Let's move on

Last year's elections came and passed, and so did the court cases challenging them.

The ruling of the Supreme Court this week, bizarre as it may be, is final.

With that finality, main challenger Panduleni Itula congratulated President Hage Geingob and urged all to support him.

Murmurs of discontent will linger, but that's the nature of every election. Most of the time such murmurs are fully justified. A few times they are not.

Whatever is true in the Namibian context between the two scenarios, we would hopefully know in the fullness of time.

Above all, we have a country to lead and a nation to care for.

The youth are hanging on for dear life to a thin string of joblessness. State patients are told there are no gloves for touching their wounds, let alone medication to ease their pain.

Children are being beaten to death by their kin and roasted over the coals like goats for a family feast.

Those whose lives are spared sit under trees to learn the sum of one plus one in maths classes.

Corruption continues to eat away at what is left of our social fabric while we drown in rivers of tears over a has-been election. Simply put, there is no time to spare.

After having denigrated each other as electoral nemeses, we are now summoned to the common cause for nation-building. And nation-building cannot be left in the shaky hands of politicians alone. Everyone is a stakeholder in it – and this is not voluntary.

Elections are a sprint but building a nation is a marathon.

The question, as famously posed by Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin at the turn of the last century, is therefore; what is to be done?

Do we celebrate electoral victories until the second coming of Jesus or do we interpret the weight of the mandate placed upon us insofar as taking this country out of its doldrums is concerned?

Winning elections is a matter of servitude more than it is about power, influence and more money in the pocket. It is a national call for duty and moral revival.