In early June, the #EndGBVNamibia campaign was launched. I could not attend as I was helping my family prepare to bury my beloved murdered cousin. Slain at the hands of her drunk ‘boyfriend and father of her child. Sadly, our family was not the only one making preparations to bury their loved one who had perished at the hands of GBV (Gender Based Violence). Despite the many campaigns, I believe GBV will continue unabated in Namibia.
I’m not suggesting the campaigns are useless, but I think all our lives in Namibia have been impacted in some way by now. We all know someone directly who has perished because of GBV. The story is always the same, and it sadly often ends at the graveside, with grieving family, friends, and children who are suddenly motherless. The families that GBV shatters are somehow expected to pick up the pieces and get on with their lives.
There are jobs to go to, funeral expenses, and children that need to be guided through the mourning process whilst you deal with your grief. What I have noticed, even before GBV touched our family so profoundly, is that we are shocked, horrified, dismayed, and saddened when we read about it happening…and then we go back to our lives.
We are not the ones committing GBV; it is the men in our society. Yes, we know it’s not all men. However, I would like to raise a point there. It may not be all men, but there seems to be precious little social control. Men should be talking to each other; men should be stopping each other, and men should be teaching boys and girls that GBV is wrong. We have Neighbourhood Watches to protect our properties and exercise some social control. If this is where we are as Namibia, that is a horrific realization. I certainly do not pretend to have a magic wand or solution to the relentless cycle of the killing of our mothers, sisters, friends, and cousins, but we need to take drastic action.
If this #ENDGBVNamibia puts a stop to the killings, that will fill me with joy; however, I’m not holding my breath. As a young university graduate trying to carve out a career for myself, I have enough things to worry about; getting slaughtered, for want of a better word, by my boyfriend, husband, or date should not be constantly in the back of my mind. Yet, this is the reality for our sisters, mothers, and ourselves across our country. If there really is the spirit of Harambee in Namibia, we should be working together to put an immediate and screeching halt to the killings. With every man leading the charge. I, for one, am tired of pretending it’s just part of Namibian life. Every killing should be front-page news; every murder, because that is what it is, should bring the country to a halt.
I debated long and hard about writing an article on this subject. I am not a Social Justice Warrior, I am not an advocate. I am just a young woman that has lost her beloved cousin, who was a mother of three beautiful children, and I am trying to make sense of things. However, I cannot.
*Name withheld to protect the author
