A Namibian House: With Giving Hands

Originally published in the Informanté newspaper on Thursday, 10 November, 2016. 

I’ve written before about how our President, Dr Hage Geingob, has spoken of ‘building a Namibian House.’ He has stated that “Namibians want a house where everyone feels a sense of belonging, where everyone is presented with a fair opportunity to prosper in an inclusive manner and by so doing, ensure that no one feels left out.” I’ve previously covered some of the values we as Namibians need in order to build a Namibian House – honesty, loyalty and kindness. Today, I’ll be covering another one – generosity. 

Our country was born of an adversarial relationship – we fought for our independence, and for us to win, someone else must lose. That, unfortunately, leads us as Namibians to fall for the zero-sum fallacy – the notion that our ‘economic pie’ is fixed, and that for someone to have more, someone else must have less. And yet, since independence, we’ve seen for a fact that it is not true. Our GDP has tripled since independence – our pie has grown bigger! 

Namibia also used to be known as the world leader in income inequality, which this growth in GDP has alleviated. Namibia’s Gini Coefficient (the measure of income inequality) has dropped from 70.1 in 1990, the highest in the world, to 59.7 currently, which places us seventh. Yet we still cling to errors such as the zero-sum fallacy in our hearts, and let it filter into our broader social spectrum. This can trap us as a society in a self-centred tunnel vision, where we assume that success cannot follow if we allow any room for generosity. 

The word ‘Generosity’ itself, however, shows that this is not true. It’s root, ‘gen’, means to beget, or give birth. It is the same root we find in genetic, and genesis. It means ‘to start,’ and for a nation such as ours that is still struggling to eradicate poverty, and needs to kickstart an ambitious plan such as the Harambee Prosperity Plan, it becomes crucial. We no longer live in a pre-revolutionary Namibia, where we need to secure resources from one another. 

The old way was based upon taking from others so that we can have more – accumulating money and resources. We live in a new society – where rather than just accumulating for ourselves, we need to create and share wealth. Wealth, however, is more than just money. Wealth requires vision and energy – a sense of identity and purpose that drives wealth creation. Wealth creation, however, does not mean wealth creation for you, and you alone!

Benjamin Jowett once noted, “The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit.” That is the essence of wealth creation as a society, and it is where the true essence of generosity flows from. Generosity is not charity – giving because you have been asked for something. Rather, it is something much more – it is giving because you can – because it can help someone on their way to success. It is giving something because the other person will have greater success with what you have than you will. 

It is not only giving from your excess – generosity is defined by the missing needs of others, not by your own wants and needs. Entrepreneurs understand this by their nature – they build their businesses on it. They identify the needs of others, and strive to help them overcome that need. Businesses can only thrive if their customers are successful as well – hence their desire to see their business, their product, help others out of a bind.

Even Adam Smith, the father of Capitalism, noted that, “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.” The basis for our civilization, after all, has not been everyone for her/himself, but rather one of co-operation. We value generosity in our personal relationships – why not value it in civil society as well?

Generosity is in our genes (again, ‘gen’), as shown by psychologist Adam Grant. His research showed that those who gave their time and effort to others, and saw its impact, were less vulnerable to stress and exhaustion. Four other studies showed that those generous with their time – volunteering – made them feel like they had more time available than if they spent time on themselves. Interestingly, people gained delayed happiness from helping others – people’s happiness increased during the hours after helping, not when it was just completed. 

We all have something we can give – whether it be money, time or skills. We can all see where these can be put to greater use for someone else than for ourselves. We just need to realise that just because we’re helping someone else win, does not mean we are losing. From a purely economic perspective, you are putting your ‘capital’ to more efficient use. When an entire society does that, our collective ‘capital’ will grow faster. Not only because of your generosity, but because as research has shown, generosity begets generosity. Generosity spreads and persists with the person you impacted – who will act more generous towards others as well. 

 

A single act of generosity can cascade, and spread across a community, a society – each selflessly invested in the others’ success. A society such as this will surely be much more effective at pulling itself up from its own bootstraps than a collection of millions of individuals trying to do so alone. It will be a society that is Harambee. We, as Namibians, must thus not neglect that basis of Harambee – generosity – which is a critical piece to ensure the success of our very own Harambee Prosperity Plan. We must become a nation of giving hands, of helping hands, that can push ourselves to the success we so dearly want.