After the Ongombe Farmers Association (OFA) was snubbed by the Windhoek Show Society (WSS) last year, barring them from hosting their annual agricultural show at the Windhoek Show Grounds (after hosting it there for the first time in 2013), they were forced to relocate to Otjiwarongo last year only to return to Windhoek again this year.
What seemed initially as a snub by the WSS eventually turned out to be a blessing in disguise with a newfound relationship between Ongombe and the Otjiwarongo Show Society (OSS). This was likely to culminate in one grand agricultural show this year.
It looks like the WSS is eventually seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for these emerging farmers from rural Otjozondjupa. But on the contrary matters do not seem to be making any progress as far as the Cattle Country is concerned. While last year the Gobabis Show Society pretended that they could not merge towards cooperation with especially their previously disadvantaged compatriots, thus ensuring a conglomerate agricultural and trade fair in the town, in view of the fact that last year was their golden jubilee, it seems that this was just mere pretence and they have never come to the conviction of merging the two shows.
The Governor of the Omaheke Region, Festus Ueitele, had been publicly on record earlier this year expressing his disappointment at the intransigence and dilly-dallying by commercial farmers in the region. And once again this year this vision of a merger between the two trade fairs seems a distant dream as ever this year with the two shows just behind the door later this month, and separately so.
At this eleventh hour, in all probability unless something drastic and revolutionary happens, it looks like the white commercial farmers and traders, surrounding the town of Gobabis and beyond, remain stuck in their white commercial and agricultural laager of the Gobabis Show Society and unwilling to take the bold move with their black fellows in having one trade fair. They remain intransigent to the proverbial ‘Namibian House’ that son of the soil, Dr Hage Geingob, has committed himself to without the exclusion of anyone.
It was reported that white commercial farmers and traders who had attended a meeting with their black counterparts, spearheaded by the Governor of Omaheke, had been ever hesitant if not outright racially exclusivist. The commercial farmers-cum-traders have been claiming a lack of a mandate to commit fellows to such a Namibian house of commerce and agriculture in Omaheke Region. As a result it looks like it is back to square one in Gobabis with two separate shows and in all likelihood at the same time once again this year.
Understandably, in Namibia, a democracy that she is, the white commercial farmers and their black counterparts have as much a right and freedom to go about their farming and trading activities in the best way they deem fit.
Provided such is not but just another excuse to remain in their white commercial and agricultural laager, and thus in a Namibian house of their own and exclusive to them alone and not common to all Namibian ala the President, Dr Geingob. And it is not difficult to imagine racism and racialism is at play given the town’s chequered history in terms of race relations and the continuing legacy in this respect, even 25 years or so after independence.
It seems so far that the black commercial and communal farmers and traders in the surroundings, including the governor, Festus Ueitele, have been treating this matter with the requisite sensitivity and political finesse. But for how long are they expected to endure the insensitivity and ill disposition towards inclusiveness in the face of the exclusivity the white commercial farmers have been and are continuing to display?