Namibia has to be a learning nation if we are to uplift the country in all spheres of the economy. After more than a century of liberation struggle for our ancestors’ land plus 25 years of political freedom, we failed to understand how important the issue of land ownership can be to Namibians.
Fellow Namibians, what caused the land crisis is purely embedded in basic economic theory of the law of demand and supply. If the supply of land is less than the demand then obviously the prices will rise and vice versa. The problem we have in Namibia is not lack of housing but lack of affordable serviced land due to public policy failure.
Thus, the housing crisis in Namibia can only be solved by increased supply of affordable serviced land, then the prices of houses or rent will automatically reduce, drastically. Therefore, there is no necessity for government to come up with any policy or law that controls the prices of houses or rent at all. In this regard, I would like to reiterate the only one sustainable solution that could lessen the urban land crisis in the country. This approach has two phases.
In the first phase, the government shall establish a Mass Land Servicing Revolving Fund (MLSRF). Then municipalities, according to the demand in various income categories of applicants, will borrow from this fund to service the land and sell it to Namibians at the cost-recovery price. Then once the municipalities sell the land to Namibians, they can return that money back to the fund for other municipalities to use. And the system continues. The prices of servicing land need to be fixed in line with the expert analysis by quantity surveyors.
Petrus Muteyauli