WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2011-04-22 Time: 17:00:03 Posted By: News Poster
By Alexactus T Kaure
LAST Friday, the Minister of Defence, Charles Namoloh, had a chance to defend his Ministry’s bloated budget.
He was motivating the N$3,1 billion the Ministry will receive this financial year. His defence was a total flop and it only confirmed what some of us have been writing and saying over the years. In another piece on this issue I wrote that “we have been moving in the direction of increasing militarisation of our society which might not bode well for the future as the ‘Libyan tragedy’ now clearly demonstrates. If there is any lesson we can now draw from that, is that African militaries aren’t there to protect their countries from foreign aggression but rather to protect rulers who are no longer wanted.”
Minister Namoloh said in his motivation, that ‘Namibia should be prepared to sacrifice resources for defence as SADC is not immune to similar turbulences as seen in North Africa’. He goes on to say that the unrest that started in North Africa is a wake-up call for the rest of Africa to be prepared for all eventualities.
The Minister is right and wrong at the same time. He is right in saying that North African-type ‘revolutions’ are possible here in Southern Africa – it has already been happening in Zimbabwe, albeit on a different scale. It might happen in Angola and Swaziland as well. People have had enough of these rulers who have been in power for decades without actually improving the lot of their own people and all the corrupt activities that go on under such systems – the case of Hosni Mubarak is just one example. One wonders how much of those petrodollars don’t go into the private pockets of some of those corrupt officials in the MPLA government in Luanda?
But he is totally wrong to assume that the role of the military is to quell internal unrest as it was apparent in his motivation speech. Namoloh says: “We are living in a rapidly changing and unpredictable world where the future cannot be predicted with certainty. If allowed to linger, internal strife can cause large-scale instability in the country”. And in his view, Namibia needs a strong and a robust Defence Force to guarantee peace and stability. This is the closest we come to the conclusion that Namibia’s ‘enemies’ are internal and not external.
As regular letter writers to The Namibian, T. Itembu and K. Basson said recently: ‘In the long term, the Namibian military would be a tool to suppress an uprising by the working classes’. They are correct in their observation because we have seen time and again in Africa, not least the current ‘velvet’ (in some cases at least) revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East, how the militaries have been used to clamp down on internal strife.
Also last Friday a misguided Young Turk from the Swapo Party Youth League, Charles Siyauya, wrote a lengthy article in New Era, spiritedly defending the defence budget and also attacking my person and an article I wrote about the military budget. Just to clear some air for this gentleman, first I’m not a ‘certain’ Alexactus T. Kaure. He knows precisely who I’m and I also don’t have a master. I don’t work at The Namibian – I’m a freelance columnist. And as a student of the late Professor Archie Mafeje, I cannot possibly worship anyone. Please confine the culture of hero worship and praise-singing to your Swapo Party. Secondly I’m not fond of crime, theft and corruption. How can one be fond of those? Or does the gentleman have problem with even the most basic Namlish? Neither did I say the military should fight those ills – he must re-read my article. Thirdly, I’m not an anti-Swapo Party activist. As a socialist, I’m against the Swapo capitalist agenda which is pushing many of our people into poverty 21 years after independence.
Following in the footsteps of Minister Namoloh, Siyauya wrote that: “The security sectors deserve more from our national budget because internal and external security is a public good which is too costly and unpredictable because you can’t estimate how much you will spend on a rebellion, insurrection …” Maybe he has the Caprivi insurrection here in mind. It’s again the same mind-set that the military is there to fight internal ‘enemies’. One thing that we have to realise and perhaps be modest about, is that Namibia’s foreign policy has no impact on the broader configuration of global politics and relations. Thus to say that foreign relations is an expensive exercise that we should be ready to pay for is nonsense.
Thus arguing from our own peculiar situation as defined by our regional context and also from a Kantian perspective that democracies rarely or never go to war with one another (the democratic peace thesis) and Namibia being part of the SACU and SADC family which are said to be democratic, there is thus no imminent danger of war.
This might be a one-man crusade but I would still argue for a scaling down of the military budget in the future and instead put the billions of dollars to fight the real enemies – underdevelopment, unemployment and poverty.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 21 April 2011
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201104220352.html?viewall=1