Matheus Hamutenya
Keetmanshoop-The Landless Peoples Movement (LPM) says the countrywide consultation on the review of the National Resettlement Policy of 2001 is wrongly timed and a waste of state resources.
This is after a consultation meeting took place at Keetmanshoop last Thursday, where different stakeholders gave input on the resettlement policy, but the LPM says the consultative meetings are nothing but a waste of money, bearing in mind that the national land conference is set for September this year.
//Kharas LPM chairperson Marcelinus Isaacks called the consultative meetings the government’s attempt at a quick fix to a failed policy, saying the meetings are pointless as resettlement will be one of the burning issues at the conference.
“I do not know what the purpose of these meetings are … I think the land conference is the best option to address everything with regard to land,” he stated.
He said the government through the Ministry of Land Reform should rather prepare well for the land conference and move forward with recommendations from the conference for the benefit of the people.
“I say let us stop with this and go to the conference and make good recommendations that can be tabled in parliament and passed into law. I think that is a better option than wasting state money.”
Isaacks further indicated the LPM is hard at work with consultations aimed at “getting voices” from the voiceless landless people countrywide, and after their own land conference, to be dubbed the People’s Land Conference, slated for September 8 – 10, they will be ready to make valuable inputs during the second national land conference set for 13-18th of the same month.
He emphasised the movement’s stance on ancestral land saying, “We still demand our ancestral land back,” but added that the government has not responded to any of their petitions since the movement was started, “which is the opposite of what President Hage Geingob preaches about an inclusive Namibian house”.
“It is a pity and disappointment that we speak of a Harambee house, with a Harambee father but the doors to that house seem closed to the LPM,” he added.