TSINTSABIS - Many unemployed residents of Tsintsabis have turned to abusing alcohol to escape the miserable circumstances they experience on a daily basis. Tsintsabis settlement is home to a huge number of people without jobs, while some have managed to get work at nearby farms. 

According to community members, children as young as three years old frequent cuca shops to drink tombo with their parents. Some argue this is the only thing they are able to feed their kids. 
According to a resident, Sarah Moses, the situation is worsening by the day, as most of the inhabitants do not have work.

She said a lack of projects and employable activities contributes to the situation. “Last year a woman had her ear cut with a knife by a guy after she refused to have sexual intercourse. The guy got furious because he had spent money on buying the victim, together with her friends, alcohol, so he instead sought to punish her,” narrated Moses, as she emphasised how intense alcohol-related issues were at the settlement. 

There is no major supermarket or business at the settlement, apart from the Treesleeper campsite, which operates on a minimal scale with only three employees. The majority of people living in Tsintsabis are marginalised and rely on government’s drought relief programme. 
Some people from minority tribes at the settlement also decried the distribution criteria for the drought relief, saying it mainly benefits the San people. 

“Such remarks are very discriminatory especially in a country where ‘One Namibia, One Nation’ is being preached. We are impoverished with no employment and live in this area in the quest of a better life, so to say the food is only for a certain tribe is not fair at all,” fumed Moses, who originally hails from Kavango West.