Bored with being beaten up and attacked in Namibia 0 I woke up to another week in Windhoek, very pissed off and apathetic, walking around in a way that speaks volumes about the way that I feel about my country and its people - again. For the last four weeks I seem to constantly be in situations where either something is being stolen from me, or I have to endure some sort of physical violence, that just throws me completely off the rails. Honestly though, I am actually not as pissed off as I used to be a year or two ago when I was a victim of theft or assault. When we talk about rape in Namibia, we always consider that the rape figures in the country, obviously, don’t factor in the unreported rape cases, of which we believe that there are quite a few.
I have come to find that it is the same for violent assault and instances involving theft or robberies. Last weekend, right in front of the Hilton I was attacked by ten young men that seemingly appeared out of nowhere, but reached me just in time to put their boots to my head several times, before they accepted that I wasn’t hiding anything else on my body that they needed.
One second I was offering the one young man a cigarette that he has asked for, the next, five men were kicking my head in, with my three female friends, having no choice but to find some sort of safety before they too fell victim to savage inclinations of the Namibian youth.
I remember clearly to be very relaxed after my attack, as if to suggest that what had happened was just another unintended consequence of living in Namibia, something that I couldn’t really do much about. You see, that’s just it, as a queer black man in this country, I have become used to being called names, being beaten by men I don’t even know from a bar of soap, no less had an interaction with, or even just being picked up in a club and being thrown across the room for no reason.
I am also tired of buying new phones, mostly because I don’t have the damn money, and it would be nice to keep my contacts and not have to start all over every time I find myself falling victim to these petty criminals.
I was also stunned this weekend when these boys were kicking in my head, at the silent and almost blasé expression on the faces of the about five or six girls that were with the boys when they took to my body. I was wondering if this is normal for them, to see their friends or boyfriends attack other people and there is just nothing they could or wanted to do about it.
Two minutes after the incident, two police officers drove past a franticly manic Keith that could still see the group that violated him in the distance down Independence Avenue, but could not get any form or justice, no matter how small, because the police simply just wouldn’t stop.
And that is the Namibia that I am slowly becoming use to. The violence that is experienced by my queer, black, poor and Khoisan body, is something that I can say has slowly become one of the constant and neverending features of a life lived in this country. It is not to suggest that these crimes don’t happen in other countries, but a lot of us think or believe that we are safer in Namibia compared to other African countries. That might be true, but who is it true for? I can tell you that although I don’t live in a crime- and poverty-ridden neighbourhood, violence still seems to find its way to me, no matter how fancy the boots are that I am wearing, or how many overpriced drinks I go and sit and have at the Hilton.
A friend looked at me after the attack, and said that she wishes that she had my calm. I wanted to casually slap her (because I know she meant well) but I really wanted to explain to her that it wasn’t joy or calm, I was just bored with being attacked and feeling like a victim. I am very sensitive to what it is that I feel, and I am not going to allow myself to feel like a victim, no matter how shitty things get.
One can get addicted to that feeling of wanting and needing better, hating Namibia and believing that the grass is greener on the other side. In a lot of ways, for a queer black man these things are true; there are other liberties to be enjoyed on the other side of the world, yet leaving Namibia with a hateful spirit and heart is just not going to be me.
At this point, I have no advice or recommendations about what to do, or how it is that we must fix this. I am really just in pain both physically and emotionally. I find that this is the one thing that I can contribute now to this conversation; my pain. Namibia seems to have a mind of its own, and I don’t really know what it is thinking. In the meantime, I am going to just heal this broken feeling and try and wake up feeling more positive about my country tomorrow, before I get my spirit broken completely and permanently.
keith@namibiansun.com