Okahandja pleas fall on deaf ears
The office of the presidency turned down the request from the residents of Okahandja's settlements to meet with President Hage Geingob.The executive director in the president's office, Moses Pakote, responded in writing to an official request to inform the relevant representatives that the president's office had already dealt with their concerns.
"The presidency takes note of the request to meet with His Excellency to present your grievances. In this regard, the president's office has already dealt with your request, by referring it to the line minister of urban and rural development, Honorable Erastus Utoni, and would like to reiterate this position. In terms of the Prime Minister's Office's [previous] letter, we encourage you to follow her lead and direct your concerns to the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development," the letter said.
This even though the group of residents of Okahandja's informal settlement had since last year submitted myriad letters to Utoni, and later to the prime minister's office, after the Okahandja town council could offer no answer or help.
The residents also held a march to the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development's head office in Windhoek, as well as to the Prime Minister's office at Parliament.
Efforts in vain
Their efforts to bring their grievances to the attention of the highest authority have so far been in vain. The grievances include a lack of access to power, water, land and tenure security.
Else Kehinana, who has lived in the RCC Camp at Okahandja for almost 30 years, says she still has no land after the house she lives in was donated to her family at the time. However, the municipality never responded to her applications to buy the land.
The land has since been sold for about N$100 000, and a warrant has been issued to remove the original 30 RCC Camp households from the land. The community is currently waiting anxiously for the warrant to be executed
The municipality plans to move the residents to a new area near the town's landfill.
"We have been sitting at RCC Camp for a long time - almost 30 years - but we have no hope. Every year we are told to wait, while houses are being built around us. What do they think of us? Aren't we human? Are we baboons to be taken to the veld?" she asks.
"They play Amagoes [a children's game] with us, while we elected the people," she says.
"I am a child of Okahandja - for 60 years - but until now I don't have anything to my name. We are not getting solutions," Kehinana says.
According to her, Okahandja's management is corrupt, and apartments are now available in abundance in the town, while "there is no benefit for us from the location," she says.
"It wasn't always like that. Okahandja is a big place with history, but now it's just a dumpsite," she says.
Community activist Sethy Gariseb says that the government is not responding. "Because we are the ones asking the questions, they don't respond. The line minister is sending us back to the same incompetent town councillors, but they have not met with us, and the minister has not come back to us either."
He says that as their last resort, the residents will take the Minister of Urban and Rural Development to court. – [email protected]