As a gender activist reportedly admitted end of February at a prayer meeting in parliament: “We are all at a loss of how to explain this situation. It does not matter from which religion one comes from, we must all call on supernatural help and ask for wisdom.” But prayers usually do not bring wisdom or supernatural help for addressing social problems. They might offer personal comfort to cope with grief or help to build an individual inner strength to tackle challenges. As a recipe for solving a social anomie they are clearly misplaced as a futile exercise within a secular state.

Let’s face the reality: Namibian society is sick. Baby dumping, rape and other barbaric acts of violence against children and women (but also among men), escalating suicide rates and other forms of (self-)destruction signal a state of anomie. The French sociologist Emile Durkheim introduced the term in 1893. With “anomie” he described a social deterioration, a breakdown of rules how people ought to behave. It is a normlessness resulting in deviant behaviour.

Anomie describes a society, in which the norms serving as moral signposts become ineffective and no longer offer orientation. Durkheim observed that social periods of disruption (such as economic depression) brought about greater anomie and higher rates of crime, suicide, and deviance.

The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe described a similar process in “Things Fall Apart”, when colonialism disrupted and destroyed the ways of life in the African village communities. But we cannot any longer blame Apartheid for the deterioration of our values. And, to clarify this once and for all, so-called passion killing has nothing to do with passion and lacks any compassion. It is purely killing as a senseless act of destruction and self-destruction, a mere sign of no respect for life without any sense of empathy and human dignity.

In Namibia today, this escalation of violence documents the failure of bringing about social stability in the light of the chronic inequalities, the destitution and immoral fabric of the social structures, the Social Darwinism displayed by the haves and the disempowerment of the have-nots. It is nothing new in the processes of decolonisation. One simply needs to get back to Frantz Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth” (published in 1961).

In chapter one (“Concerning Violence”) Fanon diagnoses: “It so happens sometimes that decolonisation occurs in areas which have not been sufficiently shaken by the struggle for liberation, and there may be found those same know-all, smart, wily intellectuals. … Spoilt children of yesterday’s colonialism and of today’s national governments, they organise the loot of what ever national resources exist. Without pity, they use today’s national distress as a means of getting on through scheming and legal robbery … they proclaim the pressing necessity of nationalising the robbery of the nation. … the success of their depredations is swift to call forth the violence and anger of the people.” (p. 37f.)

This is an anger (and despair), which cannot find constructive ways of being articulated in a search for solutions. It is an anger caused by the feeling of insurmountable frustration and – in the obsessive male macho-mentality – bordering to a state of impotence. But it is the social fabric, which creates such feelings of impotence. This is no excuse for the horrendous violence unleashed, and directed against the even more vulnerable and defenseless in society. But it is an explanation.

Namibia’s state of anomie documents that we have failed and betrayed our people. We are a far cry from the state of Independence envisioned by Frantz Fanon more than half a century ago when he stated: “Independence is not a word which can be used as an exorcism, but an indispensable condition for the existence of men and women who are truly liberated, in other words who are truly masters of all the material means which make possible the radical transformation of society.” (p. 250)

Namibia has not achieved such Independence. It has betrayed the ideals proclaimed under the banner of solidarity, freedom and justice. Neither burying killers alive nor praying will be a solution. Only social justice and equality, which provides the basis for a dignified life for all, will create the fundaments for a flourishing nation. This, however, requires the political will and subsequent actions of those claiming to act in the general public interests for the well being of the citizenry.

This article appeared in the Namibian of 11 March 2014