Zimpapers Logo

Lovemore Mataire Senior Reporter
Thousands of Namibians on Sunday occupied large tracts of land at Goreangab, west of Katutura in Windhoek demanding government speeds up the land reform exercise. Namibia’s national daily newspaper, New Era, yesterday reported that at least 1,000 people occupied large tracts of land at Goreangab settlement to the west of Katutura in Windhoek on Sunday demanding to be allocated the land insisting that they were tired of renting.

The paper reported that at least two people were arrested as the confrontation between land grabbers and the police intensified.

Leader of the Affirmative Repositioning group Job Amupanda, who is also the spokesperson of the ruling Swapo Youth League which has been spearheading land occupation, yesterday told our Harare Bureau from Windhoek that his organisation had given the government July 31 as the deadline to start allocating land to landless citizens. “I’m in a very important meeting right now regarding that issue. We feel the issue of land has been dragging for a long time. Namibians can’t continue living like squatters in their own country,” said Amupanda.

The Swapo Youth League was yesterday scheduled to meet with a committee of the ruling party’s Politburo in an attempt to resolve the emerging crisis over the affordability of urban land.

The committee is chaired by Home Affairs Minister Pendukeni Livula-Ithan. In a telephone interview, Namibian Minister of Information and Communication Technology Tjekero Tweya yesterday said the government would not tolerate any lawlessness.

“Freedom doesn’t mean you can just live anywhere or can settle yourself anywhere. If you’re in urban areas you’ve to follow by-laws and if you’re in rural areas there’re traditional chiefs who are the custodians of the land,” said Tweya.

He said the government through the Deputy Prime Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah who is in charge of Land and Related Matters had issued a full statement regarding efforts being undertaken to address the land issue.

In the statement published in the New Era, the Deputy Prime Minsiter said: “Land is what we fought for, therefore in addressing the land problem there should be no shortcuts. We need to make sure the solution is sustainable . . . We understand the plight of the people, but solving problems is a process which needs to be undertaken to ensure that everyone is happy in the end.”

News of land occupations went viral on Sunday afternoon prompting some people to abruptly leave church service fearing missing out on acquiring a piece of land.

Some people are said to have arrived in the morning armed with spades, rakes and shovels to clear land in an area close to Penduka near Goreangab and within minutes the group had grown into hundreds as news spread that land was being grabbed.

This is not the first time Namibians have illegally occupied farms and vacant spaces of land clamouring for resettlement.

In December last year, more than a thousand people illegally occupied land in Namibia’s coastal town of Swakopmund saying they had grown tired of waiting for the government to give them plots.

The land grabs came just a few weeks after the ruling Swapo won national elections with an overwhelming 80 percent vote.

Former Namibian President Sam Nunjoma also rattled some white Afrikaner farmers in 2002 at the Earth Summit when he said the land reform programme had been in place since independence in 1990 and 30,000 landless blacks have been given farms, leaving more than 200,000 on the waiting list.

He said he was concerned by the slow pace of the “willing buyer, willing seller” policy of acquiring land for resettlement and was considering other means of redistribution.