Namibia: Mansions Planned to Keep President Safe

This little news flash certainly inspires one to confidence and pride in the legacy of African responsibility that seems to play out over and over again. Confidence and pride in that the wealthier countries of the world community continue to transfer significant portions of their treasury to the African continent, to ensure that people who live lives of dire poverty can have those lives improved, as long as their governments gratefully accepting international assistance, use it to their peoples' advantage.

There's that old adage about gift-giving; once that gift changes hands the giver has no say whatever in how it is used. Of one's own free one one makes a gift, transferring something of value to someone else who may then do with it what they will. And charity too is a gift, one that elevates the giver, and benefits the receiver. Except that funding handed over to impoverished nations is meant to improve the lot of all those who inhabit the country, it is not the private preserve of that country's leading elite.

At least, that's the way we would like to interpret the exchange. After all, why would any democratic, advanced country of the world willingly deprive itself of money it could use internally to good advantage for its own civic well-being and that of its population, if it knows of a certainty that to proffer it, personal greed will benefit. But the proof manifests itself fairly consistently; international aid never quite seems to filter down to benefit those who need it.

On the other hand, that might seem to be a warped perspective by those who feel that by administering the affairs of their struggling country with its sparse economy and needy population, they are entitled to all the perquisites of royalty. And this seems a particularly African predeliction, as it seems to happen. Take, for example Namibia, which is planning to build a number of "mini state houses" for its president.

Four years ago a splendid official residence was built for President Hifikepunye Pohamba in Windhoek, Namibia's capital, at a cost of $73.4-million. The president's clique claim that the string of presidential mansions that are in the planning stages are an imperative. To spare the head of state the dreadful ordeal of spending the night on occasion in hotels where others have stayed and where "many evil things happen".

So, at an initial cost of a reputed $20.7-million - close to the total of Namibia's annual aid from the European Union, a series of mansions in each of the country's 14 regions is to be built, at a total cost of $146.8 million. This is a brilliant initiative, as it happens, of the ruling Swapo party. There are critics, of course, who bemoan that as a waste.

For President Pohamba, like the potentate he is, has a private jet and alternately a helicopter at his disposal, which could simply fly him back to the capital, if staying over at a hotel is so offensive to his majesty. They money, they bleat rationally, would be far more useful spent on medicine for hospitals, textbooks for schools, or boosting the pensions of the elderly who live on $60 a month.

Little wonder there are aspirants at large who would dearly love to take the place of reigning heads of states of Africa. There is one, in fact, in Ottawa, temporarily working at a rather menial job, but whose supporters consider him the new president of a new country. This is a tribal group from Adwal State, currently part of Somaliland, which itself declared itself to be a nation, breaking away from Somalia.

A photo of the good man was recently published in a local newspaper, showing him as the president-elect of Awdal State, awaiting its declaration of independence and recognition by the international community. He sits regally within an interior obviously meant to convey the impression of sumptuous wealth. As tribal and national aspirations go, this appears to fall neatly into a long-established pattern.