Are these the signs of the times? These times when the ancestors are as yet not prepared to listen to their children but rather making them crazier to eventually destroy them in total just like Imperial Germany nearly annihilated them. Like the proverbial whom the gods want to destroy they first make crazy?
But it seems like what the Imperial Germany could not complete has been destined and divined to be taken to its logical conclusion by the ancestors or gods of this beleaguered community.
Looks like this beleaguered community is destined and divined for the final annihilation and there’s nothing that the ancestors or gods can do unless the community itself wake up from its slumber and path of self-destruction and self-annihilation that it seems to have embarked upon.
A path that has been manifested in and by many things since Namibia’s independence. One of the latest and perhaps most revealing and odious manifestation is the commemoration of Heroes and Heroines Day two weekends ago in Okahandja.
Unlike the commemoration of Otjihenda and Okeseta the preceding weekend, Okahandja/Otjiserandu and/or Heroes/ Heroines Day in Okahandja was by marred by a standoff between kinspeople, at times threatening to erupt into a physical confrontation, and probably bloodshed.
If the police are to be blamed, this standoff must have been an opportune excuse for them to use it as a pretext and subtext for banning a section of the community from visiting the shrines of their ancestors.
Unlike the observance of Heroes/Heroines Day in Oshakati the same weekend, which proved a momentous occasion, befitting the national heroes and heroines who must surely be smilingly proudly wherever they may be at this homage, the same cannot be said of the fallen heroes and heroines in Okahandja, and other ancestors wherever they may be, seeing their descendants on such a warpath of self-destruction and self-annihilation as menaced by the pilgrim in Okahandja the said weekend.
Yes, the national leaders and all those who converged on the Oshakati Independence Stadium must receive the deserved credit for giving the Heroes/Heroines the befitting tribute and homage, and Heroes/Heroines Day a day worth commemorating.
The leaders who spearheaded the pilgrims and commemorations at Otjihenda in the Okakarara Constituency and at Okeseta in the Gobabis Rural Constituency, the preceding weekend, as much deserve recognition and salutations for the exemplary and judicious leadership they exhibited.
Surely other leaders, whatever the nature of their leadership, must be taking a leaf or two from them. But the same cannot be said about the leaders involved in the pilgrim to Okahandja, and the paying of homage to fallen leaders there. But all must remember and reminded that the Okahandja pilgrim is not just about the fallen leaders who have been laid to rest at the holy shrines in this garden town. It is whether one wants it or not, the mother of all pilgrims.
A dedication to all who sacrificed their lives in the noble cause of resistance, culminating in 1991 in Namibia’s freedom, independence and sovereignty. So those failing that these heroes and heroines receive befitting homage, can no doubt be as much guilty and must stand trial and indicted by their communities for a crime equal to desecrating and defacing these shrines and spitting on such.
They are equally guilty of turning the highest sacrifices some of these heroes and heroines, their lives, worthless and a political ballgame to satisfy their parochial egos.
All too often, the Namibian government has been blamed and accused for usurping Heroes/Heroines Day for its own limited heroes and heroines. But now that Okahandja pilgrim is supposed to be offering especially the community with close affinity to most of the heroes and heroines laid to rest there with the opportunity to pay befitting homage to them, the community has instead become the usurper of such an opportunity.
And more often than not it has failed to pay the heroes and heroines the befitting homage. Forfeiting in the process their liberty and freedom to do so only to blame either the Namibian government and/or police. Heroes like Samuel Maharero, Kahimemua Nguvauva, Hosea Kutako, Kambahahiza Kavikunua, you name them, surely must be turning in their graves.
How can they not given such shamefulness by their own descendants? Let alone be expected to bestow upon them blessings? And sadly, some of those who may be deserving of such blessing are missing it by the misdeeds of others who cannot provide the necessary and required leadership in this matter.
While ready to blame the police and/or the government, few if none from the beleaguered community would dare to pause to earnestly ponder how the community, three years or so after an agreement in 2014, made a court order, it finds itself still in limbo and wilderness in terms of paying its ancestors the befitting tribute and homage?
Simply since 2014 with the said agreement, this matter has squarely been in the hands of the community itself and its leaders not in the hands of some imagined third force, be it the government and/or the police.
On the contrary the Namibian police time and again has been compelled to intervene and crisis manage the situation, if not providing acting leadership for the given community given the inability of its own leaders.
Still three years or so down the line, the community’s leadership has not been able to broker a way forward on the matter the help of the court notwithstanding. How given this one can blame either the police or government is mindboggling.