EDITORIAL: Locking the electorate out in the cold

Yesterday, opposition leader Job Amupanda released videos depicting nauseating conditions in the apartheid-era compound at Walvis Bay, in which some families live. The irony of this situation is that many houses constructed through the government’s mass housing initiative remain unoccupied and have started to fall apart.The people delaying the occupancy of mass housing units across the country are reminiscent of the biblical Cain. “Am I my brother’s keeper?" was Cain’s rude response to God when asked where his brother Abel was. He had killed him moments earlier.In contemporary parables, being your brother’s keeper means having a moral inclination to help those around you, especially when you’re the custodian of national resources. If no one is the keeper of another, there can be no dignity and peace within the human race.On the unoccupied houses, officials of the state and contractors are pointing fingers in each other’s direction. These are officials to whom housing has long been provided – hence the lack of urgency to resolve the impasse for the sake of others. If these houses were meant for the officials themselves, the finger-pointing would not have lasted 24 hours.But these are Cains. They are not their brother’s keeper, and they completely lack empathy for their fellow Namibians who hop from one place to another for a night’s rest. We reject our sense of obligation or connection, even though it is part of the contract we signed with the electorate and took an oath for. The very electorate we have locked outside in the rainstorm and scorching African sun.

EDITORIAL: Locking the electorate out in the cold

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Namibian Sun 2025-04-02

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EDITORIAL: Locking the electorate out in the cold

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Namibian Sun 2025-04-02

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