EDITORIAL: The Cains of Mass Housing
The people delaying the occupancy of mass housing units across the country are reminiscent of the biblical Cain. “Am I my brother’s keeper?" was Cain’s rude response to God when asked where his brother Abel was. He had killed him moments earlier.
In contemporary parables, being your brother’s keeper means having a moral inclination to help those around you. If no one is the keeper of another, there can be no dignity and peace within the human race.
If the narrative of keeping one’s brother was applied to the housing crisis in Namibia, a country teeming with unoccupied mass housing units, no one would sleep under a bridge.
On the unoccupied houses in Otjomuise, officials of the state and contractors are pointing fingers in each other’s direction. These are officials to whom housing has long been provided – hence the lack of urgency to resolve the impasse for the sake of others. If these houses were meant for the officials themselves, the finger-pointing would not have lasted 24 hours.
But these are Cains. They are not their brother’s keeper, and they completely lack empathy for their fellow Namibians who hop from one place to another for a night’s rest. We reject our sense of obligation or connection, even though it is part of the contract we signed with the electorate, and took an oath for. The very electorate we have locked outside in the rainstorm and scorching African sun.
In contemporary parables, being your brother’s keeper means having a moral inclination to help those around you. If no one is the keeper of another, there can be no dignity and peace within the human race.
If the narrative of keeping one’s brother was applied to the housing crisis in Namibia, a country teeming with unoccupied mass housing units, no one would sleep under a bridge.
On the unoccupied houses in Otjomuise, officials of the state and contractors are pointing fingers in each other’s direction. These are officials to whom housing has long been provided – hence the lack of urgency to resolve the impasse for the sake of others. If these houses were meant for the officials themselves, the finger-pointing would not have lasted 24 hours.
But these are Cains. They are not their brother’s keeper, and they completely lack empathy for their fellow Namibians who hop from one place to another for a night’s rest. We reject our sense of obligation or connection, even though it is part of the contract we signed with the electorate, and took an oath for. The very electorate we have locked outside in the rainstorm and scorching African sun.
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Namibian Sun
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