By Sarah
Nunes and Melissa Rink
This
week, we’ve been thinking a lot about power dynamics in the desire
to help the less privileged on individual and international levels.
The power dynamics that put the United States (US) in an economic position to give
conditional donor aid to “poorer” countries like Namibia stem
from hundreds of years of colonial exploitation and profit off of the
labor of black and brown people, to create North American and
European economic dominance that prevails today. Erasing this
narrative through history, and presented in the Eurocentric way
history is presented to us in many public high schools in the US today, creates a
new power dynamic, a new form of racism that sees the needy recipient
as powerless, as deserving of and depending on our pity and charity.
As we occupy the positions of privilege in this discourse, if we
don’t reconsider the power dynamics of aid on an international and
personal level, we run the risk of perpetuating more harm than good.
 |
Andrew Williams, Finance Director and Executive Officer of USAID,
presented USAID's mission and work in Namibia to our development class
|
In
our development class, we focused on the topic of foreign aid and
how, in the case of many African countries, this aid can ultimately
have damaging effects. It can foster dependency, perpetuate the cycle
of poverty by limiting long-term growth, and encourage government
corruption through the consistent supply of free money. Aid given by
western countries is also notorious for being imposing and
insensitive to tradition and culture. However, foreign aid can be
slightly more contextual, such as in the case of the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID), which is a segment of
the US government providing aid directly from within
the country of Namibia. This type of support has the potential to be
much less imposing because of the presence of interaction and the exchange of ideas. When talking to Andrew Williams from USAID, we
took note of some very positive strategies of development and some
borderline obtrusive plans. He spoke to us about the $41 million that
the organization spent on the development of conservation practices
of water basin management in the rural areas of Namibia. “We have
to help educate the farmers and tribes about water management,” Andrew told us. This way of thinking did not settle well with us;
wouldn’t the local people of Namibia have a better idea of water
conservation than the foreign “teachers?” This rationale can most
likely be attributed to the power dynamic between the donor status of
USAID and the recipient status of Namibia. When one identifies the
power structure of the US as a donor country and its huge influence in
many facets of Namibia’s development, while keeping in mind how the
poverty-donor relationship is constructed, one can consider other
alternatives to the current situation and find a new direction
forward.
 |
Namene Tekula Nekwaya, in a still from his video interview
at the Young Achievers Center in Katutura. |
One
of the alternative perspectives that organizes power a bit
differently is something called Gross National Happiness (GNH), as
brought to our attention by Namene Tekulav Nekwaya,
a friend from Young Achievers, a youth-led organization that inspires
and motivates young people to have a sense of vision. He showed us a
video of himself being interviewed about GNH and the Young Achiever’s
initiatives to introduce this idea in a Namibian context. Namene and
three of the other youth are organizing trips to different parts of
Namibia to distribute and collect a revised version of the GNH
surveys/program first endorsed by the fourth king of Bhutan. This is
the first attempt to adapt it to a Namibian context. We were
interested in the work being done to create what Namene called a
“paradigm shift” in “trying to divert the government’s, the
world’s mindset in terms of looking at how to look at its
economical processes or activities to better the country”.
A project like this not only engages the community in rethinking and
coming up with their own ideas for a happier, better Namibia, but
empowers the youth carrying out such a project to follow their
initiatives and gain the leadership qualities needed to become the
country’s future leaders and start to create sustainable systems of
development that aren’t entirely dependent upon a donor country’s
conditional financial support. Learning about Namene’s work with
GNH in the context of hearing the USAID talk in the same week really
encouraged us to reflect on the mostly one way power relationship
between donor aid and the needy recipient, and to consider
alternatives in determining the best ways forward for the development
of Namibia.
 |
| Cover of the September 2013 Sister Namibia Youth Issue |
Also this week, Sarah attended a sexual and reproductive rights
workshop Saturdaywith
the Young Achievers facilitated by Sister Namibia,
where she had to consider her own positionality and recognize
possible power dynamics with her own privilege. She, being a feminist
from a western, wealthy country, wants to be in solidarity with and
help women everywhere liberate themselves from gender-based
oppression.However, being from a country with a history of
exploitation of non-western cultures, it is essential to acknowledge
the unfair power dynamic that could arise if she started imposingly
defending all of her views and criticizing patriarchy in a Namibian
context. While in this workshop, she thought about when and how to
speak up and pose her point of view in a sensitive, non-judgmental
and non-imposing way and when to take a step back, and listen. She
had a conversation with one of the Sister Namibia facilitators during
the lunch break, and the lady was airing her thoughts on how
frustrated she gets at times, being a supporter of LGBT rights, when
the conversation she’s facilitating ends up being about how
homosexuality is a sin, and how weird/unacceptable “those people”
are, etc. But she said that no matter her feelings on the subject,
her job was only to facilitate, not input her opinions, not correct,
not judge. Since many of the opinions aired in the controversial
statements on sexual/reproductive rights, “Agree,” “Disagree,”
“Don’t know” activity were opposed to what Sarah believes in
(such as the existence of marital rape, men having sex with men,
etc.), she really had to think about where it was appropriate to
speak and when she needed to think, step back and not intrude.
The
USAID presentation and Namene’s GNH helped us to connect the dots
between power relations between countries and power relations on an
individual basis, and how it is often better for the privileged
person or person with unearned power to step back and learn from
people who, (surprise surprise!), may have their own ideas for moving
forward in a way that is best adapted to their culture and benefits
them the best. In fact, the best solutions can only appear if the
realm of possibilities is opened as wide as possible, and “truths”
we take for granted, such as the poverty discourse, are reconsidered.
Sister Namibia is a local feminist organization advocating for women’s rights
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