By: Kelvin Chiringa
The ruling Swapo Party’s recently appointed political think tank may not be the party’s saving grace between now and the next presidential elections if it does not stand out as an autonomous body that calls a spade a spade.
Swapo established its first Think Tank in 2008 with 38 party technocrats who specialise in various fields to evaluate developments at regional, continental and multi-lateral institutions, and to advise the Swapo leadership on Government’s Foreign Policy stance.
Although some of those appointed to be in the Think Tank are government employees, the Public Service Act of 1995 prohibits management cadres or public servants from taking an active part in political party activities.
Labour research analyst Hebert Jauch, who has contended that the party’s hierarchical structure over the years has seen decisions being taken at State House more than anywhere else.
In 2019, the party appointed a 60-member think tank but this has now been drastically halfed to 31 members.
The organ is constituted of a few academics and business-minded people and host of unknown faces.
This brood has also had the pleasure to be told by Sophia Shaningwa that ministers and executive directors have hailed from this grouping over the years.
This has left more questions than answers.
Chief among them being whether those that now find themselves in this political “central processing unit” will be there for the job or to enhance their chances of rising up the career ladder.
The 31 members must thus be seen as standing ready to carry out empirical research into the political challenges of the day and proffer solutions that must respond to the urgency of the party’s survival.
Enrique Mendizabal and Kristen Sample in their work titled, “Thinking Politics: Think Tanks and Political Parties in Latin America” highlighted what an ideal think tank must be and not be seen to be and do.
They reason that this organ should “offer political leaders the opportunity to consider alternatives and to develop their proposals away from the public arena in which the natural pressures of an unstable and highly competitive environment would make evidence-based reflection impossible”
“However, this ‘safe area’ is useful not only for the promotion of policies, but also for the protection of ideas and their proponents,” they submit.
Writer, Adolfo Garcé, has also suggested that “think tanks (must) carry out a series of functions including the generation and dissemination of information and analysis on public policy and government issues, and that they can be different types of organization”.
Now for this 31-member power-house to impress itself upon the party, Jauch has submitted that first the Swapo Party must be very clear on what it wants to achieve.
This should further be clearly communicated to the think tank which should carry out research, bring out workable solutions that must be fiercely debated and tested or discarded.
“The former Prime Minister, Nahas Angula recently wrote an opinion piece where he asks, “Is Namibia getting the most out of its natural resources”. Now the answer is clearly no, we are not. That we should actually acknowledge.
“And then a think-tank should devise mechanisms in which not individuals benefit from resources but the public in general benefits. In other words, how we socialise the benefits from our resources. These are key questions for a think tank and very comprehensive policies to be made if such a think tank is to be worthwhile,” he says.
Jauch also posits that the think tank, which must be understood to be the real brains behind the party’s functioning power, should be seen to re-think the Swapo Party and set it on a new growth trajectory.
Swapo is in the midst of a political crisis which has seen powerful outfits emerge out of its quarrels.
The Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) and the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) are two latest cases in point. There is also the Affirmative Repositioning Movement.
The more the party suffers splinter groups while battling deep running fissures of factionalism from within, the more it is likely to continue on its ill-fated decline.
Thus, the quality of minds that make up the organ and how they are to be allowed to function by the hierarchical powers that be, will decide whether it shall save the party from that decline.
According to Jauch, unfortunately, the Swapo party think tank has been historically quiet in terms of public debate.
“It might be that their ideas and proposals are merely communicated to party structures and are basically kept under wraps within the party,” he says.
Jauch also adds that there hasn’t been an attempt to have an open and public discussion.
If the party’s structures are functioning, he says, then ideas of the think tank should be debated and cascaded through the same.
There hasn’t also been clarity as to whether the President’s key decisions as of late have been a product of his legion of statehouse advisors, or a combination of both the latter and the think tank.
While clearly, statehouse presidential advisors have been heard and seen to be working, the think has been quiet on what should be the way forward in terms of combating the Covid pandemic, how to deal with the austerity measures and the state’s indebtedness.
Enrique Mendizabal Kristen Sample further provide a clear portrait of how this think tank must be seen to function and that is, it must:
- provide a forum for debate and deliberation for the aggregation of the visions, missions and aims of diverse political actors;
- articulate these political demands in the form of policy programmes which constitute government plans or alternatives; and
- (iii) develop a reserve cadre of future politicians, decision makers and civil servants.
The writers advise that think tanks as whole should be “considered as legitimators of policies, proposals or demands from political parties”.
If Swapo’s organ is to be allowed to do its work within the framework of autonomy, it should also be seen to be “developing an ideological or scientific basis upon which policies are established, as in the cases of Colombia, Peru and Chile”.
Orazio Bellettini and Melania Carrión submit that the think (must) act as sounding boards for politicians and decision makers, lest it ends up being yet another loud sounding nothing.
NUJOMA UNHAPPY
In July 2020, the former president Sam Nujoma questioned the omission of experienced and knowledgeable cadres in the Swapo Think Tank.
Nujoma questioned why veterans of the liberation struggle, former commanders, combatants of PLAN, former political prisoners and other with institutional memory of the party were not included in Think Tank to spearhead the process of regaining the trust and confidence of the Namibian people who are members of Swapo.
When he was the Prime Minister Hage Geingob in 2014 said all Namibians are entitled to participate in political activities according to Article 17 of the Namibian Constitution.
Geingob further explained that this provision of the constitution does not exclude public servants.
According to Geingob, no permanent secretary or director who is a Swapo member should hold office in Swapo, however these officials are not prohibited from attending party rallies or to ‘think’.
“The Think Tank is just an institution to think. Nobody is stopped from thinking just because he/she is a public servant.
“The Think Tank is an intellectual activity. Thus they (Think Tank members) have a right to write and conduct research,” he said.
