Letter of the Week … Swapo Was Also Illegal

IT SEEMS we have short memories. When Swapo was formed, was it a legal or an illegal organisation? When they were fighting in the bush, was it legal or illegal? Of course the occupation of Namibia by South Africa was also illegal.

But we should have learnt long ago that people do not do illegal activities out of choice, but out of desperation, because sometimes going the illegal route is the only way to gain what you don’t have or for others to lose what they have denied you.

No one was baptized to do illegal things. But sometimes circumstances force some people to go the illegal way.

It is good to create a system to keep order. But what would you do if the system is not working for you or it is only working in favour of certain people? Anyone can kill, he just needs a reason. So anyone can do abominable or illegal things depending on his situation.

Just as Swapo was recognized as a legitimate liberation movement while others branded it a ‘terrorist’ organisation, so someone could also be considered a hero for erecting an ‘illegal’ shack for his family.

If you do not want illegal shacks, then you should simply provide land to the people.

How could you blame your child for stealing food if you did not cook for him/her? No child would want to be labelled a ‘food thief,’ so no one wants to live in an illegal shack.

Being a leader is not like winning a ‘tender’ as some people seem to think. So if you are a leader and you behave like a ‘slay queen’ at the ‘slay gate,’ don’t complain when others decide to crash the gate.

Whether a shack is illegal or not, its occupants would never have ‘illegal dreams’. Someone from an illegal shack could become a scientist, a medical doctor or even a future president.

President Geingob claims to have been raised in a ghetto, but was that ghetto legal or not? Even other former freedom fighters were also conceived or raised in ‘illegal’ shacks.

People from the ‘illegal’ shacks also pay taxes. They build and protect state properties/infrastructure, raise the children of the rich and wash their toilets.

So the decision by the City of Windhoek to invite bids for a tender to dismantle shacks erected illegally on municipal land is nothing but the ‘Windhoek Massacre Part 2’. Although the tender has been put on hold, I believe they are working out new tricks. Perhaps it has been put on hold because it is an election year.

Apartheid killed people physically, but this government is killing people psychologically or emotionally. The apartheid government killed people with bullets, while this government is killing people with poverty, which is even more painful as you die a slow death compared to being shot.

It is a new ‘black apartheid.’ They want to decide for us how and where to live.

But suppression is like fire, whether you are burnt by a white man or a black man, the pain is the same.

People are not mad to erect ‘illegal’ shacks, and they don’t erect the ‘illegal’ shacks for the fun of it or for decoration either. You would never find an ‘illegal’ shack that is not occupied by people.

That tells you that even if a shack is considered ‘illegal’, to someone it could be the only house he and his family have.

When will this stop? It is obvious that if the City of Windhoek was to have an entity whose sole purpose is just to destroy ‘illegal’ shacks, then other towns in Namibia would most likely adopt the same system.

This culture of selective justice in Namibia whereby a poor man is punished for stealing a goat while a rich man is not punished for stealing a cow is nothing but ‘black apartheid.’

So if the formation of an ‘illegal’ Swapo during the times of injustice was considered an act of bravery, then why is erecting an ‘illegal’ shack in times of homelessness and unaffordable houses considered a crime?

Salom Shilongo

Via email