Tjova Fololindo

Recently, there have been so many suicides of men recorded in Namibia’s local newspapers. A lot of them do not leave notes behind. The nation is wondering what the root cause of this act is. A boy child has been neglected and has no space safe for him to share thoughts, ideas and feelings about what is attenuating his peace. Namibia lacks safe spaces for men - an environment of trust where there are no judgements and they are allowed to be themselves without fear of rejection or ridicule.

These kinds of spaces (with mental health professionals) promote personal growth, mental trauma healing, and insights into life. Some men have a history of trauma, which gives them a high tolerance for emotional pain.  I strongly believe that it is high time for the government to include the establishment of safe spaces for men in the national budget.

This will allow men to share their concerns and relate to situations that other men might be passing through and be safe, knowing that they are not the only ones passing through such difficult moments, and that they will try to find amicable solutions.

I was listening to a programme on a radio station. Men of different age groups from various ethnicities called in to participate on the topic. I recall the callers narrating that a lot of women nowadays do not settle for a man who does not have a stable income. The other caller said even if that woman works and earns more than the partner, she still expects the partner to provide her with a fixed monthly allowance, and upon failure to do so, the relationship comes to an end.

A young caller came through, and narrated how it is so difficult to find true love and a good friend in one person as when a man loses his job, he loses his girlfriend, or the partner begins to behave differently. All these expectations from a man amount to depression. The other incidences are that of men expected to have properties or more because they are men, despite the fact that they cannot afford or have no means of income to fulfill all those expectations. Society puts pressure on the male child, and this creates toxic masculinity.

Society has turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to the issue of men raising children who are not biologically theirs, only to be told when the child is 25 years old that ‘the child is not yours’; A man is called a coward when he cannot father a child and is impotent; a man is ridiculed for not being able to provide for his family - a danger created by gender roles and patriarchal norms. An age limit is set for when a man is to get married and have a certain type of car, and the violence that these men are susceptible to include verbal and financial abuse. After all this pressure has been laid on the shoulders of innocent men, are there safer spaces created for them to run to in order not to perish? As a nation, we have forgotten so much about the boy child who has not been given enough attention. More focus has been directed towards a girl child, who is relatively considered a victim of so many social ills such as Sexual Gender-Based Violence (SGBV), femicide, the victim of patriarchal/cultural and systematic norms, just to mention a few. In the pursuit to combat these social ills perpetuated by mostly men, we tend to neglect the boy child, and do not research much on why men are the majority of the crime perpetrators. There should be a space where men and boys are allowed to cry and feel better and move on despite the burdens they are enduring; a space full of hope and love, which fuels them with the strength to carry on with life’s challenges.

Immediate measures should be taken to address the mental issues of boy children and men, which leads them to commit crimes because of the severity of endurance placed on them.