Namibia: An Arena for Competitive Murder?

In Namibia, it's like killing someone is a competition and they all do their job so well as if they are going to be awarded for taking another person's life.

It is the worst thing imaginable. Here people don't get famous for being the best sports star, singer or even best student, but they acquire their fame through taking the lives of their fellow brothers and sisters.

Here, killing someone is a planned job. I don't think it's done overnight or on the spur of the moment. It seems that the killers take enough time to analyse and plan and this is surely seen in the end products.

I'm talking about taking another human being's life in the most horrific way. This varies from being stabbed numerous times and being locked inside a house to bleed to death. Can you imagine losing your life at the hands of someone you love the most? To make it even more dramatic, some people are chopped into small pieces like meat, some are hacked, others are strangled and in some cases, it seems that guns were also created for a purpose and that is not only to hunt animals, but to kill humans as well. Some people were crushed to death with stones while others were burned to the very last breath of their lives.

This is just to name a few and wow, I wonder which one will win the grand prize. Who is even offering that prize? I mean seriously, I don't understand why someone would spend all their energy and time doing something that is so terrible, something that never gives them any satisfaction at all. Or maybe their is a prize for doing all this and the one thing that I know of is nothing but pain, anguish, despair, horror, misery, terror, tears and some years behind bars that will not even make up for the loss of a precious life.

So then this leaves me with one huge question drifting in my mind: Why is it done if it does not offer any satisfaction or prize? Why don't we Namibians invest our energy into something that will make us smile brightly each time we think about it?

Esther Nuuyoma is 17 years old and is a pupil at Hochland High School.

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