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Ubuntu @ubuntu.activitypub.awakari.com.ap.brid.gy · 30/06/2026

When victims become killers and liberators become perpetrators There is a moment in every nation’s life when it must look in the mirror and ask a simple question: who have we become? Lazarus Kwed... #Opinions Origin | Interest | Match

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When victims become killers and liberators become perpetrators

**Lazarus Kwedhi** There is a moment in every nation’s life when it must look in the mirror and ask a simple question: who have we become? South Africa is at that moment, and Namibia watches, because our histories are braided together by African nativism, colonialism, liberation, and now by the same dangerous test: what do we do with the power we fought for during the liberation struggle for independence against colonialism and apartheid? Mahmood Mamdani, the scholar who dissected the Rwandan genocide, gave us the warning long ago. He showed how African native societies that once bled under colonial oppression can, once they hold power, turn their pain and anger sideways, not at the systems that failed them, as was the case with European settler colonialism and apartheid rule, but at the neighbour and the foreigner, the ones who have no power to answer back. That is what is happening now. And it is not just violence; it is betrayal. **Ubuntu, the African way of life** At the core of this betrayal is the abandonment of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is not just a word. It is the African way of life “I am because we are.” It means your humanity is bound to mine. It means we recognise each other’s dignity, respect each other’s rights, and carry each other’s burdens, as the saying goes in Oshiwambo, “Dhoyendji ihadhi ehama okulila, meaning give each other a shoulder to cry on. Ubuntu is what made Africans open their doors to South African refugees during apartheid’s prosecutorial, exploitative, and dehumanising rule. It is what made strangers into family when the state turned its back. To attack a foreigner in your land is not only to reject them, but to project self-hate as Africans. They have rejected Ubuntu, the core foundation of humanity’s coexistence in harmony with one another. To deny someone’s humanity because of their passport is to risk denying themselves the right to existence both inside and outside their homeland in times of need. **The hand that fed you** What is being done to fellow Africans in South Africa is like a person biting the hand that once fed him, or biting the hand that is feeding you and might feed you again. It is like burning the house that once sheltered you and may have to shelter you again. During apartheid, South Africans knew what it meant to be foreign. They crossed borders with nothing but fear and hope. African countries opened their doors, fed them, and trained them to fight their oppressors. They risked their own safety because Ubuntu obliged them to show humanity to fellow human beings. Today, the roles have flipped. And instead of remembering, too many have chosen to forget. Instead of gratitude, there is rage. Instead of protection, there is fire. The Bible says it plainly in Leviticus 19:33–34: do not mistreat foreigners residing among you in your land, because you were once foreigners in another man’s land. Namibia says it in Oshiwambo, and it cuts deeper than most realise: “Shalya Nyoko yamukweni inashi kuta.” It means that if your mother dies and my mother raises you, I must not mistreat you for staying in my house. I must not take you for granted. Because my mother is not immune to death, and I too may end up raised in another’s house, far from my own. This conventional wisdom is both caution and conscience – a warning to treat the stranger well, because circumstances are not permanent but can change. Today you host, tomorrow you flee. Today you have a home, tomorrow you need one. South Africans learned this truth when they ran from apartheid’s atrocities and exploitation. They were taken in by other Africans, by other houses. To forget that now is not just cruel. It is to spit on the very Ubuntu spirit that saved them across African countries. **The broken promise** The call for South Africa is not just about moral obligation. It is about power and human rights. A government rules by public consent. The people agree to be governed in a constitutional democracy because they expect protection, justice, and dignity in return. That was the promise of 1994, and it is the promise Namibia made at independence. Human rights are not negotiable. In fact, another person’s rights are not yours to dispossess, and they do not stop at the border. When jobs vanish, when clinics have no medicine, and when corruption eats the budget, that public consent begins to break. Leaders should be held accountable for failing the state. The sad reality is that failed leaders do not step aside. They survive through deflection. And deflection has a playbook. First, externalise the problem Blame colonialism. Blame apartheid. Blame the foreigner. Blame anything but the policy failure in front of you. Second, delay accountability. Say the problem is 35 years old, so today’s leaders cannot be blamed yet. Colonialism has been here for longer. Third, fragment the people through divide-and-rule tactics. Let the poor fight the poorer, victim fighting victim. Let the unemployed turn on the immigrant. While they fight each other, no one is looking at the leaders who broke the promise to provide and defend the public good they promised during elections and after securing a two-thirds majority rule in parliament. The point is that words from failed politicians do not create jobs. They do not fix hospitals. They do not stop the looting. But those words do change the target of your anger to people who have nothing to do with the fundamental problem. **Perpetrators in suits** Let us call it what it is. A leader who fails to govern and then points people toward the foreigner is not innocent. They are perpetrators of violence without ever pulling a trigger. They protect their careers and privileges at the expense of the public they swore to serve and the human rights they swore to uphold. Failed politicians know that organised anger aimed upward, at them, can remove them from political office and disrupt their privileges. But scattered violence aimed downward often strengthens their position, because it diverts public attention from the real issues. Politicians chant political slogans such as “we need strong leadership. Give us a two-thirds majority rule, so we can do it better.” But the ultimate goal is to consolidate their power. People are falling into these traps, because people are tired and afraid; they cling to the very hands that let them fall. Namibia is not immune. We too invoked colonialism and apartheid to claim legitimacy after independence. But decades later, when inclusivity and prosperity still lag behind, the same language of scapegoating becomes a shield for failing politicians. The sad reality is that if power is now in our hands in a constitutional democracy, the question must be asked: why is constitutional democracy not working for everyone? Why are human rights being denied to those who stand at our gates? **The choice** The struggle has shifted. It is no longer “fight for inclusion.” We are all included in a constitutional democratic rule, unlike in colonialism and apartheid. The struggle for independence was legitimate because exclusion was perpetrated by the racial apartheid state and its laws. Today the struggle pattern has shifted to black political elites who perpetuate exclusion and exploitation in the post-apartheid era. The struggle now is: hold power accountable now that we are included. Mob violence against foreigners erases that shift. It spends the energy of the people on those who have no control over budgets, policy, or governance. It lets the real decision-makers walk away clean, as if they have no hand in a failing government. South Africa and Namibia share more than borders. We share a history of being crushed and a history of rising. We share Ubuntu: the belief that my humanity is tied to yours, that respect for human rights is not optional, and that dignity is not reserved for citizens alone. Ubuntu is not a slogan. It is a test. Leviticus is not an old book. It is a mirror. And “Shalya Nyoko yamukweni inashi kuta” is not folklore. It is foresight, born from knowing that no one is safe from needing shelter. Liberation movements become perpetrators the moment they let deflection replace delivery, the moment they betray the consent of the people or the moment they trade Ubuntu for scapegoats. So here is the question for both nations: will we keep aiming our anger downward, at the ones who have nothing to lose? Or will we turn it upward, at the ones who promised us everything and delivered too little? Humanity and the rule of law must take centre stage again. Not slogans. Not scapegoats. But the simple, stubborn belief that how we treat foreigners reveals who we are and who we are cannot be people who bite the hand that once fed them, who forget the house that once sheltered them, or who abandon the Ubuntu that makes them human.

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