“Your Honour, the struggle kids were born violent,” an Inspector of the Namibian Police has been quoted as telling Judge Christi Liebenberg when testifying at the inquest into the death of Frieda Ndatipo, who died from a bullet wound sustained during a skirmish between the struggle kids and the police on August 27 last year.
It is common cause that the police worldwide exist first and foremost to enforce the law. They are neither political scientists nor midwives. Even though it is granted that the law per se is substantively neutral, it most certainly is not neutral in its effects when applied by the police, especially when such law enforcers are themselves biased in executing their responsibilities.
More often than not, our utterances in defense of our actions leave a lot to be desired and lead many to draw conclusions based on the words we use.
As a general premise, the applications of legal statutes may have entirely different consequences when applied uniformly, if the set of conditions under which such statutes are applied vary. That is, if the social milieu in which the law is applied is not taken into account by the individual officer when applying law to the citizenry, then the effect of law per se, or at least the effect as perceived by the citizenry may in fact become discordant with the goals for which the law was applied in the first place.
In this regard, professionalism in the police service – defined as the equal application of the law to all citizens – may actually aggravate tension in a polity rather than reduce it and encourage perceptions of the law as applied in justice. When this happens, the effectiveness of the police in carrying out their law enforcement functions must take into account the nature of the polity in which they must apply the law. If such awareness is lacking, then problems between the police and the citizens will certainly arise.
Are we to conclude that Ndatipo’s life was cut short on that day because she was perceived to have been born violent, or because those kids are violent by the mere fact that they were born in exile, or because they are descendants of formerly exiled Namibians?
Alternatively, are the police saying if those kids or their parents were not in exile they would have been treated differently, and possibly there would have been no need for force, because they are born non-violent? If we can entertain questions from our leaders who constantly ask “Where were you when we were fighting for independence?” then surely these kids have the equal right to ask “where were you when our parents left us unattended to fight for independence?”
It is prudent to clear some misconceptions about life in exile. Firstly, exile is a “condition” or “process” that is both historically and contextually specific, associated with forced separation, physical “banishment,” and geographical dislocation compelled by political circumstances.
It is not, by any means, an environment that equipped one to be violent. The circumstances of Ndatipo’s parents, and all exiled Namibians, were associated with a strategic space characterised by transnational political, diplomatic and military struggles against a colonial regime.
Secondly, it should be acknowledged that those who were born and/or spent their formative years in exile (second-generation exiles) had little or no experience or memories of colonial Namibia. For them the myths of homecoming were constructed under the influence of their parents’ narrated memories and hopes of a new Namibia. Their hopes of a prosperous Namibia were instilled by their parents and through their personal relationships with political stalwarts in exile and nationals of free nations. Images of a joyous and triumphant return to a prosperous Namibia were formed in their minds and heightened expectations of a good life after exile.
When they and the majority of exiled Namibians returned, they faced disillusionment caused by the reality of unbridgeable schisms, inequitable racial, socio-economic, gendered, and gerontocratic realities, false promises and hopes, and feeling abandoned by their leaders, but they still have hope that they will be recognised and appreciated, compensated accordingly, and accommodated in the democratic dispensation.
The politicisation of their childhood and circumstances is what needs to be addressed – not by the law enforcement agents – but by society and the political hierarchy. Their circumstances need to be contextualised. Namibian exiles – of whatever status in society – did not merely return to a geopolitical Namibia as a country of origin, but to perceived notions of a social setting where Namibians would live in prosperity and share in the natural resources of the country with no social or economic stratification.
For many exiles, home was not necessarily related to a geographical space. It was associated with the triumphant ideology of a restored people, a people free to chart their future, irrespective of one’s social, political or economic status.
• Dr. Charles Mubita holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Southern California.