Windhoek
More than 50 people yesterday invaded a 500-square metre open space in Katutura’s Goreangab area and cleared it with the aim to erect their dwellings, before police intervened and halted their plans.
Sources say the targeted land belongs to the Lutheran Church.
When this reporter arrived at the scene, the invaders had already burned the grass and tree stumps, cleaned the plot and marked boundaries around it. While on the scene, the group set up a committee and registered themselves so that each can be allocated a piece of land. However, members of the City Police arrived at the site and ordered the crowd to disperse or face a penalty of N$2 000 each.
The crowd calmly obeyed but vowed to return today when they would hand in copies of their identification cards in order to take them to the municipality to be registered and put on the waiting list.
“We don’t have land to put up our homes. We are struggling as the rent for the kambashus is increasing from N$700 to N$850 for some of us,” a young woman remarked.
Maria Beukes, who owns a small piece of land adjacent to the targeted plot, says the land belongs to the Lutheran Church, which has already set up a large tent on it.
“My children also don’t have land and this land has been lying idle here for many years. We are just waiting for the church to start building to get what is not used, but we don’t know when it will happen,” she told this writer.
The thirst for land among Namibians is growing every day. Barely a month ago, a two-day consultative meeting on national urban and rural land development was held in Grootfontein in the Otjozondjupa Region where the Minister of Urban and Rural Development Sophia Shaningwa, her two deputies Sylvia Makgone and Derek Klazen, were in attendance.
Shaningwa in her address called the meeting to consult with all stakeholders involved in the quest for urban and rural land delivery to the nation.
She brought to the attention of all that President Hage Geingob on April 24 this year wrote her a letter asking her to provide an action plan to the Office of the President on how her ministry, including sub-national governance structures would fast-track affordable land delivery and quality houses to the landless and homeless people.
She said the President stated in the letter that he wants to see easy access and provision of serviced land being given to the homeless and landless Namibians during her tenure as minister.