KATIMA MULILO – While Zambezi chief regional officer Regina Lubinda-Ndopu denies the existence of bad blood between them and the Katima Mulilo Town Council, the situation on the ground tells a different story. 

This comes after Katima Mulilo CEO Rafael Liswaniso revealed during a parliamentary standing committee hearing last week that no cordial relationship exists between the town council and the regional council.

He was referring to the Katima-Liselo Farm, which was recently handed over to the Namibian Correctional Service (NCS). 

It followed a 2023 Cabinet decision to allocate the 420-hectare farm to the ministry of home affairs.

This, Liswaniso said, was done without the town council’s knowledge. 

He stated that the town council had for years planned utilising the farm in question, and to make it part of townland to curb land grabbing. 

Katima Mulilo faces a 6 000 unit housing backlog, and thus planned relocating some of its residents to Katima-Liselo Farm. They had sketched about 9 000 plots at that farm.

“We have paid and planned for everything, but now our people are going to sit for the next six years without land. All the plots and roads are planned. We just needed to put up water infrastructure. 

The plan was to move people there this October. This is what is happening because between us and the Zambezi Regional Council, there is no accord. We don’t work together. Regional councils come into town councils, and do what they want to do. This has created a conflict,” he charged.

Liswaniso said they roped in Ongos to provide water to the farm before the town council relocated residents in need of land.

“These are some of the reasons why Katima is not progressing. You can’t plan for more than 8 000 plots, and the whole project is taken away without consultation. Then you want to come here campaigning for people to vote for you. What are they going to do? They don’t have land and shelter,” he lashed out.  He continued that the lack of consultation between government and local authorities has put the town council in a difficult position, as the land in question could have cleared the housing backlog at the town.

Deputy Prime Minister John Mutorwa, alongside home affairs’ minister Albert Kawana, jointly officiated at the groundbreaking ceremony at the prison farm, which had stood idle for more than 20 years.

Not true

In response, Lubinda-Ndopu expressed surprise at the allegations, stating that the two councils have a good working relationship.  She said the regional council invites the town council to various events, which they attend. “Even last week, we had two meetings with both the Katima town council and the Bukalo village council. We don’t understand. All I know is that they owe us money, and they need to pay,” she hit back.

Lubinda-Ndopu said the town council owes the regional council the 5% in levies, which translates to more than N$7 million. 

“We don’t owe them anything. We pay our municipal bills. They owe us money, and we won’t compromise on that. We need to establish who among them has an issue with us, and what that issue is,” she stressed. The chairperson of the parliamentary standing committee on public accounts, Peter Kazongominja, ordered the parties to deal with their differences immediately. “There should be no issues between regional and town councils. You are mandated to run the Zambezi region overall,” he told the CRO.

Meanwhile, Liswaniso said they had written to Zambezi governor Lawrence Sampofu, asking him to address this problem.

Letter

“We need to hear from the governor why he is not addressing this misunderstanding. The regional council takes decisions, and we are not informed of that,” he continued.

He also touched on the Zambezi Waterfront, which the town council allocated to the government in 2005.

“Nothing happened there. We have lost income of about N$200 million on rates and taxes since 2005. Katima Mulilo could have been well up with those finances. We forced our way to host the Zambezi Bream festival this year. Some of us had police cases opened against us for having the Zambezi Bream festival,” he claimed. 

The town council spent about N$3 million to renovate the waterfront to host the cultural festival, as the place had deteriorated over the years.

The government spent N$184 million on the infrastructure of the waterfront.

Liswaniso said the town council revoked the decision over the land where the waterfront is constructed, as the conditions on which the land was given were ‘violated’. One such condition he mentioned is that the regional council was supposed to service the central business district, but they did not do so.

“We were supposed to be shareholders in that waterfront. How we were removed, we don’t know,” he added. 

-anakale@nepc.com.na