Lahja Nashuuta
Former president Hifikepunye Pohamba has attributed the botched mass housing project and the limping green schemes to poor planning and supervision, as well as rampant greed.
He registered his displeasure in his autobiography launched this week.
In the book, he gives a glimpse of his journey and contribution towards liberating Namibia from the yoke of colonialism and apartheid.
In the last chapters, he narrates his achievements and the obstacles he encountered during his term in office as Head of State.
Namibia’s second president highlights the construction of mass housing as one of his initiatives intended to address the shortage of housing in the
country.
“My idea was to build and sell, then reinvest the money into the project to build more houses on a continuing basis until all our low-income people were moved from zinc and cardboard-box houses into basic, standard, two-bedroom houses with a shower, toilet, kitchen and living room,” he states.
He points out that the prevalence of homeless people, coupled with accelerated urbanisation, required an emergency response to the housing crisis.
“Unfortunately, defective implementation of the housing scheme castrated the project because some greed crept in and hijacked the good intentions of the housing scheme, which could have benefitted many”, he adds.
The project was spearheaded by the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development in conjunction with the Ministry of Works, Transport and Communication, as well as the National Housing Enterprise (NHE).
It intended to build 185 000 affordable houses by 2030.
The urban development ministry stated that the Mass Housing Development Programme, which was adopted by Cabinet in 2013 and kicked off in 2014, has benefitted close to 4 446 persons so far.
Prime Minister (PM) Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila in August 2022 dismissed assertions that government had no political will to address the housing crisis, saying through the Mass Housing initiative alone, 4 130 houses were completed and handed over to beneficiaries.
She was responding to a letter by official opposition leader in the National Assembly McHenry Venaani, who threatened to mobilise Namibians to demonstrate and possibly occupy empty Mass Houses countrywide.
The PM said by then, only 891 houses remain unoccupied, as they were incomplete.
They are in Opuwo (24), Swakopmund (505) and 362 in Windhoek.
It is not true that government is dragging its feet on the front of housing delivery, she reiterated.
She blamed legal disputes and underperforming contractors for incomplete houses.
“The government is, however, making all-round efforts to get these disputes resolved between involved parties in order to clear the way for these houses to be urgently completed and allocated to needy beneficiaries,” she continued.
In his biography, Pohamba maintains that those who were assigned supervisory roles in the implementation of this noble effort did not adhere to the existing controls that were in place.
He says poor supervision has led contractors to take advantage and, in some instances, build houses without access to basic amenities.
In some cases, corners were cut to increase the profit of the contractors.
“I was shocked to find out during 2020 that some of the affordable houses for low-income people built during my presidency were unoccupied, and getting vandalised. I had to learn through the media that these low-income houses were built without compliance to quality standards in terms of safety and operational efficiency,” he states.
He adds: “I felt betrayed by the people I entrusted with this responsibility. I was not correctly informed, and even my site visits did not uncover the scams that were going on.
As a president, my reliance is on my appointees. Unfortunately, self-interest can be a blinding thing when it comes to seeing the big picture”.
He says despite his efforts to monitor progress, he realised that there was poor planning at the initial design stage.
“I found out that once the house plans were accepted with design faults by the professionals in the ministry, the contractors would just go ahead and produce a building that would serve no purpose,” he reveals.
He reiterates the incident where he was visibly agitated at an official for overlooking the fact that their houses did not have a second door.
“I was famously quoted when I stated the obvious that, ‘If a fire were to come from this side, these people will die’,” Pohamba says.
Green schemes
The former president also attributes the failed green schemes to poor planning and management.
“Obviously, there were some successes, but something seemed to have gone very wrong with the management of these green schemes. I realised that the green schemes were dying a slow death. On investigation, I learnt that the problem was at the operational level. The downfall was that these schemes had been managed centrally from Windhoek by people who were faraway from the operational sites,” he writes.
He maintains that some of these managers had never been to these sites, and had no idea about what they were managing.
“When problems were reported, they took too long to resolve them – and slowly, the people on the ground lost their motivation,” he observes.
The book also points out that the fact that green schemes were not linked to any value chain in the marketing, production, sales and consumption channels was a challenge.
He cites the established Agro-Marketing and Trade Agency, which intends to link the producers and consumers of local agronomic products and regulate the market, as some of his success stories.