Crime, especially violent crime, has become entrenched in our everyday lives. The rapes, assaults and murders have been particularly gruesome for quite some time. We can’t continue to say this is not us.

This violence is defining who we are.

We are a nation of violent, nasty criminals. 

The victims and perpetrators come from all ages and backgrounds, and the screaming headlines hardly get a reaction from the public anymore.   

A six-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a cattle herder when he grabbed her by the arm and raped her, using a stick, while she was walking home from school in the Endola constituency of the Ohangwena region. 

A 50-year-old businessman was arrested for the alleged rape of a 23-year-old woman at a guesthouse outside Ondangwa. 

According to the police, the businessman accused the victim of bewitching him, and threatened to expose her to family members.

A 20-year-old woman was dragged into a Mariental graveyard and raped.

It is alleged that the victim and her sister were walking home after attending a wedding celebration at the suspect’s residence when she was attacked.

The suspect allegedly joined them, and started chatting with the victim before he covered her mouth and dragged her into the graveyard, where he raped her.

In Windhoek, a 17-year-old girl was allegedly raped after she was grabbed from a taxi and dragged into the darkness.

A 28-year-old man allegedly raped his biological son of one year and seven months on two different occasions at a village in the Ohangwena region’s Okongo area.

The mother last week caught the suspect in the act.

In a separate incident at Omuthiya, the body of a 22-year-old woman was found buried under the floor of a man’s hut.

According to the police, the woman was killed by her boyfriend.

The Ohangwena police arrested a man accused of raping, strangling and throwing the dead body of a woman in a well on Monday night. 

Young men who are brought up with the idea that they are owed, that they have power and have arrived at a point where they can step into that power, represent the attitude that drives domestic and intimate partner violence. In an extremely traditional, highly patriarchal culture such as ours, violence in all forms is seen as an acceptable measure of discipline and communication. Coupled with the view that women and children are property, objects, commodities, a mere extension of the existence of the “man of the house”, has resulted in an incredibly dangerous society where these crimes often go unpunished.

The boy who is taught that the world owes him a certain life simply because he is a boy becomes the man who does not understand why a woman would reject him, why she would be “allowed” to. 

That man is a danger to a community when he feels powerless. 

This is where the myth is that domestic violence increases as socioeconomic status decreases. The way men are socialised to believe that status and money should translate to greater access and ability to behave in a certain way mean that domestic violence occurs in all echelons of society. Indeed, it is this money and status that often protect these men from any repercussions, especially social ostracisation.

However, because we live in a society that values the reputation of perpetrators more than they do the lives of victims, many of these crimes continue to go unpunished and largely unspoken of. 

Especially when the police and healthcare workers further perpetuate the idea that any action or lack thereof by the victims could have prevented the abuse. Until we as a society understand that violence is an act of power, exerting power over another, taking power from their victims is what fuels these acts and the constant rise in these crimes, we can never consider ourselves an equal or safe society, for anyone.

While women are continuously told how to protect and improve themselves, no learning or unlearning is expected of men who are ill-equipped to deal with an ever-changing society.