‘Implement ancestral land recommendations’
… Dordabis residents demand in petition
Residents of Dordabis want the recommendations by the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Ancestral Land Rights and Restitution implemented urgently.
The commission’s report on ancestral land rights and restitution, based on countrywide public hearings in 2019 and oral and written submissions, was released by the office of the prime minister last month.
It identified matters which warrant urgent and immediate government intervention, with Dordabis being one of the areas mentioned in the report for intervention. The settlement is situated about 90 kilometres outside the capital and forms part of Windhoek Rural constituency.
Some of the report’s recommendations are that there is a need to create communal land areas for traditional communities which lost ancestral land during the colonial era and continue to find themselves landless in the postcolonial political dispensation.
Theexpansionanddevelopment of overcrowded communal areas
and group resettlement farms and communities which have lost ancestral land have led to overcrowded settlements and villages, resulting in residents
struggling for survival, it said.
“The degree and extent of their plight are epitomised by the settlement of these communities in areas such ǂHatsamas, Stinkwater,
Dordabis, ǂKhanubeb, Autabib, Baumgartsbrunn and Farm Versailles, all overcrowded and lacking basic amenities.
As an example, the geographic area of the settlement of Dordabis is a mere 10 hectares on which a population of approximately 1 500 people live,” reads the report.
Dordabis Community Development Committee chairperson Albertus Rooi said in in a recent interview with Nampa that the community welcomes the recommendations made by the commission, but the government must heed the recommendations such as addressing overcrowding as a matter of urgency.
He said the people of Dordabis are “tired and running out of patience”.
“We have waited 31 years for our crisis to be addressed by our government. We plead with our leaders to give us a satisfactory and concrete response on our plight by 15 March 2021,” said Albertus.
When the report was released, Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said it has been distributed to members of the high level committee tasked with assisting government in the coordination of the implementation of resolutions from the second land conference, and will be discussed this month.