It was most interesting what Mr. Bob Kandetu had to tell us via his ‘Pages On My Mind’ in your paper; most interesting and most important too. Affirmative Action (AA) has a 22-year old history in Namibia; its results lay bare, no guessing is necessary about its ‘merits’.
AA came along accompanied by Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). Looking with hindsight on what happened in South Africa and Namibia and with the knowledge of the history of previous such actions, especially in case of the empowerment of Afrikaans-speaking people when they took over from the English-speaking, we could have foretold what would happen – and some did.
Yes, since apartheid on the basis of colour was made an official law to ‘finally’ exclude the majority of the people and by comparing its results with what happened after 1990 here and after 1994 there, we indeed are now able to judge these forms of ‘empowerment’ – in the end they all proved as futile as our new Affirmative Action will do.
Empowering a part of a population as part of the political strategy to ‘rule forever’ is negating the holistic science; it was an antiquated tool of feudal rulers and is now anachronistic, not fit for our times. As an economic tool this strategy is proving itself today as deadly wrong too; it is for all to see. Such a program cannot succeed, because it puts separating barriers into the highly complex process of nation-building. AA breaks down instead of building up!
In Namibia, AA is unconstitutional - this is because of its discriminatory and plain racist nature (skin colour is the decisive factor) – and not only because of that, it should also be forbidden, because it will, we know it from the example of South Africa, definitely corrupt a society’s future in a very profound way. Do we not see the beginning of that corruption already every day? The basis of our new AA is ‘divide et impera’, which is used by every imperialistic autocracy – and autocracies are all imperialistic. I could imagine that we all have had enough autocracy in our own history; we could do with a bit of democracy now.
It is not only the white male that made the list of endangered species in southern Africa, it is all those who want to live without any intellectual bonds, without the chains of any already failed ideology. They are the people we need, because they are the true crème de la crème of southern Africa!
Affirmative Action proved to be a waste for our society and together with BEE, it proved to be the ‘Mad-Cow Disease’ of our political and economic strategists.

Anna Hansman
Windhoek
(Letter has been shortened: Ed)