Voters deserve better

Electing service-driven candidates for the forthcoming regional council and local authority polls is essential because these elections are far-reaching as they broaden the level of our well-grounded democratic norms and ideals.

These elections should be taken seriously by political entities, independent candidates, associations vis-à-vis ratepayers’ associations in light of the fact they are intended to bring real services to the electorate who deserve better.

Voters participating in the polls on the horizon should not vote for job-seekers fixated on landing salaried positions but they should vote for competent candidates who will bring real development in 2020 and beyond.

After 30 years of independence, gone are the days when meaningless sloganeering, noisy chanting and gifting cheap T-shirts reigned supreme.

Service should be the essence and the pinnacle of this democratic exercise.

Voters should not waste time with those masquerading as candidates who once elected will retreat into their shells only to resurface during the next regional and local elections as has become the political norm.

Being a councillor entails hard work as it requires the voted candidate to deliver better roads, running water and electrify informal settlements while getting rid of mountains of uncollected garbage.

What happened at Grootfontein where councillors stand accused of being inept, failing to deliver the most basic of services – and the photo in our news story yesterday verifies this – substantiate residents’ claims of councillors’ incompetence.

There was also the unresolved issue in Kongola in the Zambezi region where Swapo members threatened not to vote for their party after it rail-loaded a candidate down their throats, leaving a bitter political after-taste.

Party supporters are dissatisfied over the district conference held on 18 August, 2019 where out of fourteen branches in Kongola only two participated after delegates expressed discontent over the imposition of a candidate.

They even took their concerns to the national leadership of the party that apparently ignored them. On top of the apathy in 2019 they have threatened to revolt in the regional and local authority because of the unresolved issue.

Residents should not be taken for granted because voter apathy blemished polls of yesteryear where no lessons seem to have been learnt.

Voters have awoken to the fact they will not vote for self-serving candidates who in some cases merely want to advance own interests and not those of the people who elected them or organisations or entities they represent. Councillors’ primary role is to honestly represent voters or ratepayers and they should serve as a bridge between their local authority and voters and should also deliver, because gone are the days of political dead wood.

Gone are the days of freeloading on voters who deserve better service.

I am writing to you from my position as an independent artist-writer/poet, and a member of the National Arts Council of Namibia (NACN). I sincerely welcome the Covid-19 Relief Fund that you are currently putting together for the lucky artists/the incredible circle of friends who will get it during this coronavirus crisis. But, I am not excited.

Based on numerous experiences and dealings with the NACN, we anticipate this great initiative to eventually waff off into the thick air of the well-managed corruption out there before it benefits artists. I mean, it is no secret that the National Arts Council had to be closed for a number of years due to funds embezzlement and corruption.

Back in 2017, after the resurrection of the NACN, a call was made for artists to apply for grants in different genres. Many of us who applied for the literature category ended up being engaged in some ping-pong game against our National Arts Council. At the end of this unfriendly game we were finally told that ‘’Namibian writing is substandard’’ therefore the grant will be suspended until further notice. That ‘’further notice” never came. In fact, for the subsequent call for grants, the “little creature” called literature was excluded.

From my standpoint, the National Arts Council is run by bureaucrats who only care and cater to a specific circle of artists. And from your association with that circle of artists, you derive your definition of what art is. You think art is all about entertainment.

Namibia’s education system hangs on four fundamental goals, namely, equity, quality, access and democracy. Coronavirus has surprisingly sent a devastating shockwave across the globe. The virus has adversely affected world economic activities, besides health and education. Business is no longer as usual. The Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture has therefore ultimately opined that schools reopen on the basis of phases.

Grade 11 and 12 have already resumed classes, and recently grade 0-3 have just started with their face-to-face classes, and other grades are yet to reopen in the very near future. With compliance to Covid-19 precautionary measures, it is mandatory that teachers and learners always put on their mask and maintain the recommended physical distance of 1.5 m, for the sake of their own safety. This situation has forced the teaching and learning process to transpire while teachers and learners are wearing their masks. Albert Einstein once argued “learners learn differently using different techniques and methods e.g. some learn through visuals, auditory, touching (hands-on-product), and most relevantly some learn through interpreting nonverbal cues to infer the meaning.” To cement my argument, the science of teaching and learning theory stipulates that some learners learn very fast through interpreting nonverbal cues such as lips movement reading skills. In other words, lips can say a lot of things

What Mr Frederick Freddie Philander bemoaned recently that musicians (celebrity Swapo musicians) are not the only artists in the country and funding should focus on all artists from various categories, is very true.

You administer the NACN like a marketing and promotional tool for the Facebook pages rather than as an organisation that should create an enabling environment for the creative talents in real Namibia. Grants are micro-managed to such an extent that they are not grants but an extension of your programs and sometimes your wishes and whims.

Your dictatorial approach to managing grants has the opposite effect that negatively affects the development of a sustainable arts industry. The NACN seem to rejoice in adding disenchantment without words. For instance, learners with poor hearing ability may learn by watching the teachers’ lips movements when he or she tries to emphasize a point. This is to say, if the teacher is always wearing a mask that covers the mouth, are the learners going to holistically understand the message being put to them by the teacher?

I strongly believe that learners do not only learn through listening attentively or by attending to sound streams, but they as well learn through interpreting nonverbal cues; in this case I’m referring to lips reading. As a result, neither the teachers nor learners may grasp the information through lips reading and speech streams.

To shed more light on my argument, one of the well-known linguists named Noam Chomsky’s studies indicate that “lips which are pulled inwards from all directions are an indication of and uncertainty in a climate where uncertainty and disenchantment are already so prevalent. We even wonder, for who do you exist?

I hope that the Covid-19 Relief Fund is not going to continue the worrying trend of organizations asking artists to creatively respond to some pandemic/disease for them to get funds.

That artists are not going to be told what and how to create. I even fear that, once again, you might handpick a publisher, in the case of literature, to compile an anthology of “substandard” quality like the recent one you collaborated with Unam press. The level of destabilization of an already fragile economic exchange between artist and funder is further highlighted because this action undermines the enormous amount of often unpaid work that independent artists and small organizations take in putting together applications.

These are just my thoughts with regard to the statuesque of funding and management of funds by the NACN. As a matter of fact, I already know that some of us will not get the funds simply because we don’t belong to the incredible circle of ‘friends’ who are repeatedly favoured as far as funding is concerned in Namibia.

As you can see, Mr Patrick Sam, I’m not against you but against the culture of corruption that is prevalent in our Namibia and that I’ve hoped you, as a revolutionary and a visionary (as newspaper articles describe you), would transcend. tension and may indicate frustration or disapproval. Biting the lip, centrally or at the side, is often a sign of anxiety.” Therefore, the only solution to this challenge should be that teachers should wear transparent face shields so that learners may interpret some information from their lips movement.

To add on, for schools located at the coronavirus epicentre of Namibia, which is Walvis Bay, classes are suspended until further notice, which include most critical grades, namely, grades 10, 11 and 12. In the same vein, some parents have voluntarily decided not to send their kids to school because they don’t want to gamble with their kids’ life amidst this out-cried pandemic. These learners are being deprived access and equity as basic goals of education, simply because other learners at different regions and areas are attending classes.

If the situation in Walvis Bay continues to deteriorate, are these learners going to repeat the same grade next year? Are there some special arrangements reserved for them to be promoted to the next grade? If these learners resume classes, I doubt if teachers will manage to complete and achieve all the basic competencies as per new rationalised syllabus, and have the learners ready for the next grade this year. Quality, as a goal of education would be compromised. So much time has been lost and it is time we go back to the drawing board to work around the virus for next year.