WINDHOEK – It seems like the City of Windhoek sheriffs cannot keep their heavy handedness in check in the name of an orderly city. But how can one really expect orderliness in a desperate situation like the one prevailing in our sprawling informal settlements. I am referring to the City Police, who once again on Friday were up to their intimidating and harassing best against informal settlers of the Goreangab Dam informal settlement. One hears these officials have of late been on the alert to guard against further mushrooming of such settlements.
Therefore, any homeless soul wishing to find himself or herself a shelter in one of these settlements can be assured of the resoluteness of the city mothers and fathers, implemented in practice by the City Police and often unmerciful, heavy handedness. Last Friday squatters or would-be squatters of a section of Goreangab Dam fell victim to the habitually intimidating and harassing acts of the city’s forces when some of their shelters were threatened with dismantling once again.
Some actually were compelled to dismantle their structures in the face of the menace of the city’s bulldozers.
Yes, one has and must have an understanding for the benign city police officers, who must obediently carry out the orders of their superiors. As one would appreciate in such a command structure not carrying out orders is a serious act of indiscipline and disobedience. But one must also have an understanding of the plight of the victims, the homeless whose only recourse are these makeshift homes on what may appear as pockets of no-man’s land. At times the vigour and force unleashed upon these poor homeless and wretched people, is more than what is necessary. In most cases they do not find themselves in their state of poverty, squalor and homelessness willfully, but are mere victims of circumstances, or the legacy of the post-independence dispensation, coupled with the continued economic injustices and inequalities they face. What is even more distressing is the fact that the dismantling of shacks more often than not is targeted against absentee shack dwellers. But the strangest thing is for our city mothers and fathers to order such inhuman actions against fellow citizens. They know very well the problems and challenges they as policy makers have been experiencing in providing for the wretched who have been running away from poverty and squalor in our rural hinterlands in search of greener pastures in the urban centres.
Also, is there any guarantee that those so targeted are shack barons? It appears that often our city mothers and fathers are also oblivious to the realities of their fellow citizens, the wretched of this country.
The reality is that one in three families in the capital live in shacks with an estimated 30 000 people in the capital living in such conditions. And the illusion that the sad reality of poverty and deprivation in this country shall be reversed by dismantling these shacks, is absurd. This is nothing but an illusory illusion. Of course we are aware that the City Police officers act on the orders and the active connivance and acquiescence of our city mothers and fathers. However, no amount of heavy-handed action shall take away the squalor and poverty so rife in our communities. More than anything else these squatters are driven into such housing conditions as pertain to many of our mushrooming informal settlements, whether here in the city, or any other town for that matter countrywide, other than by their pitiful living conditions.
The stark reality of poverty in this country, seems to find little appreciation or resonance, let alone sympathy, among our city mothers and fathers, including the not to mention the city’s law enforcement officers, who do not seem to whimper when depriving fellow residents of their shelter, which they have erected at great cost to them and which may take, who knows, ages before they can scrape together the necessary building materials to rebuild. And this is a reality that our city mothers and fathers must begin to fathom.
At times the deconstruction, demolition and destruction of these shelters appear to be the most convenient or easiest course of action that our city mothers and fathers can conceive. Surely, one must admit it cannot be easy for the pride and image of our city mothers and fathers to be guardians of people living in shacks, and feeding from rubbish dumps. But the sooner they swallow their pride, the better foe all of us, after all what pride may they be left with or to speak of and about in the face of the pitiful conditions of their people? Therefore squaring up to the realities of our fellow citizens on the fringes, and addressing their plight with the resolve and determination that it deserves, rather than resorting to the undue flexing of muscle and the swinging of clubs maybe the right course of action.
The heavy handed action of the authorities against people who refuse to be downed and have been providing for themselves through their own efforts, cannot be termed leadership by any definition or stretch of the imagination.
Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro