Is this possible? Namibia the richest country in the world per capita, no poverty, no unemployment, everybody has clothes, everybody has food, a house, a car and a job. Is this a dream?
Not at all! With the right economic policy this is possible.
Q. Will big government create this wealth?
The answer is no. There's no example in the world of a big government that made their countries wealthy.
Q. Is big business going to make us rich?
The answer is no. There is no example in the world where big companies have made a country rich.
Q. What about the unions? Will they create wealth for us?
The answer is no. There is no example in the world of a country that's been made wealthy by unions.
Q. Will the World Bank or Bill Gates make us rich through his $60 billion welfare fund?
The answer is no. Their agenda is health. So you will end up being healthy, with no food or job or clothes. The Gates', the Buffet's, Bono etc are products of their sophisticated society. They don't have the faintest clue how to create sustainable jobs in Africa. Bono won’t last a day on a Outjo farm.
Q. Will small business and businessmen make us rich?
The answer is yes. It's a fact that 70% of a nation's wealth is being produced by small business people with 50 or less employees and maybe 80% of the employment. There are lots of examples like Switzerland, Singapore countries with no natural resources that became wealthy.
Q. We have small business people in Namibia, but why are we not rich?
The answer is: The environment for small business to flourish is not available in Africa. Small business people at the moment are like mice that scatter amongst the feet in a world inhabited by dinosaurs namely: big government, big unions and big companies.
So what has to be done to create a fertile environment for small business to flourish?
The answer is economic freedom. What is economic freedom?
Economic freedom is a small government (budget less than 20% of GNP), honest administration, low tax base, peaceful and democratic, freedom of speech, freedom from bureaucracy, helpful and understanding unions and population and government that admire respect and champion the cause of small business men. Most developing countries are not economically free. They unfortunately copied the western forms of government (a rich man's government), with all the big bureaucracy, parastatals (government enterprises), laws and regulations, high taxes, and social engineering agendas. This is like a poor man buying a Rolls Royce with all the extras while he could only afford a Toyota Corolla and in the end of the day the bank must repossess the car. I'm willing to bet anybody that if Namibia should be rated for 10 years in a row as one of the 5 freest economies in the world by the appropriate international agencies, unemployment and poverty in Namibia would be eliminated. If I am wrong I would liquidate my companies and myself and publicly give all my money to the poor and join their ranks. If anybody tells you I am wrong, let him or her spell out his or her economic solutions in terms where its success can be publicly monitored and measured like mine.Not at all! With the right economic policy this is possible.
Q. Will big government create this wealth?
The answer is no. There's no example in the world of a big government that made their countries wealthy.
Q. Is big business going to make us rich?
The answer is no. There is no example in the world where big companies have made a country rich.
Q. What about the unions? Will they create wealth for us?
The answer is no. There is no example in the world of a country that's been made wealthy by unions.
Q. Will the World Bank or Bill Gates make us rich through his $60 billion welfare fund?
The answer is no. Their agenda is health. So you will end up being healthy, with no food or job or clothes. The Gates', the Buffet's, Bono etc are products of their sophisticated society. They don't have the faintest clue how to create sustainable jobs in Africa. Bono won’t last a day on a Outjo farm.
Q. Will small business and businessmen make us rich?
The answer is yes. It's a fact that 70% of a nation's wealth is being produced by small business people with 50 or less employees and maybe 80% of the employment. There are lots of examples like Switzerland, Singapore countries with no natural resources that became wealthy.
Q. We have small business people in Namibia, but why are we not rich?
The answer is: The environment for small business to flourish is not available in Africa. Small business people at the moment are like mice that scatter amongst the feet in a world inhabited by dinosaurs namely: big government, big unions and big companies.
So what has to be done to create a fertile environment for small business to flourish?
The answer is economic freedom. What is economic freedom?
Let me present you with another helpful proposal to fast track economic growth in Namibia: "The government putts an end to value-added tax (vat), for 5 years. That would immediately put cash in the pockets of the poor. Cut government expenditure by as much as possible, this will help to curtail bureaucracy. Borrow the rest of the fiscal shortfall from the World Bank or some friendly nation like Germany at low rates. The result: you will find that the economic growth rate of Namibia will double from 4% to 8% or more and the tax base for the re-introduction of vat after 5 years would nearly have doubled supplying an income stream to the government that will comfortably pay back the intermediate loan at a lower vat rate than now."
My development plan for Namibia
It is now the third anniversary of this message as published by me in the Namibian Press at my personal expense and I will continue with it every year as long as possible until poverty and unemployment are eradicated in Namibia. My proposal is that the whole of Namibia must become a game reserve. If you ask a visitor to Namibia what impresses him the most, he will tell you it is our wide-open spaces and our game. But there are lots of wide-open spaces in other African countries too. For example the Serengeti. What do we have more than these wide-open spaces? We have a modern infrastructure and stability. We are therefore in a unique position compared to the rest of Africa. We have what economists called a competitive advantage, but we are not focusing at the moment on this competitive advantage. We do not have a national focus with a sound business model and road map to take advantage of our competitive advantage to become the richest nation, (the Switzerland of Africa) by way of example.
Let us take Spain for example. Spain was a poor European country. They had few natural assets apart from a nice coastline and nice weather. The Spanish Government, together with the private sector, opened up the Costa de Sol coastline for development and tourism and today there are hundreds of hotels and marinas. Spain every year attracts 40 million tourists and with a population of approximately 40 million, they are now a rich European country. Imagine if Namibia can attract 2 million foreign tourists instead of 200 000 at the moment. Then Namibia with its 2 million population should be theoretically as rich as Spain per capita. But what will happen if Namibia can accommodate 3 million tourists. You can imagine.
I can see in the future a Namibia with no internal fences except around the cities and villages where the game like in the Serengeti can migrate freely from the north in Etosha and Ovambo right down south to the Orange River. Millions and millions of game migrating freely over our country with the cities and villages becoming super rest camps, so to speak, exactly like the camps in the Etosha National Park just on a different scale. Five minutes out of Windhoek, it should be possible for a foreign tourist to see a lion kill, for example catching a zebra and on the big north-south highway Namibians and foreign tourists will daily experience the fantastic African wild life opera or play of nature taking its course and living its life.
Please bear in mind that nobody will be forced to participate in this nation wide game reserve. Of course there will be pockets of agricultural, industrial, mines as well as communal areas. The idea is for the maximum amount of land (for example 80%), to be incorporated on a willing basis spurred on by the success, wealth and job creation of the participants in this national Game Reserve.
This Namibian game reserve (the whole country) in its totality is the only workable sustainable model for Namibia that makes sense. There is no other way at this stage in time. Bill Gates is not going to come to Windhoek and build a computer factory. General Motors is not going to build an assembly line in Namibia. Boeing is not going to start building airplanes here. We must realize our shortcomings and our constraints. Only then will everybody realize that the best that we have to offer to the rest of the world is our tourism potential and here we do have a competitive advantage.
Every citizen, every business, every official in the Government should work to achieve this goal. This road map for Namibia should have priority above all other matters for the nation. Students at school and University should have tourism and nature conservation as a mandatory subject. All decisions that are taken in the business and public sector should be weighed against only one question. Is this going to contribute to the Namibian game reserve and foreign tourism or is it going to be to its
detriment? So where does Erindi and I come into the picture? We on Erindi would like to set the example for the rest of the country to follow. The seedbed, the womb where this future Namibian model can be tried and tested and the practical intellectual capital be accumulated. What happens on Erindi can branch out or seed the rest of the country. The practical experience gained in Erindi of how to accommodate large numbers of tourists and create large numbers of employment will be passed on to the rest of the country.
It is imperative that we should learn how to live with nature in harmony and also take from nature on a sustainable basis. This is the future of our planet. God gave us this large inheritance in Africa and if we do not learn these skills, we will lose everything. What the colonial Governments did by moth balling huge tracks of land in Africa was maybe the right way 80 years ago, but the intellectual perspective of those decisions is not going to stand the test of time. Population pressure is going to force us to develop new business plans. Please remember most national game reserves in the world are a financial liability to the Government and if we cannot find a way to conserve and utilize a win-win situation we are doomed. The national parks of the past were good for it's time but its shelf life has now expired.
I am just a man that will feel very proud if I can say: "I have played a little role in this African success story". Namibia is now the number one tourist destination in Africa, and the richest, where poverty and unemployment is something of the past.
Thank you for your time
Gert Joubert
Please bear in mind that nobody will be forced to participate in this nation wide game reserve. Of course there will be pockets of agricultural, industrial, mines as well as communal areas. The idea is for the maximum amount of land (for example 80%), to be incorporated on a willing basis spurred on by the success, wealth and job creation of the participants in this national Game Reserve.
This Namibian game reserve (the whole country) in its totality is the only workable sustainable model for Namibia that makes sense. There is no other way at this stage in time. Bill Gates is not going to come to Windhoek and build a computer factory. General Motors is not going to build an assembly line in Namibia. Boeing is not going to start building airplanes here. We must realize our shortcomings and our constraints. Only then will everybody realize that the best that we have to offer to the rest of the world is our tourism potential and here we do have a competitive advantage.
Every citizen, every business, every official in the Government should work to achieve this goal. This road map for Namibia should have priority above all other matters for the nation. Students at school and University should have tourism and nature conservation as a mandatory subject. All decisions that are taken in the business and public sector should be weighed against only one question. Is this going to contribute to the Namibian game reserve and foreign tourism or is it going to be to its
detriment? So where does Erindi and I come into the picture? We on Erindi would like to set the example for the rest of the country to follow. The seedbed, the womb where this future Namibian model can be tried and tested and the practical intellectual capital be accumulated. What happens on Erindi can branch out or seed the rest of the country. The practical experience gained in Erindi of how to accommodate large numbers of tourists and create large numbers of employment will be passed on to the rest of the country.
It is imperative that we should learn how to live with nature in harmony and also take from nature on a sustainable basis. This is the future of our planet. God gave us this large inheritance in Africa and if we do not learn these skills, we will lose everything. What the colonial Governments did by moth balling huge tracks of land in Africa was maybe the right way 80 years ago, but the intellectual perspective of those decisions is not going to stand the test of time. Population pressure is going to force us to develop new business plans. Please remember most national game reserves in the world are a financial liability to the Government and if we cannot find a way to conserve and utilize a win-win situation we are doomed. The national parks of the past were good for it's time but its shelf life has now expired.
I am just a man that will feel very proud if I can say: "I have played a little role in this African success story". Namibia is now the number one tourist destination in Africa, and the richest, where poverty and unemployment is something of the past.
Thank you for your time
Gert Joubert
2 comments:
I could not believe my eyes when I saw that there is absolutely no comment on Mr. Joubert's article on Namibia. Has the entire nation became too blind, too scared to speak out? This article also appeared in the Namibian daily "Die Republikein" on Tuesday, 4 November 2008. I am 100% in support of Mr. Joubert's views. Here is a man who not only has a viable, workable vision for Namibia but who also is not afraid to speak out - at considerable personal cost. In my opinion there is a great need to promote and further this idea. Given our current human resource potential and levels of technical/industrial know-how, all we indeed have to offer is wide open spaces AND an ever growing demand for it from the international tourist community. Coupled with the development of viable small businesses (on a national scale) this is the only way forward for Namibia. In addition, Mr. Joubert is already proving on a smaller scale that this is possible and a viable alternative. If only the Namibian authorities could let go of self interest, self enrichments, hang-ups about the past and political pettiness, we could create real wealth for all!
Dear Mr. Joubert,
It has been some time since I first saw your advert that was published in The Observer, and while I set the paper aside to write you a comment I have not had a chance to reply until now.
First off I would like to applaud you on taking the time to write your open message, and for paying (what I assume must have been a rather stiff price) to have it published so that everyone else can have access to it.
Normally we only see adverts in papers that promote a certain business or brand - in your case you wrote a message that should serve as a model to enrich the lives of all Namibians and not just your own/your companies etc. - thank you for your humbling contribution, and thank you for injecting a breath of fresh air into the "gloom and doom" scenario that we normally see associated with any press about our wonderful country.
In regard to your message I would say that I agree with the following points:
• Agree that small sustainable businesses are the way to go.
• Agree that there should be governmental tax breaks (less tax would mean that government would have to spend its money more carefully and this would hopefully equate to a more transparent way of administration in our government)
• Agree that there should be a suspension of VAT to give small businesses the break to increase their revenues to bring forth greater investments into their infrastructures and markets.
• Agree that there should be more international business collaboration in Namibia and that foreign nationals be given the opportunity to live here (see more on this later).
Now to the reality of the present situation in Namibia.
I hope that you will agree with me that it isn't exactly easy to do business in our country - too high taxes with very little benefits to the average man on the street (compared to other developed countries), low levels of education, an impractical labour system etc.
A case in point: there is talk of increasing taxation on rough minerals that are exported from Namibia, while this may seem as a good idea to some it has to pointed out that due to the current worldwide financial crisis even big international businesses are finding it difficult to keep their heads above water and adding a new taxation on minerals could result in the increase of mine closures (see the current closure of Tsumeb West and Matchless) as well as a large amount of layoffs and loss of revenue to government, employees and subcontractors.
Instead of government increasing taxation; I would suggest that the mines either increase staff wages (at least this way the people actually doing the work will benefit - instead of even larger amounts of money being deposited into government coffers - which have a very strange way of continuously "misappropriating" themselves) or put some money aside which has to be invested into the community or natural area.
This is our government's current idea of "sound economic policy"- let's tax the largest contributor of our GDP and let's see what happens.
Political slurry aside - let's see what is good about Namibia.
On the positive side we have a vast array of natural resources, a good road and infrastructure system, good telecommunications, relatively low levels of crime and a currently stable political system.
As someone that worked in the tourism industry for a few years, I whole heartedly agree with you that Namibia could greatly benefit from being turned into a huge game reserve.
Besides the large number of unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled jobs that would be directly created (mass poverty reduction) by the establishment of this game reserve, there would be a number of positive financial spin offs in the rest of the tourism industry (currently the 2nd or 3rd largest contributor to Namibia's GDP) in the form of expansion of other tourism related fields (accommodation, guides/tours, travel, retail etc.) all of which would receive the much needed FOREX that keeps many further businesses alive.
However there are always some problems (nothing that can't be changed though) that we face moving progressively into the future are addressed below:
Stock theft is a major concern to most farmers (my uncle was almost murdered during an attack on his farm) and the same will be true for the game reserve.
Ideally humanity will see that there is a larger benefit in up-keeping a number of wild animals in their natural state - but this unfortunately isn't going to happen, there will always be people that will want more and don't want to work as hard as the rest of us.
These poachers will have to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law - poaching should then be seen as stealing a Namibian natural resources and assets.
While I did agree that Namibia should become more "foreigner friendly" it should be said that these foreigners must meet a few strict criteria.
They should ideally be from developed countries; they must prove that they are somehow adding value to the Namibian economy (no refugees that take away local's jobs) by being in Namibia and they should possess the financial resources to be self sufficient for a determined amount of time.
I validate my objections and stipulations due to the following grounds:
I have often seen that foreign nationals come into our country buying up natural resources - only to have them pay "peanuts" to the local man who had to slave away to create or extract these resources, this same foreigner then sells Namibian assets oversees (at great profit) and all profits get spent and are invested oversees - i.e. no job creation here, no taxation on profits in Namibia, no sustainable development in our country.
What is funny about this situation is that a Namibian company that exports to oversees is taxed on profits, has to pay salaries, has to pay for local utilities and rent and reinvests its money back in Namibia - a catch 22 I hear you say?
Well what do you say about the fact that the government is fully aware of this situation and still does nothing about it?
I have heard many great things about what is being done at Erindi - you offer good rates and I like the direction that you are going.
It seems that you are one of the few people that are willing to invest in their idea/ideal and are willing to forgo quick profits in exchange for a sustainable venture.
I have unfortunately never had the chance to visit but who knows what is written in the stars for the future.
This ends my feedback on your advert, but if you will allow me just a few lines in accordance with the train of thought that is sustainable development in Namibia.
I was once asked by a foreign consultant that was doing some work for the Ministry of Trade and Industry on how Namibia could reach its developmental goals.
Fist off the consultant wanted to know how and where we could put up large factories to curb unemployment, as I quickly pointed out to him Namibia's problems are not unemployment per say but a lack of focus by our policymakers on what is important to grow any countries infrastructure and maximize our natural resources.
So what did I suggest then?
Well for any country to flourish we have to be able to provide each citizen with at least all of their basics needs.
We have to ensure that everyone has access to enough clean, potable water - without water there is no life.
Since leaving the tourism industry I am employed in a large African-based water treatment company - the tools for producing quality water from any source in Namibia are available if the correct people will just sit down and invest for the long term in properly sustainable infrastructures.
If you have water (and we have vast areas of unused or should I rather say misused land) then make sure that each citizen has something too eat - how are we supposed to become economically stable if we do not properly invest in our agricultural sector?
We import 90% of all vegetables and fruit from South Africa!
Now I'm not saying that we can plant everything in Namibia, environmental aspects will just not allow that, but 90% of our food (and animal feed) is imported - how does anyone expect Namibia to become self sufficient?
This might seem to be in contrast to your national game park idea - but hear me out.
There are thousand s of hectares of "unusable" land in the northwest of Namibia - why unusable?
Well someone thought that it would be a great idea to introduce non-endemic species of bush from the Andes into Namibia - the result large amounts, of land covered with "useless" invader bush that neither our domesticated animals nor our wild animals eat.
I say useless in "" because there is actually a great use for this foreign pest - turn it into charcoal!
Yes charcoal, one of the most cost effective and environmentally sound means of heating and cooking - it retains heat longer than wood, it doesn't smoke as much as wood and I don't have to see any more multi-decade old camelthorns being chopped up to make firewood for the next braai.
If a cost effective, large scale means to harvest invader bush is found - we will end up with a highly sellable product and vast expanses of usable farmland as an added bonus.
I was actually toying with the idea to convince the Department of Prisons to use prisoners to harvest invader bush - this would mean that these criminals are put to work (instead of idly eating away our tax dollars) and the whole of Namibia could benefit because we would end up paying less for our food due to larger amounts of usable agricultural land.
Next on the agenda would be local energy supply - with all our sun (Keetmanshoop for example is the 7th sunniest place on the whole earth) why doesn't government make solar cells etc. tax free?
While our state utilities can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on setting up power grids to Zimbabwe (of all places) what is being done about investing into long term, environmentally friendly, renewable energy sources?
All of the above issues are a "tip of the iceberg" so to speak but do warrant serious further investigation.
I thank you for your time, and perhaps maybe one day if you are ever in Windhoek we can meet to further discuss these issues that are of national interest.
Kindest regards
Ernst A. Schnaitmann
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