Gubagub Landless 

       Community

Dear President, Firstly, we want to wish you good health and everything else beautiful for the remainder of the year. 

To start off with, we want to thank the late president Hage G. Geingob for initiating Namibia’s second National Land Conference which took place during the first week of October 2018. 

With the realisation of that conference, which preceding president Hifikepunye Pohamba had ignored or perhaps did not see the need for, showed president Geingob’s interest in the plight of Namibia’s landless communities. 

It is now almost six years since the conference took place and as a community, we also submitted our ancestral land right claim.

We are disheartened and very sad to learn that despite the more than 160 resolutions given by the claimants, the government has never reverted to the different communities and individuals to update them on the progress and status of the submitted claims. 

With this, we mean the government has not reached out to the grassroots indigenous communities, to give them a proper and comprehensive update [feedback] on ancestral land right claims and restitution. 

The commission on ancestral land right claims and restitution which was appointed by the late president travelled the length and breadth of Namibia to engage the communities but almost six years down the line, we do not even know what specific purpose the commission served or is serving. 

As for us the Gubagub Landless Community (GLC), it seems we will continue being landless Namibians in our own country, despite having been robbed of hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland by the former colonial and apartheid regimes. 

It has become evident that in an independent Namibia, our ancestral land is reserved for the same previously advantaged white minorities, the rich foreigners and other Namibians, but not for us the rightful inhabitants of the
land in Khomas and in particular land in the Aris district. 

As we speak, land transactions are taking place right under our noses, a situation we can describe as business as usual. 

We are appealing to you, Comrade President to hear our cries and investigate the unjustifiable and non-transparent land deals taking place in the Khomas region. 

When farms in other regions are offered for sale, this is advertised in the local print media but we do not think the same applies for Khomas. Mr President, you are our last hope, please do not let ancestral land right claims go into vain. 

Constitutionally and as per the United Nations human rights protocols, we have the right to our ancestral land which bears graves of our forefathers and mothers. Even the poor deserves to be given land and then assisted by their own government to make something out of such land.