One Namibia, many standards: Beyond tribal allegations at Roads Authority

The following opinion is informed by an article in The Namibian titled “Minister investigates tribal bias at Roads Authority.”

What may appear to be a routine dispute within the Roads Authority (RA) is, in reality, far more consequential. It exposes a persistent fault line in Namibia’s governance system — one that continues to test the credibility of the country’s founding ideal: One Namibia, One Nation.

More than three decades after independence, allegations of tribal bias in recruitment should no longer be recurring headlines. Yet they persist. For this reason, the RA matter cannot be dismissed as an isolated incident; it reflects a deeper institutional vulnerability.

The staffing figures cited — approximately 74 employees from the Zambezi Region compared to over 300 from northern Namibia — do not, on their own, prove discrimination. Numbers rarely tell the full story. Governance, however, is not judged on statistics alone; it is judged on trust. Where trust is weak, even lawful decisions become suspect.

That is the real issue.

Minister Veikko Nekundi’s suggestion that he may have been misled raises a more troubling question: how easily can internal disputes escalate into national controversies? When institutions lack robust internal verification mechanisms, they risk becoming battlegrounds for competing narratives rather than centres of administrative integrity.

Former RA CEO Conrad Lutombi’s defence — that recruitment followed policy and merit — is important. It speaks to legality. But legality is only half the equation. In public institutions, perceived fairness carries equal weight. Once employees begin to speak of fear, division and exclusion, the issue shifts from compliance to legitimacy.

And legitimacy, once eroded, is difficult to restore.

The uncomfortable reality is that the Roads Authority is not alone. Similar allegations have surfaced across key institutions, including the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), the Namibia Revenue Agency (NamRA), and even segments of the defence establishment. This pattern suggests the problem is not episodic; it is structural.

The Office of the Ombudsman is correct to frame tribalism complaints as symptoms rather than isolated offences. In modern bureaucracies, bias seldom appears in written policy. Instead, it thrives in informal networks, opaque processes and weak oversight. That is where attention must be directed.

At the same time, it would be overly simplistic to reduce every grievance to tribalism. Namibia’s socio-economic conditions — particularly high unemployment — inevitably intensify scrutiny over who is hired and who is not. In such an environment, every appointment is contested, and outcomes are often interpreted through the lens of identity.

This creates a cycle: scarcity fuels competition, competition sharpens division, and division erodes institutional trust.

Breaking this cycle requires honesty. As some analysts have observed, tribalism is often only one dimension of a broader governance problem that includes nepotism, favouritism and patronage. Focusing on one while ignoring the others risks missing the point entirely.

Calls for independent audits and stronger oversight should therefore be taken seriously — not as political rhetoric, but as practical governance reforms. Transparency, accountability and procedural independence are not abstract ideals; they are operational necessities.

If One Namibia, One Nation is to remain meaningful, it must evolve from a slogan into a standard — one that is visibly enforced across all public institutions.

This requires recruitment processes that are not only fair but demonstrably so, oversight systems that are independent and credible, regular institutional audits that measure equity rather than mere compliance, and a clear boundary between political authority and administrative decision-making.

Without such measures, allegations — whether substantiated or not — will continue to gain traction. In the court of public opinion, perception often carries more weight than proof.

The Roads Authority episode should neither be trivialised nor sensationalised. Its significance lies in what it reveals: a governance framework that still struggles to decisively answer questions of fairness.

Until that changes, Namibia will remain caught in a quiet contradiction — where national unity is professed, but institutional trust is contested.

And that is a gap the country can no longer afford to ignore.

• Peter Ilukena holds a Master’s Degree in International Relations, Diplomacy & Management, PGDHE and a BA in English.