Windhoek must resettle dispossessed Namibians - LPM
Landless People’s Movement Windhoek councillor Ivan Skrywer on Monday tabled an unopposed motion for the City to buy land and resettle land dispossessed communities who resided in and around Windhoek before colonialism.
This, Skrywer said, forms part of addressing colonial injustices that persist to this day.
Windhoek, according to Skrywer, was historically inhabited by the OvaHerero, /Khomanin Damara and the Afrikaner Nama, making what is today the capital city, their ancestral land.
To address these past injustices, the city must recognise the historical fact that “the city lies on the ancestral land of the OvaHerero, /Khomanin Damara and Afrikaner Nama communities”.
Land for these communities, Skrywer added, is more than an economic commodity as it has been guided by their way of life for generations.
“Landdispossessionstilltriumphs post-independent Namibia. The city expanded its borders in 2012 without the consultation of the inhabitants leaving them landless,” he charged.
To redress this dilemma, he said: “I, therefore, implore this council to agree to purchase an agreed sizeable parcel of land in consultation with the aforementioned ethnic groups and look into the matter of City of Windhoek farms that are lease agreement contracts.”
More so, the LPM firebrand also wants the three communities to be paid royalties derived from rates and taxes of each business and residential property within Windhoek.
Skrywer, however, is cognisant that the demarcations of yesteryear are different from today’s geopolitical borders as “the traditional borders stretched beyond the current borders”.
“The Ovaherero clans owned large tracts of land per clan as necessitated by the number of herds of cattle that they owned. Kahitjene wa Muhoko and his family and part of the Afrikaner Namas, for instance, lived where the current Eros Airport is located in Pionierspark,” Skrywer narrated the history.
He continued: “Their land stretched as far as Gamsberg Pass, including the land where the main campus of the University of Namibia is located.”
Wa Muhoko’s eastern boundaries bordered Ehi ra Nguheva, today’s Groot Aub Nguheva, co-inhabited with the /Khomanin Damara.
“The ethnic groups were forcefully dislocated by [the] German regime from the city and the Ovaherero and Nama subsequently waged a war which resulted in the horrendous genocide. Despite the Damara not being targeted by the German extermination [order], the / Khomanin Damara amongst others, live through the repercussions of the dislocation of contemporary Namibia,” the councillor advanced.