Lahja Nashuuta

/Khomanin Traditional Authority chief Julianne Gawanas has warned that only a fair redistribution of land to landless Namibians would guarantee freedom for all, and fulfil late Founding President Sam Nujoma’s vision.

She credited Nujoma’s efforts for the recent handing over of 8 000 hectares of land of Farm Groot Korisieplaats to the /Khomanin.

Once functional, the farm will have a business component to be managed by the yet-to-be-elected board that intends to generate income for the residents as well as the residential areas to be allocated to the landless /Khomanin.

 Preference will be given to those in farm corridors and the landless community.

In an interview with New Era this week, Gawanas described Nujoma as a true father of the Namibian nation, who devoted his life to ending the racist apartheid South African regime.

“Nujoma left the country to exile to make independence a reality for every Namibian to have freedom, and to lay the foundation for Namibia to govern itself. 

“As Namibian citizens, we must acknowledge and accept that he is the father of the Namibian nation – that his struggle lives on, and continues to enlighten the present generation,” she said.

Land reform 

Gawanas described Nujoma as the genesis of land reform, and the implementor in ensuring that the land acquired forcefully during the apartheid era was returned to the rightful owners.

“We hereby wish to express our appreciation for the sitting government that they have engaged and made progress where they have bought farms for our people to be resettled, which we can now call our home. It has taken since 1990 – 35 years, for us, as a community, to be able to have communal land,” she said. Gawanas added: “Nujoma fulfilled his dream and the objective of the liberation struggle. This was for the Namibian people to own land. Upon return, he facilitated the process, and progress has been made in this regard”.

She added that Nujoma ensured that Namibians in their diversity benefitted from the country’s abundant natural resources.

Gawases reiterated the case of the /Khomanin’s land dispossession to colonial powers.

This situation haunts them to this day, as many are without a place to call their own.

“Our people have lost land. We have lost our traditions and norms as well as our way of living because of landlessness. The current situation is that where our ancestral lands are, we can only identify that with the graves of our ancestors. The land is now owned by White commercial families,” she said.

Going back to Nujoma, she remarked: “Before the late president left for exile, my father was alive. They used to communicate on the traditional authority’s issues. In the 1970s, my father was also in New York, where he met the founding father. They continued working together in the quest of independence”.

“The discussion between my father and the late founding president was for the land to be returned to the Namibian people. This included our ancestral land, which was the main aim of the liberation struggle,” she said.

After independence, some of the Namibians who went into exile returned to the ancestral land of their forebearers. 

“When the country got independence, Nujoma did not stop the fight for the return of the ancestral land. The presidents who followed, including the late president Hage Geingob, continued to keep the hope alive for the return of the ancestral land to the /Khomanin community. When the issue was reopened for discussion after independence, there was an agenda to say that people should not claim ancestral land after independence,” she said.

Gawanas credited Geingob for facilitating the discussion on the return of ancestral land, a move she said in the right direction. 

-lnashuuta@gmail.com