The thing about living through a slew of significant events is that they’ll eventually come to the big screen.
As Shili Munyama’s highly anticipated ‘Wrong Generation’ (2026) heads to Ster-Kinekor next Thursday, I can’t help feeling some type of way.
“Triggered” is a word that has seemingly lost all meaning, but it’s the first that comes to mind.
‘Wrong Generation’ is inspired by activist Ndiilokelwa Nthengwe’s book about the 2020 ShutItAllDown movement, and I remember being on the street.
Back then, Covid-19 was playing fast and loose with life as we knew it.
The Black Lives Matter movement had unleashed a spirit of protest across the globe.
Activists in neighbouring South Africa had been pushing back against a scourge of gender-based violence and the remains of Shannon Wasserfall, missing for six months, had just been discovered in a shallow grave in the dunes at Walvis Bay.
The latter is what inspired hundreds of protesters to march through Windhoek’s central business district, to the doors of parliament and beyond.
Some wore masks to ward off disease while others marched mask-free, yelling the chant that defined the protest: “Ons is moeg! (We are tired!)”
And we certainly were.
The full details of Shannon’s killing weren’t yet known, but her being missing for six months and the discovery of her body filled everyone with dread.
We know what happens to women and children in this country. Femicide and gender-based violence are rampant.
At the time, the police had recorded more than 5 000 cases of gender-based violence, 74 cases of femicide and 800 instances of rape between September 2019 and September 2020.
As protesters shut down Windhoek’s city centre, Cardi B’s ‘WAP’ sometimes blaring in the background, Twitter was ablaze with commentary, photos and insights into the sorry state of the nation with regard to protecting women and girls and bringing perpetrators to book.
When the police began to harass protesters, lob tear gas, shoot rubber bullets as well as manhandle and arrest journalists and activists, no words were spared in their condemnation.
We were tired. We were tired of government and police inaction. We were tired of shoddy investigations and unsolved murders.
We were tired of the growing pile of broken or dead bodies and thoroughly sick of the reality of perpetrators roaming free.
So, we shut it all down.
Thinking back to those days and the multiple protests, an image that haunts me is of a young woman weeping: All around, the protest seems on the brink of combustion. People are chanting, dancing, drumming and holding signs aloft near the intersection between Independence Avenue and Fidel Castro Street.
The lights of a police car flash. The crush of bodies, all dressed in black, grows thicker and the air is heavy with something powerful and promising.
It feels easy to be swept away but one young woman just stands and weeps. A black mask covers her nose and mouth, gathering her tears, and I imagine them spilling out and drowning us all.
Her stillness, her silence, her steady gaze, staring at something I can’t see, is an image I’ll never forget.
As I wait to watch ‘Wrong Generation’, I remember all of this – the moments, the movement – and I feel a bit sick to my stomach.
Almost six years later, I can still feel the desperation and the heartbreak.
Twin feelings so many of us have learnt to live with, because the ShutItAllDown protests ended after promises and a meeting with the president and nothing changed. Some say things got worse.
Half a decade on, we mourn the murders of multiple queer Namibians as justice for Sexy Fredericks, a transgender woman murdered in 2024, is sought in our local courts.
We feel the shame of the unsolved Okahandja child murders, and we still don’t know who killed Juanita Karolus last October, almost five years to the day since Shannon’s body was found.
I’m excited yet terrified to see the film.
I fear being ferried back in time and having to accept how relentlessly life goes on while things stay the same – and we just keep counting the dead.
