Have Norms Changed?

WHEN I was in standard one (grade three) I read a story written in Rukwangali, one of the indigenous languages of the Kavango region. The story was titled ‘Nzara zalire nane tate apome evhu’.

The story talks of a greedy husband who let his wife and children starve while he fed himself the honey in the calabash that he secretly buried in the ground. Every time he felt hungry, he would go to that location where the calabash was buried, kneel down and start to sip the honey using his hand made straw.
Every time his children and wife asked him what he was doing, he would tell them that he was sucking sand. Only later did his children discover that their father lied to them that he was sucking sand instead of eating honey alone while the whole family was starving.
I found this allegory well fitting to describe the situation we are experiencing in our country today where civil servants are starving and asking their leaders for money to rescue themselves from this poverty but the ‘fathers’ say “there is no money in the house” while at the same time they want a 31 percent salary increase.
Is it not the duty of the father to feed his children first before feeding himself? Or have the norms and values of the society changed? I don’t know.
All I know is that the gap between the rich and the poor in Namibia still continues to become as huge as the ocean. Please fathers, it is your responsibility to change this scenario for the better.

Dzikotz
Tsintsabis

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