By Trophy Shapange
In Windhoek, every boardroom wall has probably heard the debate on currency pegging more than once.
Inside those polished rooms, the conversations are often critical, technical, and filled with concerns about sovereignty, macroeconomic discipline, or monetary flexibility.
But today, as I sit under the tree here at my village of Ondeikela, I want to explore this same arrangement from the open walled boardroom of my childhood, the shade of this tree. Will my view mirror the scepticism of the capital, or will it be shaped differently by the realities of rural life?
As I sit here quietly, watching children pass by on their way to and from the nearby cuca shops, some carrying bread, cooking oil, a can of fish, or a packet of salt, all sent on errands by their grandmothers, a question begins to form.
How does this currency arrangement affect the grandmothers of my village? And if I had to explain it to my own mother, who spends her days surrounded by her grandchildren and laughing as a mischievous chick runs off with a piece of bread from the smallest one who thought hiding it behind her back would win her an extra slice, what exactly would I say?
The more I think about it from the quietness of this tree, the more I realise that the answers lie not in economic theory, but in the lived experiences of these grandmothers.
After a carefully considered view, I believe if I was to sit under a marula tree in any northern village and tell a grandmother that Namibia’s currency is pegged to the South African Rand, she would probably adjust her headscarf, laugh softly, and say, “My child, I only know mahangu, pension, and the price of cooking oil.
What does this peg have to do with me?” Yet without her knowing it, currency stability quietly determines how far her pension stretches, how much she pays for sugar, and whether the clinic nearby has medicine when she needs it.
It influences everything she experiences at the village level, even though she has never used the words “exchange rate” in her life. This is the great Namibian paradox: the people who understand the least about monetary policy are often the ones most shaped by it.
The first and most direct connection is her pension. As a rural grandmother, her monthly government grant is not just income; it is survival. It feeds grandchildren, buys paraffin, pays for grinding mahangu, and covers transport to the clinic.
That pension only has meaning if it buys tomorrow what it buys today. In countries where currencies collapse, the elderly suffer the worst. Their pension evaporates in real terms, and their dignity is stripped away one price increase at a time.
Namibia’s peg shields her from this trauma by ensuring that the Namibia Dollar does not lose value unpredictably. It keeps inflation in check and protects her from the chaos that hits many African households when their currencies swing wildly.
She may never discuss monetary policy, but she can tell when cooking oil has suddenly doubled in price, and she knows something is wrong. Currency stability prevents that nightmare.
Her daily basket of food is the second place where the peg quietly safeguards her life. Whether it is sugar, bread, rice, salt, or the occasional tin fish, almost everything she buys has an imported component. Without a stable currency, prices in rural
shops would jump unpredictably, and hunger would deepen. The peg ensures that these fluctuations remain moderate, shielding the most vulnerable from the brutal impact of global price swings.
When inflation is stable, her shopping list becomes manageable. When the currency collapses, even the simplest ingredients become luxuries. For a grandmother who measures money by how many meals it can produce, currency stability is not an academic concept, it is the difference between enough and not enough.
The peg also affects her health without her ever realising it. Most medical supplies are imported: blood pressure pills, syringes, gloves, antibiotics, and basic clinic tools.
When a currency is unstable, the cost of these items skyrockets, clinic shelves empty, and rural grandmother suffer. But when the currency remains steady, government and private suppliers can buy medicines predictably and affordably.
So, every time the grandmothers find their clinic stocked with her hypertension medication, she is benefiting from the stability she does not know exists. Currency stability, in this sense, is a healthcare policy disguised as monetary policy.
Transport is another quiet casualty of currency weakness. Rural life depends on mobility: taxis to town, bakkies to the clinic, tractors for ploughing, and buses for long trips. Fuel prices react immediately to exchange rate movements.
If the Namibia Dollar collapses, diesel and petrol climb so sharply that a simple trip to town becomes a financial burden. A grandmother who once paid N$20 to reach the clinic may suddenly need N$40. Her world shrinks with every fuel increase.
The peg protects her from this, smoothing out the violent movements that could isolate her entirely from basic services.
Electricity and communication are yet another link. Solar panels, batteries, generators, and airtime all depend heavily on imported technology. When the currency is unstable, utility providers raise tariffs, and airtime never lasts long enough.
For the village grandmother, who may not understand global telecom supply chains, the effect is still deeply felt: her electricity becomes unpredictable, her communication with children becomes expensive, radio batteries become expensive and her access to information narrows. The peg quietly keeps these pressures manageable.
Perhaps the most invisible benefit comes from stability in the economy at large.
When the currency is stable, businesses feel confident, investments flow, and jobs remain secure. Her children, who work in towns, cities, farms, mines, and shops, rely on this stability for their livelihoods.
If the currency collapses and companies begin to panic, retrenchment follows, and suddenly her pension must carry the whole family again. She becomes the default provider for unemployed grandchildren. Currency pegging protects her children’s jobs, and by extension, protects her from becoming the family’s last financial safety net.
To her, interest rates may sound like “those things people in suits talk about”. But when the currency is stable, interest rates remain predictable. That means her children’s home loans, car payments, and small business loans do not spiral out of control.
If they lose their stability, she suffers too, because the burden of family crises always falls hardest on the eldest mother in the home. Stability in money is stability in family life.
What makes all of this remarkable is that this grandmother will likely never speak of exchange rates, the rand peg, inflation targeting, repo rates, or foreign reserves. Yet every one of these policies determines how easily she moves, how well she eats, whether she gets medicine, whether her pension feeds their household, and whether her children keep their jobs. She feels the results without knowing the cause.
That is the paradox of the macroeconomic policy.
For her, currency pegging is not a technical tool. It is a silent protector. It is the reason she can still buy her monthly staples without fear that the price will double tomorrow. It is the reason her pension remains meaningful.
It is why the clinic shelves are not empty, why the taxi to town has not tripled in cost, and why her children’s wages still have value. Even though she may never understand the mechanics of pegging, her life would be dramatically different without it.
In the end, currency stability is not an urban or academic concern. It is a village concern.
It touches the life of the grandmother sitting under her marula tree more directly than anyone else. She may not know the jargon, but she lives the consequences.
Pegging is not for economists, it is for her. It protects her dignity, her health, her food security, her movement, her family, and her survival. And she deserves that stability, even if she will never call it by its name.
*Trophy Shapange is the Managing Director of Lebela Fund Managers. The views expressed in this article are his own and not those of his employer.
