Privilege Threatens Social Justice and Must Be Confronted

The failure of our government to develop rural hinterland forced the rural population to migrate to urban centres to access better prospects, goods and services. Yet, the urban centres are finding it difficult to contain such migration in providing goods and services such as land or housing. As a result, the low income earners resort to set up their structures without approval from authorities. Also, another group is one that can afford rentals, however exorbitantly charged. Such environment creates conditions that obstruct, limit, or deny poor people access to the same opportunities and resources, relative to the rest of society. 

In fulfilling their duties, we have witnessed how the Namibian Police and Windhoek City Police have been destroying street vendors’ goods and shack dwellers’ homes on grounds of illegality. The recent destruction of one of the shacks led to an arrest of an activist because of his attempt to stop the police from destroying the shack. The events raised a wide debate that bordered on the rule law and enforcement, especially in an attempt to justify the work of the police.

There is an omission in diagnosing some of the issues at hand. For instance, the police rely on the Squatters Proclamation, AG 21 of 1985, a law rooted in apartheid. The police sometimes destroy structures without court orders. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o informs us that laws are instruments of power which society choose to achieve certain values and because of their coerciveness, they raise issues of morality. As if confining people to stay in shacks and sell their goods in difficult conditions are not bad enough, we go further to destroy their homes or the goods they sell. Is there morality or justice in enforcing such law? Why did the police not enforce the same law in destroying a shack belonging to Hadino Hishongwa (someone close to power)? 

While the local authorities’ councillors seem to be clueless in resolving the issues, they do not realise that they have the power to change how the matters are handled by establishing by-laws for their respective councils.

Whereas some of the happenings are to be viewed as a struggle for social justice, we also observe that the issues at hand are being talked down. We observed that when the unemployed graduates took it to the street demanding jobs, when calls for the regulation of property rentals was made and during mass urban land applications, such efforts have been looked at with disdain, mostly by the well-offs. We see the haves and the powerful among us trying to make us believe that their positions are always correct. We have observed how they are grouping society into ‘beings and non-beings’ by implying that the oppressed (non-beings) cannot assert their rights without being instigated or having ulterior motives or blaming them for their situations. The attempts to silence the efforts by the poor and oppressed to exercise their rights should be rejected because of its potential to make people indifferent and render them into subjugation.

What could cause the haves to be insensitive or not to take the attempts by the poor and oppressed to better themselves serious? One explanation is that the reason why the haves and the have nots are no finding each other is because of the former’s privilege. On privilege Chinua Achebe tells us that it “…is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.” Thus such privileges prevent the haves to understand the power imbalances that they are a part of and to support social justice efforts.

Johannes Ndeshimona Shekeni