EDITORIAL: Let resilience cut through all values

President Hage Geingob declared 2021 as the Year of Resilience. Being resilient means one is able to recover from adversity and adjust to change to emerge stronger after a setback. The adversity and setback in our case is the animal that is Covid-19.

For Namibia, resilience is not simply the art of navigating the challenges the virus has piled on us.

Resilience means wholesale changes to our character, sense of integrity and a radical shift to both our way of thinking and of doing things.

Because Covid-19 has radically altered our lives for the worse, it means radical changes are required to the manner we have done things.

The resilience envisaged by Geingob will not materialise if we continue to alienate skills and sacrifice them at the altar of patronage and personal loyalty. Where there is no accountability, resilience will falter.

If there’s no transparency in how we deal with national and public matters, resilience will remain a huge empty podium rhetoric which people with low esteem will shout from the rooftops to make themselves feel worth the air they are inhaling.

Resilience will be dictated by our character as a nation. When people stand up for what is right and when we reward persons on merits instead of personal allegiances, resilience will come about almost naturally.

We cannot expect resilience if we crawl back into the cocoons of our old habits.