Omayanga
A meeting called by the village chief of Omayanga to address the grievances raised by the community ended abruptly with the village chief and his daughter walking away. But the community later demanded that the chief and his daughter up their sticks and leave the village.
The chief Hilingaye Angula stands accused of illegally alienating other people’s crop fields and re-settling his daughter, Angelina, in someone else’ homestead. Coincidentally, the daughter, Angelina, is also the deputy mayor of Ongwediva.
Headman Angula called the meeting after reading an article in the weekly tabloid Informante, in which his subjects poured out their frustrations.
It was a charged meeting with the headman and his daughter sitting on the side where their mahangu field is, while the community sat on the other side, on a crop field that belonged to a late old man whose death the community now blame on headman Angula.
Providing shade was the large tree that somehow also marks the boundary between the two crop fields. The late old man and the headman were neighbours.
Angelina Angula narrated that she received her current homestead from her father in his capacity as headman at the time. “My father has since stepped down to someone younger because he is old,” related Angula. The community was angry with Angelina Angula whom they accused of inciting her father to press for five homesteads in the village.
They also charged that one of the homesteads now occupied by Angelina Angula formerly belonged to orphans who are now homeless with no crop field on which to cultivate crops.
The community is also blaming the headman for the death of the person on whose mahangu field they were sitting, saying the headman caused the man’s death by forcefully alienating part of his crop field.
Angelina Angula tried to explain that her father put up poles – not to illegally alienate part of the crop field but to show the position of the initial crop boundaries, but the late man’s family removed the poles. This was after the other homestead had fenced off their mahangu field but fenced off part of the headman’s mahangu field as well.
Neither side would have any of it and the meeting descended into chaos with each of the two parties tongue-lashing and pointing fingers at the other. In the end the Angulas left.