(Repost from 09 October 2020)
To eat and digest the words of very angry police officers may not perhaps be the most pleasant or appetizing meal. It is not a sentiment that I want to begin this post on, but yet, the bitter taste of arrogance and disrespect lingers too long behind my tongue, “If you wear like this, how will you not get raped” or better yet the unspoken words of those same men as they stood guard today, ready to defend the walls that house the political executives caught in a deadlock about a petition for justice.
Police and policing is a concept surrounding social control that any individual fresh from an “Intro to Sociology” class or the SJWS side of the internet would recognize. It is one thing to theorize the Marxist perspective of conflict policing in the luxury of your own home, but to feel the dead stare of men in clad iron uniform unmoved by the shaking voices of protestors? Its enough radicalize anyone. But this is not a Pan-African Blog post riddled with out of touch theory because not amount of armchair reading can prepare you or encapsulate the horror of feeling small in front of ideological superstructures.
The 8th of October 2020 stands to be printed in the Namibian history books as the day the revolution was not only live but televised as well. However, in the face of unyielding calls for political action and the crushing oppression of the patriarchy, we see the truism of the age old saying, history tends to repeat itself. And it does so perpetually, like an alarm clock with no dismiss button.
photograph: Michael Petrus
Picture August 2, 2010, the day thousands of Namibian school aged children marched in the name of the late Magdalena Stoffels. A young school girl who had been a victim of the type of tyranny that any and every girl child lives under- the type of tyranny that you want to forget is real.
“no justice, no school'”.
That was the mantra of every child from schools in Khomasdal and Katutura residential area; an unequal bargaining chip that could never be expected from anyone let alone children. But that is the reality of the black girl child. The story of Magdalena Stoffels ends as many others do, her killer free and her family looking for answers from the unappeasing void. The young Avihe Cheryl Ujaha, Melanie Janse, Mirjam Nandjoto and Rejoice Shovaleka echo this same tale, with their names added to long lists of lives unlived and dreams plucked from Namibian girls and women. Some do not get a bridge named after them.
The one thousand six hundred and four cases reported from January 2019 to June 2020, tell us a story of a country unquenched by its raging bloodlust and makes the story of Magdalena Stoffels, the story of many young woman. And today, the streets overflow with the tears and demands for justice for the life of Shannon Wasserfall, taken too soon and unavenged by the society that perpetuated systems that would keep her unprotected, unsafe and unable to defend herself - the power hopes to return itself back into the hands of the people.
This time around, the demands are for the declaration of a national state of emergency to initiate the combatting of femicide and gender based violence; which would begin with a reassessment of sentencing guides and policing patterns. Moreover, the call for competent leadership is highlighted; the organizers call for the replacement of the Minister of Gender and some parliamentarians are bringing back the death penalty debate onto the table. I would like to say that the eyes of the world are on Namibian leadership, however, that may not be true. The eyes of Namibians, on the other hand, are focused and locked onto the executives they voted into office - the demand for justice is interlocked with a promise to hold leaders accountable and to proliferate the tenants of democracy.
To protest is to speak the language of the masses, the language of the unheard and the language of those who can use nothing but the sheer velocity of their bodies moving around in the spaces of our community, colliding to form a hivemind forged of solidarity.
See you tomorrow.
DownSouth