EDITORIAL: Police have blood dripping from their hands

“Imagine you have been beaten by your husband, then you get to the police and they tell you they don’t have enough resources. They tell you to go back home and get your husband - the one who beat you - and bring them to the police,” remarked a participant at a gender-based violence training in Zimbabwe in 2020.

That hypothesis came to life at Walvis Bay last Friday when a mother, desperate for protection from her perpetually abusive husband, sought police protection but was sent from pillar to post and fed a concoction of excuses.

In the end, Memory Eises’ five-year-old son paid with his life when his stepfather lured him away from public view and killed him to seemingly spite his wife who was divorcing him. Similarly, five people were massacred in 2018 in Rundu after police ignored pleas for help from the culprit’s family members who alerted the police about his violent behaviour.

In the same year, police also came under the spotlight after a woman who repeatedly reported death threats from her ex-lover was gunned down by the same man at her workplace. In fact, Alina Kahehongo, the slain 24-year-old International University of Management (IUM) student who was doing her internship at a local supermarket in Windhoek West, had opened a case against her ex that very same week.