By Clemence Tashaya
EENHANA – Can mobile technologies be blamed for society’s loss of morals? Yes, some youths here in the Ohangwena region think.
Though they admit that smart phones have improved communication, young people say the gadgets have also exposed women to scrutiny and social attack. Many feel that the private recording undermine the extensive work that has been done to right gender stereotypes that projecting women and the girl child as sex objects. This is because it is the women who are often blamed whenever sexually explicit video footage leaks out.
Some residents in Otjiwarongo were among the Namibian people to have their recorded sex tapes leaked to the public and the media last September. This led to the death of Cosmos /Narib (46) allegedly at the hands of Jesika Geingos (31). Since then sex tapes have become a constant feature on social networks in Namibia depicting among many others Namibian artists, celebrities and the youths.
“The circulation of sex tapes via Whatsapp tends to project the woman in the act and not the man, which is an insult to women at large because this perpetuates the often held stereotype that women are sex objects,” says John Mbiti, a 22-year-old from Ondobe, referring to the messaging applications now widely used in Namibia and elsewhere in the world. “So in some way smart phones have become one among the tools that fuel gender discrimination,” he says
Lavinia Nakamwe, a 21-year-old resident of Eenhana, concurs. “Taking the issue of sex tapes as an example, people have become too experimental and the availability of personal digital devices such as smart phones and tablets is serving as a motivating agent to record videos that were traditionally private,” says Nakamwe. The fact that smart phones have cameras makes it easy for people to try out things they have never done before, including taking nude pictures and video-recording acts of intimacy. Lucia Nakapandi, a 27-year-old journalism student intern with Umutumwa indigenous newspaper here in the north, thinks smart phones are great for communication and sharing information but notes how the very same tool does not limit others’ access to personal data.
“Say you are on Whatsapp, friends can get access to my profile picture, which they can use for anything including posting on other social networks sites,” Nakapandi explains. This according to her, allows any person to access private footage, which in some instances has ended up being posted on social media without the owner’s knowledge. There is an increasing trend in Namibia where anonymous people, even friends, create obscene Facebook pages which they use to post pictures of women who are presented as looking for relationships or intimacy. “It is then tricky for us women because when people see your picture on an obscene or dirty Facebook page, such as Nam Hot Sex Babes, they quickly label you. And you know how African society labels women,” she says
Nakapandi believes it is always women who are blamed and ridiculed while men are praised and applauded. “Look at the Otjiwarongo sex tape as an example where people mocked the family until the man died but the woman was labeled as a “loose woman” while others went as far as judging her bedroom skills but there was never negativity about her now dead husband or boyfriend,” says Nakapandi
People say immorality is nothing new in Namibia, and indeed in African society. But there seems an agreement among a few women surveyed briefly for their opinions that smart phones are to blame for the erosion of Namibian cultural values, which discourage sex before marriage and infidelity according to other Namibian cultural groups’ values. However, Joseph Amukwaya (25) does not share the same views saying that people have always been engaging in extramarital relationships and pre-marital sex, but common knowledge was limited by the absence of convenient gadgets to record their acts. “People should not confuse issues here. Smart phones have only given people, especially young ones, the freedom to record and share pictures and videos. People are just using gadgets for the wrong reasons,” argeus Amukwaya.
He adds that the reason women, especially young ladies, are being blamed more than men is because they are presumed to be better at managing their sexual feelings.
“So if a woman fails to control herself, society will obviously react harshly against her than the man. It’s not like people were not having sex in the past. They had no means to film and share the sex tapes,” he reasons
Amukwaya believes that smart phones are only enhancing the process of moral decay. He adds that in the other tapes which went viral on the Namibian social media networks, the partner is usually the videographer and thus not likely to show his face. Because the female partner is the one being filmed, it is often she who suffers in the smart phone spotlight.