At the preceding indaba held at the Midgard Lodge in 1997, Comrade Hidipo Hamutenya, then Minister of Trade and Industry, was one of the eminent guest speakers.  I was a lonely chairman of that Ambassadors’ Conference.  Places and faces have changed since but the objectives of Namibia’s Foreign Service, national priorities towards achieving sustainable social transformation and Economic Diplomacy as a vehicle for promoting smart partnerships remain immutable and evermore urgent.

 

I am grateful for the invitation to address this conference and congratulate you, Comrade Hamutenya, for bringing back home our Heads of Mission so soon after assuming your current assignment as Namibia’s Foreign Minister. I express my warm felicitations and hearty solidarity to you Comrade Minister for a successful outcome of your deliberations.

 

Two Ambassadors’ conferences had preceded this one. The first one was in 1993 at this very venue and the second one at Midgard in 1997. I said this in 1997: “Much knowledge, experience and professionalism have been accumulated by one and all (in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) in the years since 1990 and particularly after 1993.” I continued to say: “When we first met (in 1993), all of us were rookies in one form or another. We may still be rookies in other ways.  For, according to social scientists, the learning process continues for humans from cradle to grave. There is always room for improvement. Each new day brings uncertainties but also solutions.

 

Foreign Policy, at its best, is an externalization of domestic order and public policies. We cannot hope to be effective as Foreign Service operators if we do not know or care very much about national priorities and aspirations of the people. In other words, how can we really hope to promote and defend Namibia’s national and security interest (in the world) if we don’t know or care about its focus and ingredients?

 

Therefore, our task, collectively and severally, is to know our people as the first estate in the country whose interest supersedes all other interests, whether of the Government, state leaders, political parties, trade unions, business, media, ecclesiastics or (any other).” I punctuated those remarks with by now heavily over-used yet still poignant exhortation of JFK in 1961: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. I did not certainly forget the ICT inroads into and impact on Cabinet, Parliament, Boardroom, Classroom, and even Bedroom. It is good technology, we must conquer it and use it well! ICT opens up new vistas for skills, empowerment and development.

 

At this time of telecommunications explosion, magic of the internet and satellite snooping, no politician or diplomat can claim any monopoly of information, knowledge or unique expertise. There is, of course, no denying that the skills and the quality which diplomats acquire in the field give them an edge over others. Even so, diplomats must never cease to strive for self-improvement and innovation.

 

In my 1997 address, I also included various other topics such as the Green Paper on Namibia’s Foreign Policy; Cultural Consciousness; Pitfalls of “me-too syndrome”; Globalisation; New World Order; the Ruling Party’s 1994 Manifesto, as well as Personnel Matters.  I recall some Heads of Mission suggesting in response that mid-life crisis might have hit me prematurely. I think they are eating their words today about the negatives of globalisation, for example.

 

Previously somewhere, I had stressed the inevitable continuity of Namibia’s Foreign Policy objectives and in that sense the centrality of our Economic Diplomacy. Questions of war and peace will still be there. Class struggle (whichever way you define it) and disparities in wealth and income will continue in world societies. We must not throw away the old tools. Racial and ethnic strife will not disappear; gender inequality and domestic violence will pre-occupy governments. The environment will not be spared wholesale degradation as its fauna and flora are destroyed. Millions of human beings will be stricken by poverty and backwardness. Water scarcity will necessitate cross-border conflicts and dominate multilateral debates on a global scale. Nuclear proliferation will still hold the sword of Damocles over the heads of humankind.

 

That was, in essence, my general perspective on the state of the world in 1997. That was before the terrible wars and their consequences in Yugoslavia, the DRC, Afghanistan, lately in Iraq and elsewhere. There were no signs about the ASEAN currency crisis, terror bombs in South Africa, Kenya (twice), Tanzania, Morocco, and Indonesia. And above all, the tragedy of September 11 (2001) in the United States was simply unimaginable.

 

Honourable Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chairman of the Conference, you have gathered your colleague, the Deputy Minister, Permanent Secretary’s team and our Heads of Mission to spend some time together with you to tear apart, reassemble and fine-tune Namibia’s Foreign Policy perspectives and Economic Diplomacy. It is a correct and timely decision you have made and I strongly commend you for it. The State House, my Office as would the Government itself and the entire nation stand to benefit from your constructive deliberations, recommendations and roadmap for success. Go for it and good luck.

 

We here at home are hard at work mitigating the intricacies of economic growth, employment creation, HIV/AIDS menace, child welfare, skills training, gender streamlining and energizing mechanisms for prompt and efficient social service delivery. When leaders representing countries and organizations speak at Davos and G-8 conferences, our minds and anxieties are focused right here on the urgent challenges of drought but then again on unpredictable surprises of heavy floods from nowhere. Urban shanty towns, rural development, provision of clean water and electricity to needy communities are among the pressing demands on the Prime Minister’s job description list. You will, therefore, understand that when I see a foreign plane these days, I become frightened. I am so far away from them these days. Now, mountains, birds and rhythms of stars move me.

 

What the Ministry’s White Paper says about Economic Diplomacy shows the way forward. I urge you to devise a robust action plan and a timeframe for implementing its objectives.  This will lead to empowering the people for self-help and self-development schemes made possible by increased investment, trade, joint venture partnerships, ICT benefits and technical know-how from friends and partners. I agree that stability, enlightened and predictable national policies, investment in human capital and hardwork can indeed leapfrog Vision 2030 and NDP II. We will all proceed on this basis. We have got our work cut out for us.

 

Namibia, to admit the obvious, is a small, poor and developing country. When more than 70% of our citizens sweat to make ends meet the hard way on land and try to survive on subsistence agriculture in our desert country, that spells poverty and hunger. We will succeed and prosper, no doubt, but only if we could find the right mix of essentials and put them into Vision 2030 and stick to practical choices we adopt. This means consistency and pragmatism in strategy and policy. I trust, we will rise and win.

 

Economy demands homework, planning and adopting a culture of risk-taking. Namibia is not a basket-case holding up a begging bowl to the world for alms. Namibia can become the Switzerland or the Singapore of Africa by wisdom and hardwork. We only need to adapt our mindsets and adopt new thinking in dealing with challenges and seizing opportunities before us. There are neither pre-fabricated plans nor one-size-fits-all answers to poverty eradication, employment creation and social development.

 

SWAPO Party’s Political Action Plan calls upon all Namibians to accelerate reconciliation and social change by creating new opportunities for our people through economic growth, land reform and redistribution, domestic savings, education for all, healthcare, crime prevention and punishment, and by putting an end to gender inequality, domestic violence corruption and tribalism.

 

People, many I am afraid, seem to have become terrified and are avoiding the use of the word “ideology” for fear of being branded anti-democrats, socialists and so forth. The bravest among us are running for cover when someone utters the word “ideology” to avoid white-listing and victimization. What has happened? Ideology is not a dirty word.

 

After consulting authoritative academic sources, I established that ideology, in a nutshell, is thus: Integrated assertions, theories and aims about human life and society that constitute a socio-economic and political programme that is not static but dynamic in response to changing circumstances. Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836) is the godfather of ideology. Both The Wealth of Nations of Adam Smith (1776) and Das Kapital (1867) of Karl Marx played competing roles in the evolution of ideology. My idea of ideology for now is in Namibia “cultural consciousness”. Just watch me. Is that threatening or too revolutionary?

 

Now what’s the problem? Is ideology inherently bad? Not according to my research. It becomes good, bad or ugly only by virtue of man’s words, prejudices and actions when ideology is put to use to serve the ends of communism, socialism, capitalism, fascism, ujamaa or smart partnership.

 

Now, the smart partnership approach, which forms the essence of economic diplomacy, advocates a united front around core interests of potential competitors in favor of a win-win outcome. This view of social relations in the society has transformed within a few decades formerly poor, backward and illiterate South East Asian countries into today’s rapidly industrializing and modernizing, economic success stories: the Asian Tigers.

 

Smart Partnership is a reconstruction and development strategy which, by galvanizing human resource base, adding to it cultural, economic and technological competencies, as well as progressive policies of planning and resource mobilization towards sustainable social development and prosperity for all, unleashes human potential for success and prosperity.

 

Smart Partners are Government, business, labour, SOE’s, tertiary training and research institutions, SME’s, religious leadership and grassroots activists. Each party keeps its identity and agenda, not unlike the wonderful French-invented political cohabitation, but rather joins in useful linkages with others to create greater economic commonwealth and industrialization, in Namibia’s case towards implementing Vision 2030.

 

Comrade Chairman, we have now adopted the Ministry’s White Paper on Foreign Policy and Economic Diplomacy. It provides us with a dependable macro-economic and policy formulation framework. No public policy or white paper, however, says it all or is an end unto itself. A workable white paper must be responsive to crises and changes, follow a robust roadmap and observe benchmarks as tests for efficacy of the stated objectives in relation to people-centred goals. No other major public policy domain though is as complex and daunting as foreign affairs, security and global economy. These human pursuits always go together and from a total sum of the whole. This human activity yields more to change than permanency.

 

Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs is both the watchdog and catalyst for the Republic, protecting the nation’s interest abroad and winning friends for us who will become our smart partners at home. But that journey outwards always starts at home and works well only to the extent that the umbilical cord is kept intact between the source and the outposts at all times.

 

If you say to me, show me the place to put my level and I will bring you all the investments, trade and financing you need for development, I will respond to you saying but will you also bring along cure for AIDS and technology for creating lakes, dams and water reservoirs all over Namibia? Which is the real national priority? In this example, both are. We must make informed choices and that’s what policy formulation and implementation is all about both here at home and abroad.

 

In the whole world, human populations are getting younger. This is particularly true in Africa and Namibia is no exception. AIDS and poverty are wiping the young off the face of the earth. Who, in these circumstances, will inherit the world’s leadership and bring development and prosperity to Africa? Who will drive the African Union and NEPAD to our advantage and our collective salvation?

 

Somebody has said that all politics is local politics. I would accept that view and add that global economy makes sense only to the extent that its benefits satisfy the bread and butter concerns of the people locally. By this reasoning, foreign affairs and our pursuit of economic diplomacy worldwide represent the external projection of poverty, backwardness and fear that exercise the minds of Africans and Namibians daily. What we all must, therefore, accept is that the domestic order sets the national agenda and dictates the implementation process of NDPII, in collaboration with our friends and partners.

 

There can be no denying that constitutional order, stability, peaceful co-existence, reconciliation, democracy, respect for human rights, the rule of law, social harmony, and systematic reduction of income disparities among citizens are necessary conditions for transparent government. Let’s face the fact. They are, however, not in themselves sufficient conditions for eradicating poverty and ushering in prosperity for all. That said, in Namibia, we must solve the Land Question first once and for all and avail the poor Namibians of resources to rise above poverty and despair. When we achieve that, we can happily join hands together, all of us, for a new beginning. Today, we are not quite there yet and that’s one of the major impediments to peace, development and progress in our country.

 

Comrade Chairman, the world is in a state of tortured disarray characterized by unjust economic relations, international terrorism, threats and actual onslaught of the strong against the weak. Also, remember trade barriers, farm subsidies and scarcity of financing for development. Your task, as Namibia’s Foreign Minister, is an unenviable one. The unity and priorities that the developing world used to share in common in the past have been undermined. The Third World has become virtually voiceless. Multilateral consensus-building tradition at the United Nations has been set aside, while the Security Council is often being used as a tool by big powers to give legitimacy, ip-so-facto, to unauthorized military operations against sovereign states. Diplomacy is after all about dialogue but dialogue is no more.

 

Iraq, it appears, is no longer under Arab or Islamic rule. Iraq is seemingly threatening to pull out of OPEC. OPEC countries will soon lose any say in controlling oil production or fixing oil prices. The League of Arab States is uncharacteristically quiet. Could this lead to the second scramble for the Middle East, since the demise of the Ottoman Empire? ASEAN countries took a devastating knock in 1999 caused by foreign sabotage and local cynism. They are hamstrung in getting back on the track. Basically, the world has once again reverted back to the Cold War mentality. Dialogue is dead and war is regrettably the preferred instrument to settle differences among nations and governments, the old-fashion way.

 

Africa is, as all this is happening, at its weakest, politically, economically and socially. Who is to take the blame? I say Africa itself. Last year, African leaders heroically and triumphantly launched the African Union and paved the way for its recovery and development programme, NEPAD, to start its business in earnest. Where are we today really? Aimless and mindless, to tell the truth: spending valuable time, energy and resources on endless conference jamborees. The African Union will hit the ground and run to serve us only when its member states pay up their compulsory dues on time and in full and do so habitually. That most of them are not doing: Namibia is one of the shining examples for the better.

 

Those who are still in arrears, from the OAU days, must clear them in full and without any excuses. Africans dutifully pay up at the UN but not at home. Only if all member states pay up can we stand tall and begin implementing the AU agenda, including establishing its vital continental institutions. The so-called Peer Review Mechanism will not save Africa. Unity, the African masses themselves and hardwork will in the long run to save our continent and bring development.

 

Comrade Chairman, during my more than year-long deployment at the United Nations, representing our country in the Security Council and presiding over the General Assembly session (1999-2000), I found the African Group there in a widespread state of amnesia. Most of the members showed confusion about Africa’s urgent priorities and overwhelming needs of our people. Outside the Security Council, I found little help from African delegations. The gains Africa had made in the past by relying on our unity and solidarity have been squandered.

 

Ironically, the victories we had scored through completing decolonization and burying apartheid seemed the very reasons for abandoning the previous winning consensus and a lively spirit of Pan-African patriotism. Most didn’t care about the business of the General Assembly and ECOSOC as I saw the situation and instead behaved like spectators mimicking delegates of rich nations. The Millennium Development Targets for 2015 adopted in 2000 contain a full scope of what is to be done to reverse Africa’s economic woes and global social disparities. In other multilateral fora as well, African diplomats are playing truancy today. And that is very sad, indeed. Maybe it is a contagion from home.

 

It was in the face of this scandal that my collaborators and I worked very hard in my office to make sure that both the centrality of the General Assembly within the UN system and the recognition of Africa’s special needs got incorporated as key concerns of the UN Millennium Declaration (2000). Africa is the poorest continent and Africans are dying in ever alarming numbers. Africans die of poverty, AIDS, in refugee camps and by generalized violence. African diplomats must be daring, creative and pro-active at the UN and in other places where they serve. It is their duty to promote the Millennium Development Targets which have become the yardstick towards 2015. Africa’s unity, survival and development is the business of all Africans. We would skirt that patriotic duty at our own peril. We are today free thanks to the General Assembly and must continue to use that important forum for skills and development.

 

Comrade Chairman, I want to end my speech with the following remarks: The greatest danger today to life for the poor and the weak nations and peoples of the world consists of two words: poverty and AIDS. For the rich and powerful nations and peoples, it is international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. In fact, both are equally the greatest dangers to life and civilization except that our priorities and interests differ. That is the disaster we all face.

 

Whoever actually detonates those powderkegs would not matter, millions of human beings will perish and that will in turn do ghastly damage to human security as we know it today. To forestall that terrible endgame, it must be our common duty to replace diversity with uniformity, save lives and invest in peace and social justice.

 

Reconciling after conflict is a precious virtue which is good for big and small nations alike. It opens the way for dialogue and healing. Namibia has taken this path and we are making progress day by day. I urge the big powers in the UN Security Council and G-8 to reconcile for the sake of world peace, security and stability and specifically to restore the damaged image and integrity of the UN system and thereby enhance the work of the Secretary General.

 

Namibia possesses no economic power, no financial power, no military power and no technological power to assert itself on the world stage and confront others. But Namibia has a good number of nationals who possess, individually and collectively, tremendous endowments of brainpower and experience. With these proven qualities and capabilities, Namibians are ready to play our part as peacemakers, partners and facilitators in conflict situations to help restore dialogue, multilateralism and international cooperation, as well as in strengthening the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law. I am done and appreciate your forbearance.

 

I Thank You.