Religion, Culture, and Disability in Namibia: Documenting Lived Experience of Stigma and Compulsory Cure

Abstract

This article seeks to highlight voices of experience of disability in Namibia, focusing on the religious and cultural perspectives and realities that often negatively influence such experiences, including experiences of stigma and compulsory cure. We present the results of three workshops that were held with persons with disabilities, organizations of persons with disabilities, clergy, and seminarians (variously, also attended by academics and representatives from UN agencies and the Government of the Republic of Namibia). The findings of the workshops—including the socio-economic, political, and public health dimensions of marginalization—are then situated within the current research landscape on disability in Namibia (and wider Southern Africa). Whilst recognizing that religious and cultural attitudes so often contribute to disability marginalization, we also propose that religious and cultural resources can usefully be harnessed to tackle stigma and discrimination. Here, we focus on the Contextual Bible Study methodology, which originates in South Africa, and its potential to promote equality, diversity, and inclusion for persons with disabilities and effect positive social change. Finally, and as this article has emerged from an international and interdisciplinary network of scholars (in Namibia, South Africa, and the UK), some reflections are offered about the collaboration between the theories, epistemologies, and methods of the Global North and Global South regarding religion, culture, and disability.