“Natives and the Vanished Dignity”, From New Era, flashed via AllAfricaNews:

For us to achieve the notion of ‘all people are equal’, the colonised must first be deliberately allowed to come at the same socio-economic level as the colonisers and their children, then we can start talking about equality as there can never be equality when a hungry athlete is put at the same line with a satisfied athlete and told to compete at the same time, place and manner.

As this might look as equality to others, it is not to me. The application of equality must be twinned with equity and the principle of fairness. The principle is that yes we must treat equal cases equally but fundamentally, we must deal with unequal cases in proportion to their inequality.

[Frantz] Fanon’s utterances remain relevant in today’s context.

In the words of this magnificent African child, ‘the settler’s town is a strongly-built town, all made of stone and steel. It is a brightly-lit town; the streets are covered with asphalt; the settler’s feet are never visible, except perhaps in the sea; but there you’re never close enough to see them. His feet are protected by strong shoes although the streets of his town are clean and even, with no holes or stones. The settler’s town is a well-fed town, easy-going town; its belly is always full of good things’.

Far away and in remote areas, is the native place of residence described as ‘ a hungry town, starved of bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of light. The native town is a crouching village, a town on its knees, a town wallowing in the mire.’

Who doesn’t know that in this country, we still have settlers that use zoological terms in mentioning natives? Just look around and see how the natives are inhumanely treated.

It will not be difficult to stand by the road and see a bakkie packed with more than 20 workers being transported to workplaces, working on a tender worth more than one million Namibian dollars. The natives remain the exploited employees of the settlers and colonisers. We still have segregated schools. Accessibility does not imply a total removal of apartheid remnants and machineries. I visited a school that still has chairs still printed South West Africa while you find a service station with all prices written ‘Rand’ instead of ‘Dollars’.

It is said that settlers have both Namibian and South African citizenship. The settlers are of course ignorant of our revolution. The other day I was at the police station to collect my certificate of conduct, I was in a queue with many people that included the two citizens that I assume to be Afrikaners.

One of them was told by the police officer that a certain document of his that I did not take much note of was missing. In response, this man had the audacity to rudely shout at the police officer, fold his document and throw it to the direction of the ‘constable’ and remarked ‘throw it in your dustbin’.

This event angered me and those patriotic compatriots who were in that same queue. I for one thought that the man will be arrested right away but to my surprise he took off freely – presumably saying ‘the natives cannot do anything to me the son of the settler’.

As a young person, it is very much disturbing seeing this happening in a decolonized motherland and to a state agency to which we have surrendered our natural act of protecting, governing and defending ourselves (our sovereignty). If I am to meet this same man somewhere and he does something to me, should I report him to the police or ‘nandi tulemo ongonyo’ (punch him)?

Having told this story to many citizens from different regions and various places, I soon learned that there are many cases in which the natives are inhumanely treated by the settlers to the point where they are still given to ‘eat with dogs and other pets’.

This appears unreal hearing it from the third party but once you have a conversation with those that have experienced it, you realise that decolonisation has just taken off.

[…]

It seems that Du Bois’s avowal that the problem of the 20th century is that of a colour-line needs to be stretched to the 21st century. What is clear here is that something needs to be done. Natives in the new Namibia must be on top of the food chain.

Needless to say, I end with the submission that if establishing a body to deal with cases pertaining to inhumane treatment of the native is farfetched then the police must do us this little favour of establishing an SMS line where we can tip the police on events of this nature because as I have already indicated, many people especially the unskilled and semi-skilled natives have sold their dignity for survival.