Prof Joseph Diescho interrogates why Namibia’s health care system has dilapidated 31 years of independence.

July 4 – – There is talk in the scientific community that the small country Namibia has overtaken India, Brazil and European countries and is now the country with the highest infection rate of the Covid-19 virus.

This is very sad indeed and it means that there is something we did not do right. It cannot be lack of resources but lack of planning and lack of empathy with the ordinary citizens. It is beyond question now that the priorities of our development planners were skew and self-serving. Too much money has gone to salaries and maintaining the lifestyles of those in power and with influence.

Someone must explain how a country of just over two million people can afford the top-heavy government Namibia has and still hope to have money left for healthcare and overall national development. It is not possible. It is not doable. Namibia can afford to have over 28 ministers and over 20 deputy ministers in a small population whereas big nations with more resources such as America and Germany have not more than 17 ministers each.

These rich nations have fewer ministers than Namibia because money is kept and used for planning and securing safety and good health for the people. Namibia can afford to have an Executive President, an Executive Vice President, an Executive Prime Minister and Executive Deputy Prime Minister, yet run an education system where children learn under trees and share sleeping rooms in stick-and grass hostels with roaming goats!

Namibia after 31 years of independence has a healthcare system with dilapidated infrastructure, now without hospital beds and oxygen. Oxygen has to be imported from outside. Oxygen and ventilators!

Namibia’s Members of Parliament are appointed to repeat what they are told to say in Parliament for fear of losing their new-found honorable titles and livelihoods. Namibia is a country where those who make laws cannot read and write. They only have to wear party uniforms and attend political rallies.

Lawmakers are accountable to the Head of State and ministers instead of them exercising oversight over resource expenditure by the executive. Namibia is a country where politics is totally upside down. Lawmakers are threatened to resign if they speak for the people. Then who do they speak for, and who speaks for the people? Do we therefore wonder how we got here?

*Now we have the jamboree of State Funerals like there is no tomorrow–all costing the taxes of poor people who cannot bury their loved ones with the decency all the deceased deserve. Nowhere else in world democracies do we see this madness. Maybe the Gods up high are angry at us*!

Prayer and fasting will not help Namibia. People need to wake up and demand justice in the land. People need to demand accountability from their elected representatives. People need to call for a Government that hears and feels their pain and that can truly respond to the crisis.

People deserve leaders with hearts, with empathy. Urgent action is required, not explanations. Not angry threats. Duty is ours in God’s events. It is not normal to have a country in crisis and government is going on with its usual business. And people are quiet because independence happened!