Resurrecting the Spirit of Ken Saro Wiwa

I’m talking about an issue that was highlighted by the late Nigerian writer, philosopher and activist, Ken Saro Wiwa – that’s, the relationship between the lack of access to and control of resources on the one hand and poverty on the other.

But two issues caught my attention recently and I was thus forced to revisit it. One was just an ordinary advertisement in a newspaper by UNDP Botswana looking for a consultant (an economist, of course) to mainstream poverty reduction into Botswana’s national development plan.The other, reported in New Era, is the planned indaba in Windhoek, next week, to look at poverty in Namibia.Both of these are very interesting.In the Botswana case, we are told that: “poverty reduction is the overarching goal of the Government.”And the task of the consultant is, among others, to establish a working definition of the term “pro-poor” and provide guidelines for assessing “pro-poor” policies and programmes.In the case of Namibia, I understand a staggering 150 local and international experts on poverty will over a three-day period provide a balanced and factual account of the state of poverty in the country.According to Fred Simpungwe, one of the conference organisers, the conference will explore and present possible avenues of solving the problem of poverty, promote the culture of entrepreneurship and business development as a means of poverty alleviation and employment creation.And Tonata Shiimi, another organiser, says: “I hope that after the conference, we as the Namibian nation will be in a better situation to understand and comprehend the challenges of unemployment and poverty and how best to address those challenges.”I think something is fundamentally amiss in all this.Take Botswana.Here is a country that has been independent since 1966 and is described as having had the fastest growing economy with the fastest growth rates in per capita in the world for the past 30 years or so.In addition, Botswana has stockpiled foreign exchange reserves of over $7 billion as recently as last year.So, if the country was genuinely committed to poverty alleviation, reduction and eventually elimination, then poverty should be history by now.The fact that the country is now trying to even come up with a working definition of “pro-poor” paints a disturbing picture.Now forget about the economics for a while, because here is a Government that is busy pushing an already impoverished San community deeper into the grip of poverty and then talks about “pro-poor” projects and programmes.What will it take to bring the San’s living standard on par with the average Motswana? Aren’t the San citizens of Botswana and thus Batswana as well? The case of Namibia is even more pathetic.Namibia, like Botswana, is not a poor country at any standard – same population size, same resource base and it might be that Namibia is even richer given its fishing resources among others.Now we have all become tired of hearing this: Namibia is one of the most unequal societies in the world – though this is freely admitted.And this was the leitmotif for the liberation struggle.So, it stuns me that after 17 years of independence we have basically been ‘ignorant’ of this problem and we would, hopefully, be enlightened after next week’s conference to chart the way forward for the fight against poverty.And Government would implement the recommendations? I think there is a certain degree of naiveté, ignorance or arrogance in all this.Remember the ‘Integrated Poverty Reduction Strategy for Namibia’, a child of the National Planning Commission and the World Bank? Was it ever implemented? These issues are not about the market allocating resources efficiently (because it doesn’t); it is about the primacy of politics – the use to which politics is put to.Ten years ago I advanced the same argument in a piece on ‘Politics and Poverty in Namibia’ (The Namibian, 22 August 1997).So, it is the politicians, not economists, who would eventually solve the problem of poverty.And this doesn’t need a heap of statistics, tables and graphs on poverty nicely bound in glossy reports with executive summaries and all that.This explains why in most cases, some of Africa’s richest regions are homes to the poorest people.In oil-rich Niger Delta in Nigeria, disputes over the control of oil have led to the death of thousands of Ogoni people who live in that area and, of course, to the death of Saro Wiwa on the gallows of the late dictator Sani Abacha just for wanting to share a piece of the national cake.The story is the same in Sudan where the impoverished yet oil-rich South doesn’t get its share of the petrodollar, as this benefits mainly the North.Closer home, the south of Namibia is supposed to reflect its diamond-rich status.Instead, what you have there are bucket toilets.In the Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve, where the San have been evicted, the story is the same: resources – in this case diamonds.By the way, there is no difference between the way Botswana and Namibia treat their San population.I’m not dismissing the conference outright nor some of the contributions that would be made.But by linking poverty reduction to the promotion of a culture of entrepreneurship and business development, one starts to smell a rat.Because given the close relationship between mainstream scholarship and the World Bank philosophy on the global economy, the nature of the problematic is unlikely to be addressed outside of the scholarship of the obvious.This arises because those who are able to attend meetings of this nature also have an eye to maintaining the very system that produces inequality and poverty in the first place.Maybe what we need at this juncture are not 150 experts on poverty and unemployment but 150 Ken Saro Wiwas instead.People who would stand up to challenge the system the produces poverty in the first place.So, let’s keep our feet firmly on the ground as we approach these issues.One was just an ordinary advertisement in a newspaper by UNDP Botswana looking for a consultant (an economist, of course) to mainstream poverty reduction into Botswana’s national development plan.The other, reported in New Era, is the planned indaba in Windhoek, next week, to look at poverty in Namibia.Both of these are very interesting.In the Botswana case, we are told that: “poverty reduction is the overarching goal of the Government.”And the task of the consultant is, among others, to establish a working definition of the term “pro-poor” and provide guidelines for assessing “pro-poor” policies and programmes.In the case of Namibia, I understand a staggering 150 local and international experts on poverty will over a three-day period provide a balanced and factual account of the state of poverty in the country.According to Fred Simpungwe, one of the conference organisers, the conference will explore and present possible avenues of solving the problem of poverty, promote the culture of entrepreneurship and business development as a means of poverty alleviation and employment creation.And Tonata Shiimi, another organiser, says: “I hope that after the conference, we as the Namibian nation will be in a better situation to understand and comprehend the challenges of unemployment and poverty and how best to address those challenges.”I think something is fundamentally amiss in all this.Take Botswana.Here is a country that has been independent since 1966 and is described as having had the fastest growing economy with the fastest growth rates in per capita in the world for the past 30 years or so.In addition, Botswana has stockpiled foreign exchange reserves of over $7 billion as recently as last year.So, if the country was genuinely committed to poverty alleviation, reduction and eventually elimination, then poverty should be history by now.The fact that the country is now trying to even come up with a working definition of “pro-poor” paints a disturbing picture.Now forget about the economics for a while, because here is a Government that is busy pushing an already impoverished San community deeper into the grip of poverty and then talks about “pro-poor” projects and programmes.What will it take to bring the San’s living standard on par with the average Motswana? Aren’t the San citizens of Botswana and thus Batswana as well? The case of Namibia is even more pathetic.Namibia, like Botswana, is not a poor country at any standard – same population size, same resource base and it might be that Namibia is even richer given its fishing resources among others.Now we have all become tired of hearing this: Namibia is one of the most unequal societies in the world – though this is freely admitted.And this was the leitmotif for the liberation struggle.So, it stuns me that after 17 years of independence we have basically been ‘ignorant’ of this problem and we would, hopefully, be enlightened after next week’s conference to chart the way forward for the fight against poverty.And Government would implement the recommendations? I think there is a certain degree of naiveté, ignorance or arrogance in all this.Remember the ‘Integrated Poverty Reduction Strategy for Namibia’, a child of the National Planning Commission and the World Bank? Was it ever implemented? These issues are not about the market allocating resources efficiently (because it doesn’t); it is about the primacy of politics – the use to which politics is put to.Ten years ago I advanced the same argument in a piece on ‘Politics and Poverty in Namibia’ (The Namibian, 22 August 1997).So, it is the politicians, not economists, who would eventually solve the problem of poverty.And this doesn’t need a heap of statistics, tables and graphs on poverty nicely bound in glossy reports with executive summaries and all that. This explains why in most cases, some of Africa’s richest regions are homes to the poorest people.In oil-rich Niger Delta in Nigeria, disputes over the control of oil have led to the death of thousands of Ogoni people who live in that area and, of course, to the death of Saro Wiwa on the gallows of the late dictator Sani Abacha just for wanting to share a piece of the national cake.The story is the same in Sudan where the impoverished yet oil-rich South doesn’t get its share of the petrodollar, as this benefits mainly the North.Closer home, the south of Namibia is supposed to reflect its diamond-rich status.Instead, what you have there are bucket toilets.In the Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve, where the San have been evicted, the story is the same: resources – in this case diamonds.By the way, there is no difference between the way Botswana and Namibia treat their San population.I’m not dismissing the conference outright nor some of the contributions that would be made.But by linking poverty reduction to the promotion of a culture of entrepreneurship and business development, one starts to smell a rat.Because given the close relationship between mainstream scholarship and the World Bank philosophy on the global economy, the nature of the problematic is unlikely to be addressed outside of the scholarship of the obvious.This arises because those who are able to attend meetings of this nature also have an eye to maintaining the very system that produces inequality and poverty in the first place.Maybe what we need at this juncture are not 150 experts on poverty and unemployment but 150 Ken Saro Wiwas instead.People who would stand up to challenge the system the produces poverty in the first place. So, let’s keep our feet firmly on the ground as we approach these issues.