Namibian ex-combatant reintegration has mainly operated through government employment. Ex-combatant demands and government programmes have focused much less on farmland, monetary compensation, vocational training, soft credit or other forms of support, although these too have formed part of the repertoire of reintegration mechanisms. Why is this the case? At one level, the answer is simple. Public employment was the meeting point of supply and demand in reintegration. Jobs were foremost in the list of ex-combatant demands and public employment was something that was easy for the government to provide. It could not transform the ex-combatants into entrepreneurs or force their employment by the private sector but it could remobilize them in the service of the armed forces and the police or give them jobs in ministries and public agencies. It was only after public employment had been provided to most eligible ex-combatants that their demands, and the focus of veteran policies, shifted towards monetary compensation. The programmes that specifically catered for the ex-combatants played an important part in turning them into an interest group that could over time remobilize around a new set of grievances and demands. Jobs and compensation, in other words, were not alternatives but were, rather, complementary, meaning that attention could turn to the latter once the former had been taken care of.
However, public employment also constitutes the relationship between ex- combatants and the state in ways that explain its centrality in reintegration. Over the 1990s, ex-combatant policies gradually became increasingly paternalistic. The original approach was that the ex-combatants would make it on their own after demobilization. Under pressure from ex-combatant groups, this was soon abandoned for the Development Brigade that, in principle, aimed to empower the ex- combatants to function as individual economic actors in the job market or as small entrepreneurs.137 In practice, the DB/DBC replicated the militaristic hierarchy and social organization that the ex-combatants were familiar with from exile. Indeed,
137 A similar idea underpinned The Socioeconomic Integration Fund that aimed at providing start-up
funding for small businesses and hence increasing ex-combatant self-sufficiency. ‘Fund for ex- fighters gets off the ground’, The Namibian, 10 August 1995.
employment creation has leaned even more strongly towards containing ex- combatant agency, seeking to pacify ex-combatants with jobs whose demands do not stray far from their duties and social situation in exile. As the Technical Committee on Ex-Combatants put it: ‘It is only the uniformed services that would be able to absorb the ex combatants because of the prevalence of a regimented and highly disciplined regime in the regulations of these institutions’ (Republic of Namibia n.d. [2001]: 13). On the basis of this conviction, the army and the police have been the two biggest ex-combatant employers under the Peace Project. Rather than being a response to the personnel needs of these or other branches of the public sector, job provision for ex-combatants and former fighters has clearly been a matter of social and security policy. The jobs for ex-combatants have mainly been additional posts created specifically for them and therefore the numbers of army, police, as well as other public service personnel have grown considerably.138 Perhaps this is why prospective employers were not very enthusiastic about taking ex-combatants on board. The ministries absorbed the numbers allocated to them by Cabinet decisions but often only after delays. Efforts by SIPE and the Technical Committee to persuade other agencies to incorporate ex-combatants yielded negligible results. The taming and rechanneling of ex-combatant agency worked to the degree that after the
138 This was noted by Minister of Defence, Erkki Nghimtina, in Parliament on 29 April 1999:
‘Cabinet, on recommendation of its Technical Committee on Ex-combatants, has resolved that the MOD employ a considerable number of registered ex-fighters in the NDF this financial year…Cabinet decision to employ ex-fighters came as a result of the government policy to provide jobs to the ex-combatants. Their recruitment, therefore, did not necessarily address the NDF’s prior need to recruit young and energetic soldiers between the ages of 18 and 25. On this basis, our pre- programme of recruiting younger faces in the force remains unaffected.’ (Debates of the National Assembly 33/1999.)
Major General Martin Shalli made a similar point (interview 7 November 2002):
MS: Once a political decision is made…you don’t have a choice to say …how old they should be…Age doesn’t matter, but you know when you [are] 50…or…55 years old…your physical fitness is questionable in the military, but you have to accept them and deploy them accordingly, give them light duties and so forth, because it’s part of the nation building. You don’t say this doesn’t go to the standards like when you recruit young people…Those go through extensive medical check-up regime to make sure that they meet the requirements…But the ex-combatants you just have to accept. LM: Yeah, there were also no educational requirements regarding them, I mean background education?
MS: No no, we don’t say…‘ok, it’s minimum grade twelve’, no, you can’t do that…because you have to look at the very history of our country…you can’t write that off and that’s why the decision has been politically defined.
Similarly, Minister of Defence Charles Namoloh stated that the recruitment of ‘struggle children’ came at the cost of compromising educational and health standards normally applied in recruitment; ‘NDF not a job agency’, The Namibian, 1 February 2012 and ‘Hundreds of struggle kids join army’,
implementation of the Peace Project there were no major demonstrations by people claiming to be ex-combatants for nearly ten years.
In a situation where employment opportunities are scarce, their provision appears a privilege and therefore a marker of economic citizenship. Thus, employment is not solely an economic category but also a political one that concerns the government in the sense of forging relations between authorities and citizens (see Chipkin 2003; Cruikshank 1999; Walters 2000). As Mbembe (2001: 45; see also Roitman 2007: 203) argued concerning the construction of postcolonial ‘commandement’:
[T]he salary…acted as a resource the state could use to buy obedience and gratitude and to break the population to habits of discipline. The salary was what legitimated not only subjection but also the constitution of a type of political exchange based, not on the principle of political equality and equal representation, but on the existence of claims through which the state created debts on society.
Unlike in many other African contexts, where the salary as a mechanism of redistribution has often given way to securing positions in ‘shadow’ or ‘parallel’ economic networks, in Namibia public jobs still remain an important redistributive mechanism while informal, parallel or ‘illegal’ economic activities offer avenues for those unable – or unwilling – to secure official jobs. The harnessing of ex-combatant agency through public employment has taken many forms. Those who aspired to be counted as ex-combatants and former fighters utilized their ‘ex-combatantness’ to argue for employment as a right and saw government employment as a reward for, and token of, loyalty. The classification and registration of applicants draw lines between inclusion and exclusion while counselling and training has further sought to reform the conduct of those included. Once the ex-combatants were employed, they and often a considerable number of extended family members depended on their salary. Regimented ex-combatant jobs have contributed to identifying with the party and the state through their repetitious practices and discipline and because they are reminiscent of the environment wherein ex-combatants lived prior to independence. Furthermore, government employment, as a form of inclusion and recognition, has facilitated the continuation of a life-historical narrative built around participating in the liberation struggle. In these ways, the strategic group of Swapo ex-combatants
have been accommodated and their fates tied to the current regime.139 This process has had both individuating and deindividuating tendencies. On the one hand, reintegration through job provision has sought to dispel the potentially rebellious or subversive collective agency of the ex-combatants and place them in an individuated, direct relationship with the central government through the techniques of registration, training, work discipline and the salary. On the other hand, many of the ex-combatant jobs have provided them with closely-knit working and living environments that reinforces their identity as Swapo cadres and comrades.
However, these functions of employment should be understood as invitations and objects of negotiation rather than as automatic operations. As it turned out in my discussions with ex-combatants, they rank available jobs in terms of desirablity, with the uniformed services usually at the top and cleaning jobs at the bottom. Tactics that the authorities see as ‘misconduct’, such as refusal to accept offered jobs, failing to perform, or trying to swap into better jobs, have continually marred reintegration. Furthermore, it turned out to be difficult to justify and verify the condition of being unemployed140 in Namibian conditions where a substantial amount of economic activity is informal and employment is often temporary or part- time. Therefore, people who were not completely unemployed often managed to register themselves and benefit from the schemes. In some cases, the official line slipped to the extent that some ex-combatants were allowed to register although it was known that they were already employed. For example, the Technical Committee final report notes, when discussing people who had been registered: ‘[S]ome who were employed by DBC, Namibia Protection Services, other security companies and a host of other institutions decided to stay put [in their jobs]’ (Republic of Namibia n.d. [2001]: 5).141
139 As van de Walle and Scott (2011: 13) argue, ‘the vast scholarship on the role of politics, political
appointments, spoils etc. in administrations demonstrates the extent to which the provision of public services and of positions within them is a key element in political power-brokering and accommodation…By providing a clear path for social mobility, public sector employment has contributed to social harmony and has promoted citizens’ identification with the state…Sharing out public-sector jobs or a promise to provide certain facilities to certain individuals, groups or regions is an excellent instrument to cement political pacts.’
140
See e.g. ‘Regions to register ex-fighters’, The Namibian, 29 May 1995; ‘Political perspective’,
The Namibian, 3 October 1997.
141 It might be that they were registered with a view of providing them employment if and when the
DBC and its offshoots became non-operational, as was foreseen (e.g. Republic of Namibia n.d. [2001]: 13). Another explanation for registering already employed ex-combatants is provided by a letter from Salute Enterprises (a Swapo-related security company) to the Chairperson of the
Such fluctuations and problems of coverage, often referred to as targeting leakages, together with ex-combatants reaching retirement age, have ensured that even large-scale programmes of employment provision and compensation have not completely incorporated all potential beneficiaries: bringing the ex-combatants into the ‘social and economic mainstream’ of Namibian society is, therefore, not a fait
accompli, but rather a long-term interplay of recurrent demands and attempts at
‘conducting their conduct’. The ‘cheaters’, that is, those who have tried to get ex- combatant jobs although they are not considered eligible, or those who fail to take up offered jobs or to stay in them over time, stand in stark contrast, in the view of the officials, to those seen as genuine heroes,142 and while there is room for
accommodating particular needs and interests in reintegration, there has also been considerable bureaucratic stringency involved in how rules have been followed and applied. There has been a comparable duality in official responses to ex-combatant agency that ranges between considering their demonstrations and demands as anybody’s constitutional right, or as subversive troublemaking.143 Together, these dualities reveal the extent to which reintegration has been, from the point of view of
Technical Committee in February 1999. In the letter, Salute Enterprises pleads that a number of ex- combatants employed in one of its branches be registered because they want ‘to be recognised as bona fide ex-combatants’ and because ‘the situation is near desperate and could get out of hand’. This points to the importance of the symbolic dimension of registration as official recognition of ex- combatant identity, but also to the perception that official recognition could be translated into welfare and security in the future.
142
See, for example, ‘Nujoma lashes out at divisive forces’, speech by Sam Nujoma, reproduced in
Die Republikein, 26 July 2006 and quoted above on pp. 112-113.
143
For illustrations, see e.g. SIPE General Manager Nghidinihamba Ndilula’s public statements in connection with the 1997 demonstrations; ‘The jobs roll in…but some ex-fighters “job shy”’, The
Namibian, 2 October 1997; ‘Fighters in yet another war of words…’, The Namibian, 24 October
1997; ‘Jobs flood in for ex-fighters’, The Namibian, 27 October 1997. He responded to my question about consulting the ex-combatants in the same vein:
NN: Demonstration is a democratic way of living, accepted by our constitution. Everybody has a right to do so, and they have the right to organize so that their voice can be heard…
LM: Right. To what extent have the policy formulations of the government been done in consultation with some representatives of the ex-combatants’ groups?
NN: What do you mean by representatives of some combatants groups, we don’t know them? SIPE is the official representative of ex-combatants.
LM: Yes, but I mean…for instance referring still to demonstrations, there have always been spokesmen there…
NN: Oh…the time of demonstrations. I did mention that that’s their right, they come and give the petition, but no, we are officially there to represent them and respond by finding jobs for them. There was no need to our ministers or government of President to go and negotiate with them, negotiate for what. If the government have already put up…SIPE to operate…[A]ll the groups…put up by the government to operate and work for ex-combatants are mandated to do so and have done so.
the authorities, an attempt to tame ex-combatant agency that reflects deep-seated ideas about rank, obedience and discipline.