Images of residents advancing threateningly towards a group of armed police officers in a show of “enough is enough” brought to light the fact that inequality is dangerously unsustainable.
A group of land grabbers risked their lives as they went ahead pushing backwards a group of armed police officers in Otjomuise residential area of Windhoek yesterday. The group was angered by the police who were dispatched to the area to enforce law and order by stopping the residents who were apportioning land to themselves without the city officials’ permission.
The group of young men armed with spades, picks, sticks and pangas walked towards the armed police and dared the police to shoot them.
The police retreated, but a while later the police Inspector General Lieutenant General Sebastian Ndeitunga arrived with groups of anti-riot police armed with teargas who came to disperse the crowd and arrest some of the residents.
While such kinds of clashes with the police are well-known only in South Africa, yesterday’s events indicated that Namibia’s inequality is now making the society to go teetering on the edges of violence and possible death at the hands of police for those poor residents who have suffered for too long under a governmental system that cares little about them.
Last month South Africa was shaken by riots that ended in the deaths of more than 200 people and losses of billions of dollars in economic destruction as a result of protests against a governmental system that cares little about the poor people.
Yesterday’s scenes in the Otjomuise residential area of Windhoek bore the hallmarks of the same situation of South Africa but only on a smaller scale.
In the photo: Windhoek residents clashing with the police.
