Windhoek
It is past eleven o’ clock on a Wednesday morning and 29-year-old Helena Elago is having her breakfast.
Seated on a green plastic chair just outside her box-sized shack in the Thlabanelo informal settlement in Goreangab, Elago helps herself to tomato-sauced rice and a piece of meat in a small purple bowl.
At first, the Grade 10 school drop-out is shy to share her story with New Era and makes it clear she should not be photographed. But, as she gets more comfortable she opens up and starts to narrate the details of her daily struggles and her deep yearning for decent shelter to call home.
“I live here, not because I want to, but because of the difficult circumstances in which I find myself,” Elago says. She moved to Thlabanelo informal settlement a year ago from Havana informal settlement, where she was renting a shack for N$200.
“I heard that people were getting land here and that is why I moved here. I paid N$150 for the piece of land where I built my shack and I am content that I no longer pay rent,” she says.
But, Elago does not really live a comfortable life, as she depends on the father of her two children for support.
“I have been looking for work but I don’t find any. I also cannot afford to go to NAMCOL to improve on my academic results. I don’t really feel good about my situation, because if my children’s father and I break up I will struggle financially,” she says.
As if that is not enough, she is unsure of how long she would be allowed to live at her current home and whether she would ever be able to afford a decent house.
Windhoek has an annual growth rate of 3.39 per cent, while informal settlements are growing at double that rate, according to City of Windhoek statistics.
Twenty-three-year old Noxolo Wayi’s story is not very different from that of Elago’s. Wayi is also unemployed. A mother of three, she moved to the Thlabanelo informal settlement two years ago when she heard people were getting land at a rather cheap price.
“Before I used to rent in Maroela and Khomasdal with my sister, but I needed a place of my own, because I now have children of my own,” says Wayi.
The grade 8 drop-out says: “Many people here are renting in other people’ shacks. People pay N$200 or more, depending on the size of the shack. Life is really tough here.”
“There are very few communal taps in the area and we don’t have electricity. People connect electricity illegally here. A child even died here last year. Life is really tough. It’s not even funny,” says the Namibian, born to South African parents. She earns a meagre income from washing people’s clothes.
“We walk two kilometres to come here and wash our clothes at the tap and also to fetch water,” she says, while washing a blanket not far from the communal tap in the informal settlement.
Asked whether grabbing land is a solution to the land and housing problem in the country, Wayi and Elago replied “yes.”
“It’s not because we want to, but circumstances are forcing us to do that,” commented Elago. “If this land issue is not addressed I will also go and grab my piece of land, because we really need land and proper housing,” says Wayi, while attending to her 11-month old daughter.
“Other than washing clothes I earn an income from taking children in our neighbourhood to the day care centre and the parents pay me N$300 for that,” explains Wayi.
Meanwhile, 86-year old Prastasius Shilongo is not convinced that grabbing land is the ideal solution to solving the land crisis in the country.
“Grabbing land will only bring instability in the country and that will not be good for all of us,” commented Shilongo, a shackdweller in Goreangab.
Shilongo has been living in his shack since 2001 when, at the age of 72, he finally got a piece of land of his own.
“My employer helped me to buy this erf for N$7,500 so that I can have a decent house when I retired,” the former truck driver says. But, his dream of living in a decent walled house never materialised as he still lives in a shack.
“My wife and I don’t really get anything from our children and so we depend on my pension grant. She is not yet a pensioner. We also depend on the other shacks that we rent out,” adds Shilongo, a father of 11 children.
He adds that it is good that Namibia is independent. “But I don’t really feel well that people are living in poverty, with so many landless people in independent Namibia. However, it is good that we live in peace and stability,” the friendly octogenarian says.