14.12.2012

It’s Not Peer Pressure

I WOULD like to acknowledge the ideas of the author with the name Happy Amadhila in the 23rd November copy of The Namibian newspaper titled ‘Peer Pressure Strike’. It is provoking my intellect to challenge it as well.

The writer disdained the teachers’ strike as caused by peer pressure. What will he/she term the NBC, NamPower, Air Namibia and other strikes that cropped up the country recently? Will he/she also call it ‘peer pressure strikes’ or only teachers’?
The author decided to think inside the box and coined the job-related teachers’ strike a peer pressure strike, which he/she failed to walk a mile in their shoes. Did he/she ever thought of the reason why the teacher seen on NBC news early November said that: “the strike cannot be called illegal because it is supported by the majority”? Have you forgotten that majority rule is the first principle of Democracy?
Teachers are law-abiding citizens and are just demanding what is due to them with regard to better payments and good working conditions. The author should not take advantage of media freedom in Namibia to tarnish the image of teachers, but rather sympathise with them as he/she is the end product of teachers.
She selfishly and subjectively condemned the teachers’ strike, forgetting that they are also parents, citizens and employees who need to put bread on the table. He/she should not mock the whole strike and it is very unfair to think on his or herself without thinking positive on other people’s lives.
If, the author is well paid, then she should not think that everybody in the country has the same conditions.

Abraham Vilho
Via the website