The government’s drought emergency programme must be activated this month without delay when it is obvious that the rains haven’t come, and all indications are there that it is not going to come.
Thus, the drought which started already last year, is going to persist.
This was the plea from Eeperi Ngaujake, an elderly farmer from the village of Koppie Aleen in the rural communal area of the Otjombinde constituency in the Omaheke region.
Since last year, Ngaujake has been informing the authorities that be about the worsening devastating drought situation through Omurari FM, the Otjiherero language service of the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC)’s current affairs programme, Keetute. He repeated it this month, but it seems to have been falling on deaf ears of all and sundry from traditional leaders, and farmers’ associations to the government, among many.
This is compelling him, as a last resort, to think of mobilising fellow farmers to start collecting ear tags of cattle which have died from the drought, and stringing them to ropes and/or wires to take them to the Office of the Prime Minister in Windhoek, the seat of the government’s National Emergency Management Committee (NEMC).
This aims to serve as concrete and tangible evidence of the drought that they have been complaining about.
The government is and has been very much aware of the drought, hence the drought relief programme, which it announced belatedly last year.
Due to its lateness, it has yet to bear any fruits for some, if not most farmers. Among those who have yet to benefit from the government’s drought relief programme are the Ngaujakes.
They say they sold 20-30 cattle last October, accordingly putting in claims at the same time. But to this day, they haven’t received anything. They also lost 37 cattle. Given their still-outstanding claims, which include expenses for licks, fodder and lucerne, navigating the drought has been a cut-throat affair.
But fellow farmer and wife Tjiuamana, as much as she agrees with such a move, appreciates its difficulties in the sense that it has been months through the drought, with many carcasses having rotten away.
Rather, she would wish to see farming units, which are appropriated by individual farmers despite being the government’s property, accommodating other farmers as an interim measure. She then called on traditional leaders to play an active and proactive part in this regard.
Tjiuamana thinks traditional leaders are too compromised to be of any help to the farmers, even in times of dire need such as the drought. This is because even the Council of Traditional Leaders in which they sit does not have an independent agenda from the set one of the government. The long-term solution ala Tjiuamana is for the government to buy adjacent farms to the communal areas to expand it.