Affirmative Repositioning: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

MONDAY, 9 November this year, marked the first anniversary of Affirmative Repositioning (AR), a movement that became a household name in the national conversation about housing and land.

Unhappy about rampant urban land inequality, the AR leaders Job Amupanda, Dimbulukweni Nauyoma and George Kambala, who now are identifying themselves as landless activists, put up a symbolic shack at Erf 2014 in the posh suburb of Kleine Kuppe, Windhoek.

The image of saws, picks, and pangas as they cleared the spot that started it all, profoundly captured their youthful spirit of defiance. In their own language, they would say that this was the day “they showed a middle-finger to corruption, greed, elitism, and zigzagging and indifference of the ruling elite regarding the land question”.

They gave an ultimatum and threatened to occupy land if nothing was done. They also mobilised more than 10 000 youth across the country to submit applications for plots.

Indeed, theirs was a form of organising straight from Saul Alinsky’s (as he wrote in his book the ‘Rules for Radicals”) idea that a successful organiser is the one who sets a bait for the establishment to publicly attack the activist and in the process validate and make the organiser popular in the eyes of the public.

This is exactly what happened as the establishment got hooked and hysterically threatened the AR as nothing but a troubled movement geared towards destabilising our hard-won peace and stability. Job Amupanda, his two lieutenants, and one Eliah Ngurare did not come out unscathed as they got booted out of the ruling party, Swapo.

However, the government eventually promised (before the 31 July 2015 AR deadline expired) to provide 200 000 serviced plots countrywide. The day was saved, and the calamity on our land averted. Iconic photos of the President, his team and the AR activists in jeans are there to prove it too.

The 24 July land deal was a welcome reprieve for the majority of struggling people of this country as they moved a step closer to owning a piece of land.

Therefore, the AR’s accomplishment probably is that what began in November 2014 as a defiant move by three individuals, not only has galvanised the youth support but also has given the nation a new passion, energy, momentum and language to talk about the land issue, poverty and inequality. Those issues are now at the forefront of our public discussions, policies and political debate.

In that way, the AR movement has perhaps diagnosed correctly that real change does not come by itself but it must be demanded by the masses.

However, I cannot help (as an uncle) to also ponder about the failure or weaknesses of this new social movement.

One unifying factor that is helping AR rally support is the high housing prices and lack of available plots. So the question is what will happen after the 200 000 plots have been made available? The tactics, strategies and ideologies of this movement are still not clear. There is a need for asking the fundamental question of what AR stands for and how they want to achieve their goals.

But we also know that the land deal does not necessary mean that we have found a lasting solution to urban housing problems. The sad reality is that the agreement might actually take years to realise, or might never be implemented at all.

So AR may be haunted by their own success as they will not be able to deliver on their key promise to restore the hopes and dignity of the landless.

The other pitfall is that AR has the tendency to racialise the urban housing/land issue, an issue that obviously requires a class analysis. Coupled with this tendency is the mistaken beliefs that militancy and radicalism can only be achieved through sables and rattles as we have seen with the disparagement and “zombinisation” of those who do not agree with the movement’s way of doing things.

They say that a true revolutionary/radical – this we have learned from Steve Biko, Franz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, Che Guavara, Saul Alinsky and Nelson Mandela – is the one who turns every opportunity into a lecture to educate and humanise his/her opponent/enemy. AR has failed on this score.

The main challenge, however, is whether the AR should only be confined to urban land or reposition itself toward other socio-economic issues, such as unemployment, gender-based violence, education, health and so forth. That would also mean that the movement should avoid the trap of revolving around a personality cult if it wants to be a people’s movement.

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