Julia Kamarenga
GOBABIS – Sounds of rakes against stones, spades hitting hard surfaces, axes against tree branches, hammers hitting hard on zinc sheets characterised Nossobville location in Gobabis.
Though located in Gobabis, Nossobville falls within the Kalahari Constituency.
Nossobville residents have resorted to land grabbing after various attempts to get the relevant authorities to listen to their cries yielded no desired results.
The steadily growing population in the suburb and the need for serviced land to accommodate the blossoming number of residents led to the illegal invasions.
Limited serviced land, overlapping leadership and boundaries, congested family structures, lack of basic infrastructures and a quest for human settlement in Nossobville are the major concerns that residents say have driven them to occupy the land adjacent to the Nossobville Primary School.
Established in the 1960s, Nossobville, according to the residents, has suffered from lack of developmental priorities because of its dual political arrangement.
The said suburb belongs to the Kalahari Constituency but it is managed by the Gobabis municipality in the Gobabis Constituency as per the Delimitation Committee’s decisions.
“Currently we need about 300 plots to cater for the serious housing shortage we see in Nossobville. People are forced to put up shacks at the back of the houses, thereby putting pressure on the available facilities such as the shower, toilets, water and electricity,” said Wallace Finnies, a community activist in Nossobville.
Fennies said the situation has escalated and has now forced the people to go out and take land to put up houses of their own as there is no affordable residential land available in Gobabis at the moment.
In response to their actions, the Gobabis municipality’s Public Relations Officer Frederick Ueitele said the action taken was illegal and would not be condoned.
In a statement in response to the petition handed to the municipal council by the land grabbers, Gobabis mayor Liberius Kalili, said the municipality acknowledged limited serviced land but indicated that it is not only in Nossobville where the situation exist.
Housing is a national challenge, the statement further said.
Kalili also pointed out that in the quest of remedying Nossobville, the municipality has in 2016 spent N$11.4 million on a new trunk line connecting Nossobville to the main sewer line as the Technical Department found that the then sewer line from Nossobville would not be adequate to cater for the new households. The municipality also sought private partners to develop virgin unplanned land in Nossobville.
The municipality has therefore requested the Nossobville community to make things easier for the council by rendering cooperation towards the council and making Gobabis prosperous to all and officially informed all residents who erected structures at the open space that it is illegal.