Source: New Era
Senior members of the Swapo Party Women's Council (SPWC) have suggested that women practise a three-month abstinence from sex as a stand against the escalating violence against women and children in the country.

The SPWC Secretary Petrina Haingura, along with Deputy Secretary Eunice Iipinge, and the Swapo Party Deputy Secretary General Laura Mcleod-Katjirua, made the suggestion at the SPWC Central Committee meeting at Oshakati over the weekend.

"Our hearts are shattered, we have spoken, we have cried, we have buried. Maybe the solution is to run out of our patience and sleep on our stomachs," said the trio at the opening of the meeting.

Mcleod-Katjirua called upon women to unite and revitalise their political will to unite and make a stand against social evils, including baby dumping, child labour, infant mortality, women and child abuse as well as other gender-based violence. "Love is not by force, if women say no, we mean it," she said.

Iipinge said it is time Namibians think back to the era when the Ovaherero women refused to give birth when the Germans were exterminating Ovaherero men as part of their defiance campaign. "History has it that it worked. Such actions may sound laughable but they are serious. When you see women doing that, it means that they are in a corner and they have no way out, but to abstain," said Iipinge.

"In my culture, there is a saying that if you [upset] a woman, she sleeps on her stomach as a demonstration of her anger and once the woman sleeps on her stomach -forget! So let us sleep on our stomachs, maybe that way men will get the point," said Mcleod-Katjirua.

• Namibia