Productivity in Namibia – A desperate need to disrupt

May is an unfair, if simply bad month to reflect on productivity levels in Namibia and is a time when there is almost no-one around to try to get data on productivity levels in the country. Four of the nation’s fourteen gazetted public holidays occur in May and they are an occasion for the ‘very hard working business elite of the country’ to shut down their operations to bridge holidays with weekends so to be able to have long extended holidays. This is because the old elite suffers no competition from a  new and hungry elite that will do whatever it takes to make a profit.

With Workers Day on  the 1^st May and Casinga Day on the 4^th the natural outcome is not just a short working week  but commonly businesses allow  managers to take 3 days holidays to create a long 9 day break. Just two weeks later on Ascension on Thursday the 10^th the next day, Friday was almost as dead as a Sunday in Windhoek with businesses and public institutions shutting their doors so their poor over-worked managers (workers can’t normally afford holidays) can take a 4  day weekend. UNAM decided to shut on Friday 11^th as it was an ‘Institutional holiday’ and much of the business community also followed suite. Of course Namibia with its 14 days  of public holidays is about on par with the rest of the SACU region where 14 days is the norm in all countries except Botswana which declares an extra public holiday whenever a public holiday falls on a weekend and so there are 16 public days but only 14 days off. 

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When you look at the figures on public holidays and weekends for the Southern African region and compare these to the number of days worked in countries with which our leaders say we are going to compete i.e China and India one can see right away why there is so little industrialization throughout Southern Africa. Even if you compare this to say Ethiopia, which is the only country in Africa that looks like it will actually industrialize, and not just write empty policy statements, the number of state holidays is 10 per year. In China there are 7 public holidays and people normally work six days per week. In India there are only three national holidays but scores of religious and regional holidays that make the country a real patch work of regional complexity. The killer is of course that Indians, like the Chinese normally work a six week in the private sector. The chart above produced by the Botswana diamond producers association shows exactly the difficulty that this creates for those thinking they are going to say, cut diamonds in Namibia and compete with India.

Of course Namibians, whether they are part of the old elite or are workers, want to earn like Belgians and work as little as they do as well. It is worth of course noting that Belgians long ago ceased cutting diamonds and handed the task over to the lowly paid Indians with who no-one in Southern Africa wants to cost compete. If Indians work 30% more days per year than Namibians and earn far less then it should hardly be surprising that the diamond cutting factories here exist only because of government subsidies such as the ban on the export of Namibia’s uncut special stones ( more than 10.8 carats) which must be processed in the country. That there is no real industrialization without state subsidy in the country is a direct result of the nation’s productivity and the low levels of output that are produced when people are actually working and not planning their

If Namibia wants to really industrialize then it needs to break the pattern of low productivity in the country and compete. There is only one way that this can be done and that requires the government to lead in a number of ways. First there has to be a decrease in the number of public holidays in the country to a level that more closely represents the situation in those countries with which we need to compete if we are ever to industrialize. If however there is one thing that will unite black Namibian workers with their white managers it is in a lynching of anyone who dares suggest that they work more days.

There is really only one way to disrupt the comfortable work habits and productivity that were developed under apartheid and continue to this day in Namibia and that is to bring in the disruptors- the people who are lean and hungry who will work not six but seven days a week and do whatever it takes to make a living and to make their families prosper. These are the immigrants, the hated foreigners but it is only they who disrupt the past patterns of never opening on Saturday and taking as many holidays as possible. These disruptors can be Africans ( Zimbabwean, Nigerians of Ugandans) or they can be Indians or Chinese but suggesting such a thing is a blasphemy in a land where productivity for the rich and comfortable or those who have jobs is not an issue.

There will of course be no mass migration of lean and hungry disruptors who often are instrumental in other countries in the very transformation that Namibia says it wants but is unwilling to pay for. Instead the government will continue to produce empty policy pronouncements about industrialization, sing the AU anthem at meetings (but no Zimbabweans, please)  and watch the nation’s children remain and become increasingly unemployed. There is absolutely no sense in Namibia’s policy circles that economic transformation has always been and will forever remain, here and elsewhere, an expensive and painful process that involves real sacrifices by the entire nation. The road to a real sustainable prosperity in Namibia is difficult and only those ignorant of economic history could think otherwise. However should we succeed the outcome will be not only a sustainable prosperity which our minerals based economy does not provide, but a future where the youth will have jobs and hope- something they do not have and will not  have if we continue on the same unproductive road.

These are the views of Professor Roman Grynberg and not necessarily those of UNAM where he is employed.

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