THE HONEST IMPACT with Gideon Kapuka

There’s a conversation we keep avoiding, not because it’s simple, but because it’s uncomfortable. It touches on something intimate: how our Kwanyama and Ndonga forefathers organized home, knowledge, and influence, and why the modern scramble for equality feels, to both men and women, like both liberation and loss. Let’s walk into that discomfort honestly, with ears open to the aakuluntu (elders) who spoke in eenghono dhopaife (old proverbs), and eyes clear on the homes we are building today in Oshakati, Ongwediva, Eenhana, Ondangwa, and the villages between. Why Didn’t They Want Women Highly Educated? In traditional Kwanyama and Ndonga society, formal education, as we know it did not exist. But oshivo (wisdom) and elongo (training) were real. Boys were taught cattle, hunting, and Ondonga (court matters). Girls were taught oshithima (mahangu porridge), okukonkola (pounding grain), and okulonga meumbo (homestead work). When colonial and mission schools arrived (Finnish mi...

Imagine a courtroom. Not one with a judge and jury, but the courtroom of public memory. One group walks in with binders full of evidence, international lawyers, and a hundred years of museums and documentaries. Another group walks in with shackle scars on their ankles, a photograph of a burned church, and a voice hoarse from screaming into a void. The judge looks at both and says, "We'll hear the first case. The second can wait." That's the world we live in. I'm not here to deny Jewish suffering. The pogroms of Eastern Europe, where drunken mobs tore through shtetls with axes and torches. The Holocaust, where six million Jews were reduced to ash and tattooed numbers. That pain is real. That history is a scar on civilization. But don't you dare tell me that makes Jewish people more holy, more sensitive, or more deserving of global remembrance than the millions of Black people who felt the bite of a whip on their backs and the weight of chains on their ankles. B...

There’s a special kind of tired that hits different. Not the “I need sleep” type. Nah, this one is the “you’ve been standing in a line since sunrise and still don’t know what’s going on” kind. The kind where you ask a simple question and get that classic government combo: a shrug, a blank stare, and vibes. Welcome to public service in Namibia, where time is just a suggestion and deadlines are basically fiction. Let’s start with Home Affairs. You already know the drill. You wake up before the chickens, pull up while it’s still dark, and boom, there’s already a line wrapping around the building like it’s Black Friday. You stand there for hours, maybe days if you’re unlucky, just to submit documents. Then they hit you with the famous line: “We will call you.” Call you when, boss? Next week? Next year? After your passport is no longer even relevant? Nobody knows. Not even them. You walk out with a receipt and zero clarity. Your passport might come before your trip or your trip might come a...

Ladies and gentlemen, hold onto your blazers. Button up. Roll those sleeves down, no,  all  the way down. Because Namibia is facing a crisis of biblical proportions, and it has nothing to do with potholes, electricity tariffs, or the cost of a loaf of bread. The crisis, dear reader, is  shoulders . Not the metaphorical kind you lean on during tough times. No. Actual, flesh and bone, naked shoulders. Specifically, the ones belonging to a young woman who dared,  dared , to attempt entry into Wernhil Mall wearing an outfit that apparently threatened the very foundations of modern civilisation. A video of this harrowing incident is now circulating on social media. You can watch it if you wish. But be warned: you may never unsee the sheer audacity of… a woman, existing, in clothing she chose herself. The Incident: A Nation Holds Its Breath Let us set the scene. Wernhil Mall, Windhoek. A place where families gather, teenagers loiter, and pensioners carefully insp...

In the quiet hum of a Namibian classroom, there is a child staring out the window. To the untrained eye, they are distracted, perhaps naughty, or simply slow. But inside their mind, a storm of sensory input is raging, or perhaps they are hyper focusing on the pattern of dust motes dancing in the sunlight, unable to process the teacher's voice. Their mind does not move in straight lines. It leaps, it circles, it lingers in places the curriculum does not go. We call these children diverted from the norm. But are they truly diverted, or have we simply constructed a classroom norm too rigid to accommodate the beautiful spectrum of human neurology? The answer to that question reveals a quiet crisis unfolding across Namibia, one that separates the future of children not by their ability, but by their postal code. As we navigate the evolving landscape of Namibian education, a pressing concern emerges from the silence. Our mechanisms for the early detection of neurodivergent conditions suc...

In Namibia, sending a child to university is rarely just a personal milestone. For many families, it represents years of sacrifice, hope, and the belief that education will open doors that were previously closed. Parents work overtime, relatives contribute, and entire households adjust their budgets so that one young person can sit in a lecture hall and build a better future. But for some families connected to Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), that hope has recently been overshadowed by confusion and frustration surrounding the way outstanding student fees are being handled. The issue does not begin with the existence of debt itself. Universities everywhere must collect tuition in order to function. Buildings must be maintained, staff must be paid, and academic programmes require resources. When students fall behind on fees, institutions inevitably need mechanisms to recover what is owed. What has sparked concern among some students and parents, however, is how...