Rosa Namises founded Women Solidarity Namibia – [...]]]> Background:
Namibia is a country in transition. It is recovering from a brutal past of oppressive colonizers and apartheid rule, rebuilding itself while also trying to address immediate needs of the community. In this context, grassroots activism has flourished, trying to overcome challenges the government has been unable to address.

Rosa Namises founded Women Solidarity Namibia – as a response to a severe need for attention to gender-based violence in Namibia. The macho, displaced, impoverished society has been a breeding ground for the HIV/AIDS epidemic, alcoholism and domestic violence. In 2000, 44% of men expressed a strongly upheld belief that it is acceptable to beat one’s wife. In the Caprivi region, the number of men believing this statement was as high as 97%. Seventy three percent of gender-based violence has been domestic, and 24% of women ages 15-24 said that their first sexual experience was forced. These staggering statistics clearly demonstrate an urgent need for social change.

Women Solidarity Namibia attempts to deal with this challenging situation by counseling battered women. However, women’s inferior social status reinforces their subservient position. The women have been disempowered mentally, physically, socially, politically and economically. They struggle to remove themselves from immediate danger and, all too often, the alternative living condition is equally as dangerous for a poor, single, unskilled woman starting over.

Out of this need grew the idea to create a community center that has a multifaceted response to domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, poverty and community disintegration. The

Opportunities Center for Women and Children has been facilitating small-scale microfinance projects for six months and is scheduled to open for full services this month. The Opportunities Center produces fair-trade crafts created by the women, providing a forum for personal growth and development as well as community collaborations and projects. Our rationale is to make Namibian women active agents in their own lives. As such, we want to facilitate skills classes (subjects have been determined by the requests of local women surveyed) that will enable the women to take on microfinance projects either in the crafts studio or in a vocation of their own. Using theories of microfinance, we hope to develop significant professional skills such as typing, formal English, financial management and project management. We also plan to establish a business partnership between the crafts studio and local artisan stores, in which the women can sell their commodities under a fair trade, equitable setting. We hope that our project will bring about an opportunity to create peace of three levels. First, on an intrapersonal level, the women will have a chance to come to terms with their pasts and seek an opportunity to grow via the already existing counseling services as well as the newly established Opportunities Center. Secondly, by creating camaraderie between the women, we hope to establish a strong coalition to raise awareness of domestic violence and gender inequality in Namibian society. Thirdly, by reaching out to the community at large, we hope to be able to engage in small-scale conflict mediation in order to overcome the divide between men and women, and work cooperatively towards a peaceful, cohesive and safe community. We will be working closely with Rosa Namises, the founder of Women’s Solidarity Namibia and co-founder of the Opportunities Center. During her term [working as a representative in the Parliament in Namibia, Rosa passed the Domestic Violence Act and Rape Act to provide rights for women subject to abuse. Rosa is nationally recognized as a women’s rights activist for social change. Working with Rosa will help to establish a deeper understanding of the cultural and societal issues that exist in Namibia and thus help women help themselves. She has agreed to serve as a mentor in the field as well as our cultural liaison.

Namibia at large, it’s time to catch you all up to date.

Sorry for the delay in updating our blog! Things have really picked up on our end, and as we start to wind down our time in Windhoek and

Namibia at large, it’s time to catch you all up to date.

When we last left off, we were preparing to head up north to the Caprivi region, the most impoverished area of the country, stricken with extremely high rates of HIV/AIDS, violence and social unrest. The workshop in Katima Mullilo (Caprivi) was a difficult one to attend and even harder to facilitate. The environment was tense, and our efforts were met with ungrateful demands and constant complaints. The workshop sessions themselves proved to be interesting and insightful in understanding the social condition in Caprivi. The participants’ understanding of violence was basic at best, so it was necessary to first introduce the fundamentals of women’s rights and human rights to the group. There was a heated debate between the participants discussing men’s need for sex and women’s role and responsibility in cases of reported rape. They argued about women torturing men with their provocative clothing, discussed issues of morality, self control, manhood and womanhood, and the legal framework for rape. Everybody seemed interested and engrossed in the conversation, but for us it was difficult to validate their claims when their reality is so different from what we are used to.

Another issue arose with the formation of community policing in Katima. The role of this group is to investigate reported claims before they are officially filed to the police. However, the community police unit consists of untrained, biased men who actually serve as a barrier for claims and ultimately end up silencing women and the community instead of empowering it. In light of the tense environment, we felt stressed and uneasy. Thus, our short excursion to Livingstone, Zambia to see

Victoria Falls was greatly needed and appreciated.

After a quick vacation, we returned to Windhoek where we were met with the high paced atmosphere of both WSN and The Opportunities Center, forcing us to really hit the ground running. On our first day back, we met with the women from our sewing and baking workshops. With the group we established ground rules and expectations and established conditions for participation. We invited the sewing group to see the temporary center, the machines we have purchased and the material and cloth so that they could begin to brainstorm products to sell. That weekend we headed south to Mariental where we were welcomed by an excited and energetic support group and near freezing weather.

The workshop was extremely motivating for us, especially after our struggle in Caprivi. The support group had invited community stakeholders from the Woman and Child Protection Unit (WCPU), the church and the community at large, drawing a diverse group. While it was an intense full day workshop, participants seemed to be attentive and engaged throughout. You could see participants’ hunger for information expressed in their faces and could tell that the topics covered (domestic violence, sexual abuse, challenges in getting maintenance and protection orders, etc.) really hit home for many. Their “mmmm”s and “ahhhh”s were enthusiastic, and validated the relevance of WSN’s work.

In Mariental, the WSN support group formed a second organization meant to tackle the issue of sex work in the community. They are very active and well organized, and both groups have taken to annual planning and targeting and involving a wider network affected by the issue of violence. The WSN support group’s chairperson, Ingrid, hosted us at her house, where she also runs a home business making affordable school uniforms for Mariental schools. Her initiative will be integrated into The Opportunities Center’s work, the hope being that once the current sewing group completes their training in three months, they’ll be ready to join Ingrid in her project and produce affordable, high quality school uniforms for schools in Windhoek.

From Mariental, we drove to Tsumispark, a remote rural village. There, we identified a strong interest for The Opportunities Center programs (specifically sewing) as well. As we work with the sewing group in Windhoek, we are simultaneously working to integrate ongoing trainings in communities such as Tsumispark. Arriving back from the south on Sunday night, we were able to catch a local jazz concert with some friends and colleagues. 

The following week was fully devoted to finalizing the logistics of WSN’s first strategic planning meeting. It was a two-day meeting that tested everyone’s creative and critical thinking skills. The first day we mainly briefed the participants, which included members of WSN support groups throughout the nation, the national board, steering committee, related NGOs, and our donors (The Finnish Embassy and the Council of Churches Namibia) on the work accomplished by WSN to date. We continued to cite the Finnish Embassy evaluation report, identify organizational challenges, and hear from the support groups on their regional challenges. We divided into groups and each group processed through a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of the organization. We brainstormed on how to transform the weaknesses into strengths and the threats into opportunities to guide the rest of the strategic planning meeting and to outline our action plans for the future. We struggled through issues of organizational challenges such as lack of funding, limited staff and office space, as well as larger concerns of communication between rural support groups and urban headquarters. We struggled with understanding how to guide our conversation effectively to address not the issue of violence in Namibia, but rather how WSN as an organization could better address violence. On the whole, the meeting was positive for the growth of the organization and a unique experience for us in that we were able to see the way in which NGO’s operate.

Right after the strategic planning meeting, we headed out to another weekend workshop in Khorixas. There they were especially concerned with questions about Child Maintenance and the Protection Order. The Khorixas support group is actively pursuing their own income generating projects, producing different crafts like pillow cases, tie-dye cloths, jewelry and duvet covers, and are seeking additional funding to strengthen their project. From Khorixas we drove to Kamanjab, passing Fransfontein, a community where Rosa used to work and attempted to establish

Namibia’s first shelter for abused women. The building now stands deserted as a painful reminder of the complexities, intricacies and care with which violence needs to be addressed in the Namibian context.

In Kamanjab we met with women to again explain about the legal framework of abuse and violence. A big concern that we found in both Khorixas and Kamanjab are issues of incest and extramarital sex. Women have been forced to watch their husbands have sex with their daughters, or alternatively move a girlfriend in to the extended family compound and have a second family simultaneously, leaving them powerless in the situation. Women were further met with reluctance from the law enforcement units to issue protection orders against abusive men unless they were their legal husbands. WSN is now following up on these issues with the WCPU and police. On our drive back, we passed the gateway to Etosha reservations, enabling us to see some wildlife such as kudus, snakes and guinea fowls (that we nearly hit!).

Returning to the office after the weekend’s workshops, we discovered that WSN’s receptionist had resigned after over a year of employment, leaving the office in complete disarray. We have been trying to reorganize and make sense out of the mess while simultaneously moving forward with The Opportunities Center plan. The first two baking classes took place this week, and the ladies baked cookies and scones which we have been selling out of the office. We are also creating a formal business plan and action plan for the coming months, trying to envision the progress of our project once we head home. It has been an enjoyable, albeit hard, process as it tests our commitment and relationship to the organization, its mission and the people it serves.

As we enter our final week in Namibia, we are sad to have to wind down and conclude, but proud of the work we have done here. Our next blog post will be our final report for

Davis for Peace, the grant we received to do our work over here. Again, thank you all for your immense support and love!