The ruling by the Supreme Court of Namibia on 16 May 2023 compelling government to recognise same-sex marriages officiated outside the country outraged many political parties. Both Swapo and the National Democratic Party of Lukato Lukato came out guns blazing in blaming the legal system for passing such judgement.
The problem should not be laid before the doors of the independent legal system, whatever the independence of the judiciary means in the Namibian context. But the blame should be dumped squarely at the door of the politicians who made the Constitution of Namibia way back in 1990. Filled with euphoria and emotional aspirations for attaining independence, other politicians did not carefully comprehend the implications of some of the constitutional clauses which have come to haunt the Namibian nation many years after attaining nationhood.
Our constitutional crafters might not have known at that time that we live in an era of information revolution where we are bombarded by new information that is sometimes contradictory to our values and norms, every moment of the day.
Established static social patterns are broken up as they are exposed to a new globalisation culture. Eventually, the prevailing attitude has become one of freedom without responsibility because it seems as if the inability to cope with rapid change has brought about a sense of fatalism.
All over the world, there seems to be a lack of discipline and control among people, especially the youth. In addition, many Africans have been brainwashed during the colonial period and in many cases failed to differentiate between what is Western and what is African. Mazrui (1986) is on record to say that you can teach people the English language, teach them almost everything but you cannot teach them how to rule themselves, that they will have to learn themselves.
One of the wars being wagged on the African continent is the issue of African culture versus the relevancy of Westernisation. Concerning the perception of Whites regarding African capability and capacity of reasoning, Mungazi (1996) mentions Cecil John Rhodes, who maintained that the Natives of Africa are like children despite having human minds.
In 1985, the former South African President, PW Botha told his cabinet that although Blacks look like human beings and act as such, do not necessarily make them sensible ones. In addition to colonising African land, Europeans also colonised African knowledge not just to claim it as their own, but also to disconnect Africans from their heritage and culture.
In echoing this sentiment Ajamu (1997) calls this process ‘intellectual colonialism. Further Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1981) asserts that the process of colonial education annihilates a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and themselves. Colonial education makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland and creates a sense of wanting to disassociate with their native heritage. It is, therefore, possible that when the Namibian constitution was drafted some of these colonial stereotypes and realities were overlooked.
Any clause which could have been seen negatively affecting the majority of people could have been debated and a compromise reached.
Although Namibia does not legalise same-sex marriages, the precedence has been set now of letting same-sex couples live together in a country which does not approve of that.
We have seen many political leaders in this country contradicting themselves by violating the constitutional provision, which they swore to uphold and protect. Article 1 of the Constitution clearly states that “The Republic of Namibia is hereby established as a sovereign, secular, democratic and unitary State founded upon the principles of democracy, the rule of law and justice for all.” What is important here is that Namibia is a secular state, which the lawmakers should have carefully navigated and perhaps considered that the majority of Namibians are Christians.
Considering the big number of Christians in that Constituent Assembly and some traditional leaders, the former could have referred to Leviticus 18:22 which forbids a man from having sexual intimacy with another man or so woman with another woman. This is wishful thinking and everything is history as the Supreme Court has already passed a ruling to compel the government of the Republic of Namibia to legalise same-sex marriage officiated elsewhere to reside in the country.
This will not be the only same-sex marriage officiated elsewhere as many more are expected to come and Namibians will have to live with this thorn of homosexual marriages in their flesh. Maybe what should be considered is religious morality, in which many Namibians believe that we are all created by God.
Of course, they could be atheists and perhaps evolutionists in our midst who do not prescribe to the diction that the earth as created by God, is being commanded by some divine powers. Traditional and conservative thinkers may even question the origin and process of producing children if same-sex marriages are encouraged in the country.
Yes, Namibia does not recognise same-sex marriages, but the exercise of allowing them to come into the country based on equality will attract many more couples.
We cherish our freedom, norms and values and the education of the children in relation to Biblical principles, but these will be negatively affected when growing up in such an environment.