Magdalena

The pastor presiding over Magdalena Stoffels’ funeral service is confident her murder will mark the beginning of a glittering new dawn. He stands tall behind a wooden podium, his clerical collar bright in the dim light of a cheerless school hall and says: “This day will be marked as a turning point in the history of Namibia as far as gender-based violence is concerned because this is a loud, a clear, a serious wake-up call for all Namibians.”

The pious woman speaking a moment before him is just as assured.

Dressed in a lemon yellow shirt and punctuating her sentences with a strange, teeth-baring smile, she likens Magdalena to the light, the life and the hope of the world.

“Magdalena had to die so Namibia could be saved. God sent his only son so that we could be saved. Just like that, the Stoffels family had to give their daughter so that Namibia can be saved.”

Almost 10 years later, as Namibia mourns the recent murder of Rejoice Shovaleka (20), continues the search for Shannon ‘Darlikie’ Wasserfall (22) and stands in horror at a father’s rape and the subsequent death of his two-week-old baby, we know that Magdalena wasn’t some sort of Jesus.

She wasn’t the holy ransom, the headline or the sacrificial lamb meant to save us all no matter how many people ranted, raved and took to the street.

“Ad Destinatum Persequor.”

“With zeal and perseverance, strive towards the goal.”

The Latin motto is writ large on an arch at the entrance of Magdalena’s former high school, challenging each of us to do better.

With zeal and perseverance, we must strive towards the goal of ensuring Namibian women and girls no longer die in frenzies of wanton, patriarchal, rage-fuelled violence.

With zeal and perseverance, we must lobby for the implementation of stricter sentencing, quicker trials, more women’s shelters, a sexual offenders registry and a society in which rape victims are free of stigma and rapists are prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

With zeal and perseverance, we must teach boys not to rape, kill or resolve conflict with violence.

With zeal and perseverance, we must commit to eradicating and stop enabling rape culture in our homes, our societies, in our work places and in our social circles.

As the 10th anniversary of Magdalena’s death dawns this coming Monday, we owe her this.

We owe her remembrance.

We owe her an end to the bloodshed.

We owe her his name.

Ten years is a long time to wait for anything and even longer to wait for justice.

To watch a bridge built and the bodies pile up and to see nothing much changing.

On a sunny afternoon, as workers, schoolgoers and giggling teens amble over the pedestrian walkway, I take a photograph of the bridge erected in Magdalena’s name and wonder who she might have been.

In a newspaper interview published in 2018, Magdalena’s mother imagines the same.

She liked decorating, her mother says, so given 10 years in which to grow big and in which to bloom, perhaps Magdalena would have started her own events company.

It’s a bittersweet daydream but the truth is there’s no telling what Madgalena would have achieved and what has been so hideously snuffed out in her and Alina and Avihe and the vivid others who stick with us even as many more seem to have been forgotten.

One day here, the next day disappeared in the apathy and the ink of the headlines that will make way for another and another and another.

Madgalena died before much life was lived online so there is little for the curious to see. But in the many social media mentions that return when I search her name, I find a Facebook post from the day after her murder.

“Magdalena ‘Maggy’ Stoffels did not deserve to die. She was hardworking, quiet and fun to be with. May your soul rest in peace, my friend. I hope the man who did so gets injected with acid so he can die a painful slow death. To all my fellow learners of Dawid Bezuidenhout, be consoled.”

(Rest in peace, Magdalena.)

“Your footprints are left in our hearts.”

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