Normally dining with other people is a bit of a chore. They expect you to talk to them and it’s considered rude to watch the TV when you are eating. Different rules apply when you are on holiday and find yourself in circumstances not of your own making.
An insight into how Namibia fits into the world economy was given to me by a junior manager of a meat haulage firm over dinner earlier this week. By chance he originally comes from a village in the north of Ireland where they paint the kerb stones red, white and blue to make plain their views on papal infallibility.
He said that the last time he and his wife had had good quality beef for dinner was when a friend had given them some. On his salary he could not afford to buy it. Namibian beef fetches the same price on the world market as British beef. Local processing costs are much cheaper since meat produced in Britain is processed, transported and sold by workers on at least the minimum wage. So even after transport costs a Namibian farmer makes more money by exporting meat than by producing for the domestic market.
The link between the world market and his dinner plate was not lost on him. He just didn’t see the problem.
His wife’s understanding of the world was not a great deal sharper.
Her farmer father amuses his guests by shooting his automatic rifle out of the living room window. The farm is adjacent to a squatter camp just outside Windhoek. We can assume that if junior managers find it hard to put good meat on the table then it’s even rarer for the camp dwellers.
They tended to make a nuisance of themselves by digging under the farm’s electric fence to take firewood. Sometimes they would kill a cow or pig and make off with as much meat as they could carry. The farmer’s daughter was annoyed at this wanton greed. Her father’s reaction was to use his rifle to earn himself a reputation as “shoot first ask questions later” type of guy. The locals at the table found this funny.
Three words were unspoken. “Colour”, “black”, “white”.
As best I can judge all the big farms are still white owned. Many of them are diversifying very successful into tourism. It’s a given that only blacks live in the squatter camps. All the farm labourers are black too.
The Alte Feste museum in Windhoek has an extensive display devoted to the liberation struggle including photographs of the children of SWAPO fighters in the GDR and Czechoslovakia. The peace deal that brought independence was brokered by the United States. So too was the subsequent socio-economic setup. There is a formal democracy. Literacy rates are above 80% and the infrastructure is pretty good, including free condoms in the post office. There is a strong PR spin on the theme of “upliftment” which is code for getting black Namibians into high profile senior posts. What is not changed from the pre-independence period is the overwhelming white domination of the land and the economy
Liam redux 
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