Africa-Press – Namibia. TOO OFTEN, we find ourselves regurgitating platitudes craftily constructed to either control or subgate the socio-cultural identity of a group, community and/or entire country.
We become so engulfed by these platitudes, that they become the normal prism through which we view the world. Moreso, it becomes a lens which obstructs, even simultaneously defying, the course of justice and the promise of equality.
Since the reignition of the abortion law reform debate and the submission of a report from the Law Reform and Development Commission (LRDC) on abolishing the sodomy law, some religious groups have organised themselves to demonstrate and reject reforming both laws. They argue that Namibia is ‘a Christian nation’, and express platitudes which repress and even dishonestly misrepresent the common and collective voices of LGTBQIA+ families and allies, as well as pro-choice supporters who embrace religious values.
Just recently, the Coalition of Churches and Organisations on Ethical Social Justice was quoted as saying “they love the LGBTQI+ community, but their sexual ethics do not represent the values of a Christian nation”. In the same breath, the chairperson of Ethical Social Justice rejected reforming abortion laws, stating “there are no international instruments recognising abortion as a woman’s right, and women’s rights should be exercised in line with existing laws”, once again predicating it on Namibia’s so-called ‘Christian’ values.
To rationalise the colonial amnesia which the Coalition of Churches and its supporters unashamedly embrace, let’s contextualise, again, how these laws came about: The Abortion and Sterilisation Act is an archaic law inherited 46 years ago by the then apartheid administration. It allows abortion under very strict conditions. The sodomy law, according to the LRDC report, is “the criminalisation of sodomy found in the common law of Namibia which was inherited from South Africa”. Further, “when Namibia became a mandated territory of South Africa in 1920, South Africa applied its legislative power over Namibia to impose a legal framework that included the Roman-Dutch common law brought to the Cape of Good Hope by Dutch settlers in the 1600s. This Roman-Dutch law introduced a prohibition on sodomy – which, after the British annexation of the Cape of Good Hope, was interpreted in accordance with the concepts underlying the colonial British penal code, which was modified and implemented across British colonies in Africa, including South Africa.”
It is crystal clear where these specific laws emanate from, yet religious groups like the Council of Churches and the Coalition of Churches choose to use bigotry to overlook history, underlying context and the long-standing social, political and economic harm of these laws in the name of maintaining a desperate argument that Namibia is ‘a Christian nation’, notwithstanding the fact that these are colonial laws and values, which religious groups have weaponised in the past and now use to oppress and subjugate women, sexual, gender and sex minorities.
SECULARLY SPEAKING More than that, our Constitution states that everyone has the right and freedom to practise any religion. Also, an international religious freedom report compiled in 2018 confirms that “the Constitution specifies the country is a secular state, prohibits religious discrimination, and provides for freedom of thought, conscience, and belief, as well as the right to enjoy, practise, profess, maintain, and promote any religion”.
Despite this, the Coalition of Churches uses religious dogma and inflammatory language to restrict the rights of more than half of Namibia’s electorate (women), and a minority community whose human status and dignity has been affected severely by harmful religious tropes. The ‘sexual ethics’ of the LGBTQIA+ community need not represent the values of ‘a Christian nation’ because Namibia is a secular state. More so, the church seems to be more concerned with the private lives of the LGBTQIA+ community than paedophilia, sexual molestation and abuse in their own institutions. So, if we do not reflect the ‘sexual ethics of a Christian nation’, perhaps the church itself doesn’t practise nor embody the same values they expect from a minority community. In addition, if women’s rights are left to be exercised in line with existing laws, it exposes the colonial amnesia of the church in deliberately overlooking international instruments guiding our Constitution such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 (among others), and the origins of these cruel laws.
Christians in Namibia (and beyond) believe theirs is the only legitimate branch of religion, and employ narcissistic exhibitionism to obscure the freedom of expression and civil rights of all religious groups. This once again confirms the colonial amnesia syndrome which itself begs its own question on the advent of religion in African states in the first place.
Namibia is not ‘a Christian nation’ because the Coalition of Churches, the Council of Churches and the Ethical Social Justice committee purports it to be so; Namibia is a secular state which provides freedom of religious expression in which all religions, including Chrisitians, may exercise their religious freedom.
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