For the umpteenth time now one has been hearing what has been seeming like the lone voice of traditional leader in the Epukiro Constituency appealing to the government to seriously consider buying land adjacent to the Epukiro communal land. This is for the weaning of calves as an alternative to the threatening situation, which sooner or later may put halt to the export of Namibian weaners to South Africa.
It is a well-known fact that for some time now since 2013 the South African authorities have been threatening to impose strict import animal health regulations equally to restrict livestock imports from Namibia.
Needless to say the South African market has been a very important market for Namibian livestock, especially for livestock from our communal areas on which 75 percent of the communal farmers depend. Livestock is the sole lifeline for most of these producers from these areas but it is an open secret that our producers have not been getting optimum prices for their products. This is because of middlemen, the so-called auctioneers, who have been running syndicates that have been seriously undercutting our communal producers.
Thus, because of the syndicated buying, it has been near to impossible if not completely impossible for Namibian communal producers to directly sell their livestock to South Africa. Year in and year out communal livestock producers who have been at the mercy of these syndicates have not only been complaining about the pitiful prices at which they have been selling their livestock but also their helplessness and hopelessness in having no control over the producers when it comes to determining prices. While the general rule is that demand and supply should be the determinant factor of prices, as with any other products in any market, when it comes to livestock production this does not seem to be the case.
On the contrary it has been an exception to the rule with the producers having little control or no control at all in determining the prices through the supply factor.
And it is not as if their produce is not in high demand, whether on the South African market or elsewhere like in Europe. But while such a demand exists the supplier, predominantly our communal producers, seems to and has been at the rough end of the supply-demand or demand-supply equation, whichever.
Most of the time for some inexplicable reasons our helpless producers seem to have been fighting their battles for better prices for their produce alone. While we have farmers’ unions like the Namibia Agricultural Union (NAU) and the Namibia National Farmers Union (NNFU), it is unclear to what extent they have been championing this noble cause of the producers in getting better prices for their produce.
It seems, and one cannot understand why, that our communal producers have been axiomatically condemned to this plight? And why voices like the one of traditional councillor Himuee Tjituka lately seem to have been lone voices?
For some time now I have been hearing this traditional councillor raising this issue with the government, and all and sundry, on the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation’s (NBC) Otjiherero Language Service, Omurari Wondjivisiro Ombaranga. Whether his lone voice has and is striking the necessary chord remains to be seen. Recently the Epukiro Constituency councillor, Cornelius Kanguatjivi, convened a development stakeholder’s meeting for the constituency where the traditional leader in question was present, and certainly he must once again habitually and as a matter of urgency have raised the issue with him. In the same vein the councillor for Aminuis Constituency, Peter Kazongominja, recently also convened a meeting with farmers regarding the same issue relating to the marketing of livestock, and especially the concern over low prices.
These seem isolated efforts but by no means meaningless. Surely they deserve the necessary support by all and sundry, especially by the various leaders in different spheres, whether political or business, to give this matter the necessary urgency and impetus.
Understandably the Omaheke Regional Farmers Union (ORFU) just had a meeting in the Epukiro Constituency over this matter.
It is not clear what the outcome of this meeting may have been but surely this is a good sign that somehow the voice of the lone traditional leader (s) is starting to get a hearing somewhere, somehow. It only now behoves ORFU to take this matter further to the corridors of powers, starting in its own backyard, the offices of the Omaheke Governor and the Omaheke Regional Council, and ultimately beyond so that this matter gets on the agenda of the powers that be, and the deserving and necessary attention that is long overdue.
One is well aware that a Namibian delegation is due to leave for Geneva in Switzerland to make its case to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over the impending restrictions by the South African authorities. It is too early to predict the outcome. But whatever the outcome surely they do not negate a lasting alternative. One such lasting alternative to the precarious and volatile marketing situation is none other the one that was being proposed by the traditional leader.
If he could only have a ready listening ear. And for sure the various farmers’ associations in the various communal areas other than the mainstream farmers’ unions have a role to play in this. If only to make both emerging and established farmers aware that if they need to prosper, in the words of concerned middle-aged farmers from these areas, they cannot allow themselves to forever be at the primary and beginning end of the production chain, livestock husbandry, without any striving at breaking the stronghold some instances have over processing and manufacturing, while those producing cattle which end in the secondary products are conspicuously missing in their absence.