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The intellectual rebellion of the oppressed

Home Columns The intellectual rebellion of the oppressed

It’s indeed very painful that the suppression of truth and sound morality continues to dominate the state of affairs in military organisations at the expense of the power of artificial superiority coated by military uniforms.
In the military clans such as the Namibian police, the defence force and the correctional/prison service the organisational cultures are inherited from colonial administration with original autocratic rules and regulations which are oppressive and such oppression is highly institutionalised.

It’s for this reason that this account seeks to emancipate the minds of those who are victimised by this chronic autocracy of the military tradition. This account seeks to provide a social constructionist outlook based on the study of knowledge via the phenomenal work of popular German theorists and philosophers Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the context of Namibian military clans.

This is a remedial narrative that seeks to resuscitate the majority people in uniform from the tyranny of oppression presided over by a bunch of commissioned officers as observed in all military clans. The nature of direct oppression in the Namibian forces is unsound and needs critical analysis, thorough engagement and intellectual guard.

This gets us as part of the oppressed group to contemplate on theories of logic surrounding the phenomena of humanity, morality and democracy in confronting the military organizational rules, and their implications on democracy. It’s therefore the best alternative for this account that we should seek the means to amend the laws regulating the military societies if we would want to see humanity, morality and democracy flourish; this oppression will be parasitic and chronic to the cerebral standing of officers and equally urinates on the democratic values of Namibia.

The concept of “discipline” as enforced in the Namibian forces is a claim used in a spectrum of oppression to regulate the conduct and behaviours of officers such that they do not behave like “civilians”; said differently, the state of being a civilian is thereby being undermined and being viewed as a sin and characterised by naivety or by anything imaginably worse; that is military tradition for you, a seasoned oppressive tradition that looks down at our culture and humanity.

The 1976 Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’ Dialectics of Nature/Dialektik der Natur would inform us in their analysis of common social phenomena. For instance, their work on the law of the negation of the negation, they argued that “crime is a negation of the law, the punishment by law is a negation of crime” and legal incarceration is the synthesis of both crime and the law. The law of the unity of opposites therefore identifies three core elements; the thesis, the antithesis and the synthesis signifying the struggle of the opposite forces and the resolution of their contradiction.

Alternatively, similar logic would argue that the “intellectual rebellion of the oppressed officers” would form an antithesis of the “oppressive laws” being the Namibian Police Act (Act No. 5 of 2001), Namibian Defence Act (Act No. 1 of 2002) and the Prison/Correctional Service Act (Act No. 9 of 2012) (Representing institutionalized oppressions) and the synthesis will be “radical humane change” (amendments of rules to satisfy the changing needs of the society to liberate humanity) in the military clans.

In a different case, the law of the negation of the negation demonstrates supreme logic from a natural science perspective that: before plants die out, they produce seeds which germinate into new plants – the seeds negate the old ancestor plant. The advancement of institutionalized oppression in the Namibian forces is contrary to this law when a positivity of the outcome is considered because when oppressors negate they would produce hardcore oppressors who will be counterproductive to humanity in the military organizations.

“Discipline” is abstract and is socially constructed, in fact it’s also relative both in construction and application. The advancement of humanity is concurrent with the liberation of the mind; humanity is best understood beyond the ranks of military clans therefore the psychology used to control officers by fear in a form of “discipline” is in the long run not sustainable and it is not useful to liberate humanity and morality in these military organizations. This is a classical representation of oppression in the Namibian forces; a social ill that must concern intellectual discourses that if not debated fiercely fear and dictatorship will continue to hold junior officers a cerebral hostage. The tyranny of oppression does not only undermine the humanity of officers but it’s also an insult to their intelligence. “The intellectual rebellion of the oppressed” is a conceptual and practical analysis that seeks practical accountability by the lords of the Namibian military clans in a view to liberate these organizations from the tyranny of institutionalized oppression.

• Shivute Kaapanda is a leftist writer from Eyanda village.