WHEN a nation drops to the level of allowing its police force to shoot and kill its citizens at the slightest provocation, as allegedly happened in Katutura yesterday, it represents not just a travesty of human rights, it also speaks volumes about the class struggle in our country.
The victim, whom we understand was aged 26, was among a group of people born in exile who for years have been demanding jobs from government, citing the role played by their parents in freeing the country from the yoke of colonialism.
The issue of ‘struggle kids’, as society affectionately calls them, was a hot topic at one stage to the extent that government made special provision for them. Understandably, not every struggle kid has secured a job and this has led to continuous demands for employment by those who remained jobless.
True, no Namibian is more special than the other but the democratic principle which we chose to rule this country allows citizens to protest, demonstrate and demand what they – wrongly or correctly – believe they deserve from motherland Namibia.
We are of course no advocates of the lawlessness that at some stage was the hallmark of the protests of the struggle kids, including their recent blocking of a road in Katutura as they demanded donations from taxi drivers and other passers-by.
And while there seems to be a well-orchestrated concealment of details of what happened prior to yesterday’s fatal shooting of the said struggle kid, there can be no justification for national police killing its own citizens.
Not until all avenues, such as the use of rubber bullets and teargas, amongst others, were evidently exhausted and the lives of law enforcement officers were genuinely in danger.
The incident, as sad and shocking as it is, offers the opportunity for a deep political rethink.
Inevitably, the incident will leave an indelible mark on the way we as a nation have handled, or even treated, the struggle kids most of whom – like in the case of yesterday’s victim – were orphaned by the war of liberating our country.
Ironically, this woman was shot dead barely 24 hours after the country witnessed the reburial of seven former freedom fighters on Heroes Day. Heroes who gave their all and perished at the battlefront did not anticipate a free Namibia where their children would be shot point-blank by the very people that should be protecting them.
Elementary arithmetic would help us conclude that the victim was two years old at independence in 1990. If reports that both her parents died in exile are true, it was not illogical that the deceased needed a job because every orphan in this country faces a struggle of survival without the help of his or her biological parents.
We have always insisted that in order to get to the bottom of the struggle kids’ issue, Namibia needs to evaluate the individual circumstances of each of these ‘kids’ to determine the merits and justification of why they should, or should not, receive special treatment.
But to make sweeping statements that they deserve no special attention without knowing stories of their individual lives is one of the biggest mistakes we have made in dealing with this matter and for that, yesterday’s killing does not come as a surprise.
Any human being with a sense of justice should be appalled by what happened yesterday. Police are a crucial arm of the State and what they do is, naturally, linked to the State. Namibians deserve a detailed explanation about what has transpired, how it transpired and what informed such cowardly killing of a defenceless woman.