Windhoek
The Anglican Church, the Evangelical Baptist Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church have appealed for peace over the sensitive land issue.
Pastors from the three large church congregations in Namibia have written an open letter to President Hage Geingob and to the land activism trio operating under the ambit of Affirmative Repositioning (AR) – Job Amupanda, Dimbulukeni Nauyoma and George Kambala – to refrain from violent acts that could destabilise the country.
Based on figures from the 2011 census ELCIN had over 700 000 members, the Anglican Church had 275 000 members and the Evangelical Baptist Church had approximately 50 000 members.
AR has given government a July 31 deadline for local authorities to allocate land to landless youths in urban areas.
The impassioned appeal is also addressed to Sebastian Ndeitunga the Inspector General of the Namibian Police.
The three pastors, while recognising the fact that the need for shelter is not a want but a need, said: “We recognise that it is the responsibility of the government to provide land and housing to people through local authority government entities such as National Housing Enterprise (NHE).
“We further recognise that it is the right of people to organize themselves … in a peaceful manner and impress their government and demand that which they feel is rightly theirs.”
The open letter was signed by pastors Lukas Kaluwapa Katenda, Joseph Nghifikepunye Hanghome and Laban Mwashekele.
The religious leaders stated they “appreciate that our country is governed by the observance of law and order. However, law and order shall not be used to suppress the voice of the needy and the voiceless people.”
“We shall all, at some point in life, need the services of our uniformed men and women. It is our sincere hope that they too need land to build their own houses. Let us not misuse or abuse them nor make them enemies of the people they are supposed to be serving,” they said, adding that history is replete with examples where innocent people unnecessarily lost their lives because of police heavy-handedness and strong-arm tactics.
They made reference to the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa where 70 people lost their lives and also the Old Location massacre in Namibia (the then South West Africa) in 1959 when trigger-happy apartheid-era police officers killed at least eleven and wounded 44 others in an indiscriminate shooting.
Equally the clergymen urged AR and its supporters “not to throw stones at the police”.
“Those people in the police force are your brothers and sisters who might be caught up in a dilemma of being employed in the force,” they stated.
“Equally, we appeal to the police not to use force wrongly such as beatings and shootings as a measure to enforce law and order,” they wrote in unison.
To government they said: “There is and will be no other government in the whole world that will listen to them in terms of land and housing.”