Namibia as a welfare state

On Friday, 1 April 2022, The Namibian newspaper reported that government, through the ministry of gender equality, poverty eradication and social welfare, had spent N$6.3 billion on social assistance in the 2020/21 financial year. When he tabled the national budget for the 2019/2020 fiscal year in March 2019, then minister of finance, Calle Schlettwein, announced that the country would spend about 50% of its budget on social welfare programmes.

Concretely, for the past three decades, a majority of the Namibian budget has been allocated to social expenditure, which includes health, education and welfare services, indicating that Namibia could be considered a welfare state with high public spending, though Namibia can as well be classified as a developmental state.

These ‘social gestures’ by the Namibian government, under the provisions of the Namibian Constitution, inculcate the ideas and philosophy of Richard Morris Titmuss, who was a British social researcher and teacher.

Titmuss, who was professor of social administration at the London School of Economics from 1951 to 1973, had a profound mistrust of the market and placed powerful emphasis in his writing on the use of the state to redistribute resources in favor of equality. The state, he argued, should play a strongly integrative role, in particular compensating for the adverse effects of social and economic change (Hardley & Hatch, 1981). Accordingly, Wilensky (1975:5) described the essence of the welfare state as “government-protected minimum standards of income, nutrition, health, housing and education, assured to every citizen as a political right, not charity”. Here the welfare is first and foremost a democratic state that, in addition to civil and political rights, guarantees social protection as a right attached to citizenship. Furthermore, welfare states provide citizens with free education and protect them against extreme poverty (Caramani, 2011).

The constitutional mandate

Namibia has one of the most comprehensive social protection systems in Africa (Schade, La and Pick, 2019). Promotion of social welfare is enshrined in Chapter 11, Article 95 of the Namibian constitution. Article 95 talks about the promotion of the welfare of the people of Namibia, that the state shall actively promote and maintain the welfare of Namibians. The constitution requires the government to promote and maintain the welfare of the people by enacting legislation to ensure equal opportunities for men and women, access to health and education for all, reasonable access to public facilities and services, a pension for senior citizens, and just and affordable benefits to the unemployed, the incapacitated, the indigent, and the disadvantaged with due regard to the resources of the State (The constitution of the Republic of Namibia, 1990).

The dissonant reality

Namibia is an upper middle-income country with a population of 2.5 million people. Considering its abundant mineral resource deposits such as diamonds, copper, zinc and marine resources, which can be economically and socially utilised to uplift the living standards of its populace through spending mineral and marine revenue on the creation of economic wealth and social benefits, Namibia remains one of the countries with the highest inequalities in the world, ranked the second most unequal country in the world after South Africa, with a gini co-efficiency index of 0.567.

In countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Rwanda, governments have used the country’s resources such as crude oil and tantalum to ignite and enhance economic growth and social development. In Namibia, where income inequality exists, social welfare initiatives have played an important role in supporting households to attain some minimum standard of living.

Social welfare programmes such as the child grant, old age grant, disability grant, maintenance grant, social security, food support programmes, provision of housing and shelter initiatives, pension funds, and Namibia’s labor market activation schemes, have assisted in achieving human developmental goals including improved education and health outcomes while also reducing poverty levels. Despite all of this, 1.6 million Namibians live in poverty right now (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, 2022). Worryingly, the global economic meltdown as a result of low commodity prices, Covid-19, the impact of climate change, economic and social woes in South Africa and the war in Ukraine has affected Namibia’s economic growth, igniting a high cost of living, high food prices, thereby sending many Namibians into extreme poverty.

The unanswered questions

It is indisputable that Namibia, under the Swapo-party government, has done well on social welfare by implementing various social welfare programmes to help the vulnerable and disadvantaged members of our communities. Nevertheless, one wonders why we still have more people living in poverty and unfavourable living conditions. In Windhoek alone, about 500 000 Namibians live in informal settlements. Windhoek’s informal settlements are home to poor health care facilities, impoverished sewage systems, soaring crime, pollution, overcrowding, landlessness, and poor water supply. What is our government doing with the resources of this great nation if these kinds of social problems persist? Why do we have so many rich individuals and poor individuals in a country regarded as one of the richest in Africa and with a national population of 2.5 million people?

What is the government doing about the level of youth unemployment and poverty, the uneven distribution of wealth and the ever-ballooning monster of inequality? Many people are flocking to urban centres in search of better economic activities and decent living conditions - what is the government doing to contain the ever growing rural-urban migration? Does the decentralisation policy still exist?

Right now, our nation survives by importing huge quantities of food from other countries - in fact Namibia is an economic stepchild of other nations, surviving by begging for food and other essential economic materials. What will happen to us if we wake up one day only to learn that other countries have closed their borders on food imports, thus prioritising their own citizens?

The way forward

Namibia has come of age and it should now live by the principles of a sovereign republic rather of a banana republic. Living by the principles of sovereignty requires that Namibia should have the capacity to produce and process its food commodities to ensure food security.

Namibia should be in a position to curb unemployment through aggressive government interventions by setting up industrial and manufacturing hubs and heavily promoting foreign direct investments on our terms and conditions. Namibia should be in a position to address landlessness, abject poverty, poor sanitation, poor water supply, inequality and poor health care by using resources as per the constitution.

Article 95 is not yet fully implemented, as just and affordable benefits for the unemployed is yet to be realised. The unemployed, especially the youth, are the most hopeless citizens of this nation, and it has ignited in them evil spirits which has pushed them to commit gruesome crimes that threaten public order.

One understands the global economic meltdown afflicting the whole world right now, and Namibia is not an island, but our government should aggressively strive for poverty reduction, equality, economic growth and equal distribution of state resources. It is very disturbing to note that Namibia as a nation is striving in grand corruption, tribalism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, nepotism, identity politics vis-à-vis tribal politics and the ever-rising colossus kleptocracy in our country.