I am a young African man with four university qualifications under his belt, yet, as is the case with many of my peers, adequate employment has been a challenge to obtain on offer.

Ottilie Abrahams was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable personalities of contemporary Namibia. She led through example as a political leader, grassroots activist, feminist and educationist from early on in her life.

Friday 4 May 2018 was not just another normal day in Namibia and Angola. Upon invitation by Namibian President Hage Geingob, the President of Angola, João Lourenço paid a state visit to Namibia to participate in the commemorations of the Cassinga Massacre. The two heads of state later announced plans to build two historical monuments to honour those who lost their lives during the massacre. 

The number of Chinese businessmen is growing in the Namibian capital, where they supply affordable but low quality goods especially to low-income earners. But not everyone is excited about the presence of the foreigners.

Recent statements from politicians and government officials give the impression that Germany is preparing to abandon the long-standing practice of denying responsibility for the genocide of 1904-1908 and is now prepared to characterize those wars of extermination as genocide. But has the German government adopted fully a new position?

The increasing popularity of SWAPO as reflected in the 2014 general elections results does not make sense, especially in a situation of ever-worsening socio-economic conditions and massive corruption. What it does show, however, is that liberal democratic balloting is not some neutral event but a reflection of power relations that serve as a camouflage for social inequality.

In a commitment to gender equity Namibia’s government will introduce a new system to achieve 50 percent representation of women in leadership positions. Will it really change the socio-economic, political structures and mind-set in the country?

Namibia needs to tackle the problem of gender based violence in the country. A new degree in gender and development studies will assist in grappling with such problems. However, some argue that dealing with the epidemic of gender violence facing Namibia will require more than developing academic programmes

Young lesbians face a lot of hardships, right from their homes to a rabidly homophobic world outside. But they can stop being victims by taking their lives into their hands, as this powerful case of Namibia shows

Contempt for Africans is still so strong in Germany that the government sees no point in returning to Namibia the human remains of the massacred Herero and Nama peoples. Further, Germany is unwilling to offer an apology and compensation

Namibia’s principled refusal to get bullied into an agreement against what it considered its own best interests has served as an example for other countries originally more willing to give in to the pressure exerted by EU

Namibia has scrapped primary school fees, a stark rejection of the World Bank’s neo-liberal fundamentalist education model imposed on the country, which denied many their basic right and resulted in vast social disparities

The new health extension worker programme has been successfully implemented in several countries and its supporters are optimistic that it will help Namibia fill gaps in its over-stretched health system.

The extraction of the much needed water from a large underground aquifer in northern Namibia may need to wait for further studies, officials have warned at a water investment conference. The aquifer, discovered in July, may contain enough water to sustain about one million people living in the area for 400 years at the current consumption rate, as well as boost development through irrigation in this poor, heavily overgrazed area where women and children walk for hours to get fresh water from boreholes.

The Namibian elite, working in cahoots with their foreign capitalist allies, has since independence concentrated on state building. The people need a new consciousness to engage in a struggle for nation building.

Namibia's Chamber of Mines believes that the government has no role to play in the country‘s mining sector apart from regulating the operating environment. The position is likely to put miners at loggerheads with the state, which is following the global trend of resource nationalism. Namibia in 2011 declared all minerals - except zinc and fluorspar - strategic and handed over all exploration rights to state miner, Epangelo Mining Limited.

German Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul apologised in August 2004 at a big rally in Okakarara for the genocide committed 100 years ago by the German imperial army. Almost eight years later the German parliament (Bundestag) rejected two motions by three opposition parties for a formal apology of the German parliament and so refused to acknowledge the genocide in contradiction to the assessment of historians.

Largely unnoticed by most Namibians, the local German-language daily Allgemeine Zeitung provides a forum for colonial apologetics. Reinhart Kössler and Henning Melber examine recent comments and readers’ letters in this newspaper, exposing the reactionary attitudes and privileging strategies that maintain the minority language as a barrier to national reconciliation.

Names, dates, statistics, records, photographs – Namibia-based historian, Casper W. Erichsen, explains some of the factual evidence of the multiple atrocities that were part of the genocide in Namibia.

Refuting in detail the arguments proffered by Germany on the questions of apology and compensation for the genocide of the Herero and the Nama, Dr Kwame Opoku notes that the Namibia-Germany case is being keenly observed by other African peoples and states with unresolved issues relating to the colonial era.