Who’s Interests Weigh More in Today’s Democracy.

Americanisation and global corporatisation of politics, building non-entities into power-political structures to take influence, does not stop anywhere. In times of the global debt holocaust, one would have to add the propaganda campaigns of the corporate mainstream media to manipulate public opinion. A hostile economy with its hidden agendas plays its role.  

The above-mentioned hidden agendas and deceptions based on their own interests do not only influence the day-to-day running of Namibia and every member of SADC. They determine the direction of the country and the region.

It is noted that the victims of orchestrated hidden agendas and lies will defend those hidden agendas and lies with their lives. This is how successful propaganda has proven to be.

The so-called “North African and Mid-Eastern style Arab Spring” with subsequent illegal “regime changes” are cases in point.

The director of ‘Human Rights Watch Emergencies’, Peter Bouckaert, told South Africa’s daily newspaper, ‘Business Day’ in Johannesburg, when he spoke about the Libyan “rebels”: “The protesters are nice, sincere people who want a better future for Libya.”

In return, a commentator in the pan-African news magazine, ‘NewAfrican’ of May 2011 feared, when he responded, “Are we to accept that armed confrontations with legitimate governments now form part of people’s human rights?”

It is important to have a national debate about democracy and daily influences on bread-and-butter issues, name changes and monuments that reflect their history. That would be honourable and decent. But, it is evil to limit and direct such debate in order to influence public opinion in favour of elitist political power peddling, particularly when it aims at socially and politically restructuring a ruling party to gain influence.

It would get worse, if the corporate mainstream media would collude to play one leader off against another, in that way contributing to unsettle the ruling party, deliberately destroying the historical and political home of the majority.

That would be dangerous, since it would eventually lead to national unrests, even higher corruption levels, undermining the infrastructure.

In the end the whole country would suffer. It should be left to the voters to bring about changes. And it should not be the privilege of select, well-resourced local and foreign lobbyists, whose chequebooks weigh more than the national vote.

By no means do lobbyists have Namibia’s interests at heart when they deploy their agents into strategic positions in the State, the parastatal organisations, the various commercial chambers, civil society and the private sector, including the media.

It would be their aim to factionalise the ruling party, whether in Namibia, or in South Africa or in Zimbabwe. Obviously, the removal of the old colonial remnant, the ‘Reiterdenkmal’ would be an emotive tug-of-war between the former colonisers and the new powers in the government buildings.

This is understood, as the German colonial occupation has a bloody history, literally wiping out whole small nations in their former colony, Namibia.

To this day, the international Jewish community remains adamant in its daily efforts to keep the horror of the holocaust of the 1930s until the mid-1940s alive in the German mind. Namibia is an independent, sovereign and democratic African state with an elected, democratic ruling party. SWAPO is in power. Its citizens live a free life within the boundaries of all the structures and laws that have come with a democratic independence. This should be respected.

• Udo Froese is an independent political and socio-economic analyst and columnist, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.