In October 2019, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) filed an application against Samancor Chrome at the Johannesburg High Court, accusing the company’s directors and board members of self-enrichment through corporate corruption, fraud, and profit shifting practices in the form of billions of Rand sent to tax havens overseas (Alternative Information & Development Centre, 2019).
Uploaded date: 05 July, 2024
This article is a critical response to World Athletics (formerly the International Association of Athletics Federations) and the western ethos of athletics for their sustained systemic exclusion of women, particularly black women. We make a case in defence of two Namibian athletes, Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi, who were removed from the 400-meter race
AlthoughNamibiahaspromulgated very progressive laws in support of gender equality and the empowerment of women, there is still a big gap between formal equality as provided for by the law and substantive equality. Substantive equality is demonstrated by key indicators like the incidence of multidimensional poverty; access to employment; ownership of productive assets; differences in incomes and wealth; access to social protection; levels of gender-based violence; sexual and reproductive health and rights; and the differential impacts of COVID-19. Budgets reflect governments’ social, economic and political priorities and provide the fiscal means through which they can address such inequalities.
Social injustice is neither morally neutral nor does it happen in a social vacuum. To create an authentic environment which reflects some measure of social justice will need concrete symbols or life-enhancing goods. Thus, to genuinely reflect humane values requires outward expressions that concretise our social order. This socioreligious and ethical analysis, as a framework, explores the need for such a tangible response to social injustice. For instance, liberty, which is a central value for a civilised society, must provide more than conducive social conditions. It requires actual conditions of liberty that will authenticate and guarantee the continuation of post-independence social conditions. These conditions are needed not for political reasons but as an ethical pursuit to humanise society. We intend to explore tentative answers to the key questions: What does it mean to be human in Namibia? What are the symbols of justice needed to express a fuller human experience?
In Namibia’s socio-economic landscape, it is apparent that land inequality is a harbinger of many other forms of inequality. Historical accounts are replete with assertions that the fight for independence was by and large about land (see e.g. Botha, 2000; Pankhurst, 1996; Werner, 1993). What stretches credulity in the post- independence era is that patterns of land distribution have remained largely undisturbed. The Namibia Statistics Agency damningly reveals that previously advantaged farmers (read whites) own 27.9 million hectares (70%) of the freehold agricultural land, compared to 6.4 million hectares (16%) owned by previously disadvantaged farmers (Namibia Statistics Agency, 2018, pp. 12, 30).
The World Bank’s report on inequality in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) recommends improving security of tenure in both urban and rural areas to significantly benefit household income and equity. Land ownership was identified as an anti-poverty tool. The Bank argues that secure tenure is important for agriculture and food security, as it provides incentives for farmers to invest in land and security;
Large parts of Namibia’s central northern regions were occupied by the Hai||om during pre-colonial times. This includes the territory of what is today known as Etosha National Park, one of Namibia’s foremost tourist destinations. Etosha has since time immemorial been part of the traditional territory of the Hai||om people and on this basis, the Hai||om people are entitled to ownership, or rights of exclusive beneficial occupation, of the land.36 The Hai||om, a former hunter gatherer community in Namibia, is the largest of Namibia’s six San (Bushmen) groups in Namibia (Tsumib heads of argument, par. 258; see also Dieckmann et al., 2014).
Introduction Inequality refers to differences in the distribution of power, resources, and opportunities between and within different groups in society. These differences can relate to income, employment, earnings, assets, health, education, and access to basic services and infrastructure (Maluleke, 2019). Namibia and South Africa are amongst the most unequal societies in the world, characterised by a myriad of social and economic inequalities, including in income and wealth, health, education, energy and, gender (Deghaye et al., 2014). These inequalities are rooted in the countries’ brutal racist history of colonialism and apartheid and thus strongly pronounced along racial lines. With the achievement of independence and democracy in the
This case study will look at the current political, economic, and social challenges in Eswatini and how recent ongoing political protests against the monarch have been gaining momentum over the past year. Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, is both the last absolute monarchy in Africa (Sherinda, 2021) and the most unequal country on the continent (Seery et al., 2019). The link between autocracy and inequality will be investigated to understand the ongoing political protests, heavy- handed security response and current impasse. Rather than ‘state capture’, a term that became popular in political discourse relating in particular to the actions of former President Jacob Zuma in South Africa,
On 23 December 2020, more than 2 000 Shoprite workers went on strike, demanding better salaries and improved working conditions. Temporary workers, some of whom had been employed for more than 10 years, were paid between N$1 200 and N$1 600 per month. Permanent workers were paid between N$2 000 and N$3 000 per month. Shoprite, which boasted a net cash position of N$ 10 billion that year, flatly rejected the workers’ demands, saying that it is not part of its culture and practice to pay transport and housing allowances to its workers.
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