The struggle continues

Life is a struggle: no one will hand you any favors, unless you are sweetening the deal with a bribe of the flesh/giving up the cookies for extra benefits. The struggle gets even harder if you begin your life at a disadvantage, due to the colonial history that is now firmly behind us most black children are born into a cycle of poverty that requires immense hustle to get out of. I could go into depth about how colonization and the subsequent siege of Namibia by apartheid regime resulted in the disadvantaging of black people at the expense of their white counterparts, which was inherited by children both black and white, but that's not the point I'm trying to make here.

The minority of people young enough to be classed as children in 1990 were born in exile, the majority were born inside the borders of Namibia's beautiful bosom. Another faction of 'struggle kids', who I think are old enough to referred to as 'struggle people' have yet again become impatient and decided to walk 800 km's from Outapi in  the north of Namibia to the capital Windhoek in central Namibia. They claim that they are fed up of their suffering and want the Namibian government to give them jobs, which were apparently promised to them. Their long walk to freedom is either an attempt to make a strong statement or preparation for training in Namibia's armed forces and police academies. They blame the government for their predicament; the poor government gets the blame for everything: they are probably to blame for the whole in the ozone layer, Paris Hilton's music career and the failure of Kim kardashian’s marriage. Heck! The Namibian government probably killed Micheal Jackson.

As much as I have sympathy for them and understand their situation, I also don't completely agree with their demands or actions, I am not exactly their biggest fan. They are special (can't believe I said that), no one can ever take that away from them, but that being said its no excuse for them to throw tantrums like spoiled brats. We might have different places of birth on our passports, but we are all going through the same Shit. Their struggle is no different from the Namibian kids born inside Namibia; nothing gives them the right to expect manna to fall from heaven.

I know that emotions always run very high when exile and its hardships are brought up. But from what my older siblings have told me and some rather emotion numbing online research, Namibia during the liberation struggle was not exactly a holiday destination. To say that the struggle children have lost more and suffered because they lost their parents in exile, parents who would have taken care of them, is an insult to every child born inside Namibia who lost a parent because of the liberation struggle. Children born inside Namibia whose lives was altered when their parents decided to contribute to the liberation struggle from within Namibia and ended up losing their lives as a result, deserve the same treatment as that being dished out to the special struggle kids. If jobs in government offices are going to be handed out on a silver platter then they should be distributed equally regardless of which country an individual was born in, what matters is that an individual has heritage, residence or blood ties that qualify then for citizenship. But in a country with one of the highest income distribution inequalities in the world, asking for anything to be done fairly might be asking too much.

I lost my grandmother, who was a reservoir of information about my father’s family, who I subsequently have little information about. She was burned alive in her hut, apartheid regime soldiers rushed into our homestead looking for my stubborn uncle "iiyambo ha mwatala" and set fire to the huts when they couldn't find anyone. She wouldn't and couldn't hurt a soul; I take my traditional name from her and might have inherited some of her other characteristics as well, that I might not know of. I have listened to my aunt countless times telling a story of how her sisters ran faster than Frank Fredericks after spotting a Casspir heading towards their homestead, leaving her to take cover underground in her mother’s (grandma’s) pottery store. It makes me laugh because she isn’t a sprinter by any stretch of the imagination, but it also tingles my spine imagining what those soldiers would have done to her had they found her hiding away like a terrorist. The woman who raised me probably would have not have had the chance to do it had things turned out different that day. The only difference between the last two generations of Namibians is their country birth; we all suffered in one way or the other and continue to suffer as a result of the liberation struggle. The hardships are the same in modern Namibia they do not segregate between exile and non exile kids.

So what am I saying? Do I agree and understand the exile kid’s predicament? Yes I do (can’t believe I said that), Do I think that the government should listen to them and try to find a solution to their problems? Yes I do, they are my fellow countrymen and women. Although I don’t agree with their attitude and their entitlement syndrome, as if they are the royal family (shake my head). What makes them better than the rest of us? Are we second class citizens and are our problems less important than the exile kids? I mean we all walk through the same shit, even if it’s in different size shoes (those lucky to have shoes). There are young people with degrees who can’t get jobs right now, everyone is feeling the pinch. It’s not a problem exclusive to those born in exile, so it is selfish of them to only think about themselves and think that the fuckery of life only affects them.

The struggle, the modern everyday one, affects everyone. We should all stand together, a lot of change would have been achieved by now if the struggle kids had not decided to act like superstars and demand favor’s from a country they weren’t even born in. that is all, best of luck to them, for the rest of us non special kids, the struggle continues. Just keep your head up and work hard to change the position of disadvantage you were born in, who need’s government hand outs anyways?