Chronicles of Fly

The last couple of months have dispelled the myth that nothing exciting ever happens in Namibia. One of my followers expressed so eloquently on his Twitter timeline , “ In 2020 we were on the verge of a World War, then on the verge of a Civil War, then we lost Kobe, and now we are in the middle of an apocalypse...it’s only March.” Covid-19 also known as Corona or The RONA reads like the intro to a science fiction end of days movie, ‘strange and incurable virus pops up and cripples half the world’. Covid-19 is no longer something that we’re watching from the outside, but a part of our reality, and if you’re going to survive the scariest infectious disease of this decade thus far, you will need information that is just as good as your hand sanitizer.  There is a lot of misinformation going around about Covid-19, I guess that’s what happens when you get all your ‘NEWS’ from forwarded videos on WhatsApp . Do you really trust Ndapewa your high school classmate to know about Co...

On a balmy day in October, in the heart of Katutura , a man set off on a walk that would change the landscape of political campaigning in Namibia. He would proceed to power walk the streets of every major town in Namibia, suit and tie in the middle of some of the most scorching heat waves of the year. It became his signature, it endeared him to many frustrated citizens – the majority of whom are jobless and frustrated youth. Instead of driving around in a convoy of expensive cars, this man rubbed shoulders and walked side by side with the most disillusioned and discontented members of our society (straight out of the Julius Malema campaign playbook), that man is Dr Panduleni Filemon Mbango Itula – Independent Presidential Candidate. A few months earlier, I attended a talk that he gave. The dude is extremely smart, that I deduced from the 90 minutes he spent explaining medical malpractice to an auditorium full of medical health professionals – like they were five year old...

“Are you voting in this year’s parliamentary/national assembly election?” If you are Namibian and are of legal age and fulfill all the legal requirements (registered voter), then the answer should be a simple yes or no, not a forlorn look at the sky and a shrug of the shoulders. However, when most young Namibians contemplate their choices at the ballot box in the upcoming national assembly elections, they look up at whichever God they pray to as if to ask, “Why have you forsaken us.” The choices are not inspiring, at all. It is either stick or twist? Stick? The devil we know: the ruling SWAPO party has been in power for 29 years, they are the reason there is ‘peace’ and ‘stability’ as they state at every rally. By the standards of a post independent African country, Namibia under the SWAPO government is doing okay. Free primary and secondary education, great environment for investors, reasonably stable economy (tourism, agriculture, mining), good infrastructure ...