I have no doubt that most of you are either laughing at the baby-faced security guard who helped himself to N$300 000 or even pitying him.
Nghinanomayovi Omafele. I do not care about the hundred-thousands.
As for me, I am doing neither of the two. I just wish him well. Yes, I wish him well. In fact, I wish him very well. On top of that, I wish him long life too. Not just long life, but a prosperous one too. This is not because I support theft. No, far from that.
Here is why.
I have been studying his picture. He is still very young. In fact, the 35 years he is said to have lived on this wretched earth do not seem to be correct. The dude is just too fresh-faced to be 35.
In this country when one is 35, then they are indeed 35. One 35-year-old Namibian would have seen the ugliest side of life more than ten 35-year-old Europeans or five 35-year-old Chinese.
I strongly suspect that either he lied to his bosses about his age or that the bosses cannot give us his real age because the dude looks just fresh-faced to be an adult, let alone a security guard.
You can also not say that the picture is old because the dude is clad in a security guard’s uniform. There is no way that he can still be that fresh in a society where 35-year-olds look like 70-year-olds.
That fresh-faced and baby-faced guard has dreams with and for his life. Just take a look into those eyes again. I do not see any thief in them. I see dreams.
I see a person who wants to become someone. I also see hope – empty hope – because being a security guard in this country, means to be condemned to a life in shacks; long days of work for close to nothing.
Being a security guard here means a life of exploitation. And a salary that does not carry the guard to the second day after being paid. In fact, the guard has to carry the salary by borrowing and living on fringes of hunger and desperation.
In the eyes of that fresh-faced guard, I see dreams that may never come to reality because of historical injustices and imbalances and inequalities. Empty dreams because they will arrest him.
So, here is a man with all these dreams and so much energy. Then he gets to transport huge sums of money when he has empty pockets. He gets to drive from one town to the next on an empty tummy.
He cannot even afford to buy water or a soft drink, yet he has to make sure that nothing happens to the huge amounts of money he is moving from town to town.
Tired and famished, he retires to his shack every night to lick the wounds inflicted by poverty and neglect, while the bosses retire to their mansions to eat sumptuous meals which they wash down with Champopo and expensive 50-year-old Single Malt Scotch Whisky.
While the hungry and hopeless security guard is looking at the holes in the zinc sheets that make up his roof, and listens to the wind blowing dust into his shack, the bosses are looking at their coffered ceilings in air-conditioned bedrooms.
They sleep under the most expensive sheets – Dreamsacks Seamless Silk, Capri Honey Egyptian Cotton Sateen, Millesimo, or Hellas Seaweed Border. And they dress more expensively just to sleep.
For the security guard, it has to be just a torn underwear and no pajamas. No pillows even and they have to use elbows like coach roaches.
Once again, I am not saying poor people must take what is not theirs, I am just saying companies must start respecting people by paying them well. A well-paid worker will have a lot to lose and they will think twice before they steal.
Nghinanomayovi Omafele. Just understand the young man. But this world has no mercy for those who defy the system.
My mind burns because I know this young man once caught will spent part of life in jail.