchored socio-economic inequality at the expense of the majority of the people.