WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-07-30 Time: 15:00:02 Posted By: News Poster
By Gwen Lister
NAMIBIANS are (justifiably) up in arms over the rape and brutal murder of Magdalena Stoffels in a riverbed next to the Dawid Bezuidenhout School this week, as indeed we should be at the rape and abuse of all women and children, regardless of the circumstances.
We in the media may well be called to account for the fact that while the death of 17-year-old Magdalena received prominent coverage on our pages, other rape and murder cases haven’t had this amount of coverage.
The fact is that because it happened in close proximity and we were able to cover this event and its aftermath, we were able to focus our reading public on the tragedy and horror of the crime. The loss of one life is not more important than the loss of another, but many such cases would come to us via reports, and we are not present to depict and/or capture the images surrounding such crimes in any detail.
The fact that we were able to do so with the rape and murder of Magdalena will hopefully serve to draw attention to violence against women and children once again, and indeed it has galvanised the community.
In the process of the community pouring out its pain and outrage over this tragedy, the media also have a duty not to incite public violence or ‘mob justice’. While the anguish and anger is understandable, calls for vengeance are not the answer to the problem, nor is the reintroduction of the death penalty or castration or those urging the Police to shoot to kill.
Magdalena was raped and killed in a riverbed; others are assaulted in their homes, or at night or in populous areas. They are attacked and killed, not by ‘animals’ or ‘monsters’, but by other people, and Namibians have to accept that the crimes are being committed primarily by their own.
How to deal with this scourge in the community is to re-examine our value system and find out what has gone wrong to lead people to commit these atrocities to the extent they do in Namibia.
It is simplistic and almost nonsensical to adopt the approach of killing people when they kill; or cutting off limbs when people steal; or raping those who commit rape. For it then removes the responsibility from our own shoulders of ensuring that Namibians grow up with a value system which serve to reduce such crimes of violence to a minimum in our society.
Are our families, churches, civil society organisations, schools and communities doing enough to inculcate a moral code in our youth? Are they being taught that it is wrong to commit acts of violence; that it is unacceptable to beat women; that we should not abuse children or animals; that it is unacceptable to steal?
Are our families, churches, civil society organisations, schools and communities also looking for solutions to the problems that beset us? We cannot just point fingers and blame the Government and blame the municipality and find scapegoats without ourselves getting involved.
The saying ’empty vessels make the most noise’ is appropriate unless we galvanise ourselves into action to do something about cleaning riverbeds or urging our children to walk to school in groups rather than singly, or turning the other cheek when something doesn’t involve us, and taking efforts to protect ourselves and our own. Public efforts would definitely bring greater reward in terms of safer environments if they were geared to fixing things rather than complaining all the time.
And we do need to scrutinise the value system that underpins everything to avoid hypocrisy. The loudest voices about crime and corruption can sometimes be those people who buy stolen goods; the husband who beats his wife can be the same one who sits complacently in church on Sunday; the rich businessman getting a tender through having the right connections may be the same person who berates thieves who break into his house.
Namibians in general also have accountability, and not only their Government and Police force and other institutions. The scale of violence against women and children in our society is frightening. It is time we the people do something about it, not by simply calling for retribution, but by changing the immoral fabric of our society. There can surely be no better way than to remember the innocents who have died through our negligence as a nation.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 30 July 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201007300499.html?viewall=1