Evicted and left in the cold

… generational farmworkers displaced by resettlement

After 10 years of living and working on farm Ansatt, the Gainub family found themselves homeless.

The family was evicted from farm Anstatt in the Dordabis area in the Khomas region last year.

Lucia Gainus (85) says she and her family were evicted and forced to live in the corridor outside the farm with their livestock.

“We lived on the farm for over seven years, but when the government bought it, we were evicted. At the time we could rent a space on the farm to keep our livestock, but since 10 December, we were told to remove our livestock,” she says.

Gainus says most of their livestock have since died due to the lack of water and food nearby.

LIVESTOCK DYING

“We don’t have a place to go. The gravel road is also dusty. Our livestock has died. We only have a few donkeys and goats, but they will also not survive,” she says.

Gainus says the family has approached the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform about their concerns – with no success.

“The people from the government told us they would pay a visit to us when they have a car available to assess our situation. But we have been living on the side of the road for over a year with no assistance, and we don’t know if our situation will change,” she says.

The Gainub family is just one among many families that government’s resettlement programme has left homeless.The parliamentary standing committee on agriculture, environment, and natural resources has revealed in a report that the resettlement process often fails to provide these individuals with alternative accommodation, forcing them into uncertain living conditions.

In 2021, Russian billionaire Rashid Sardarov was accused of evicting about 30 people from a farm near Dordabis, leaving several families out in the cold near a public road.

The people lived on farm Tsatsachas, 20 km outside Dordabis.

The farm borders 10 farms occupied by Sardarov.

The Russian had since 2013 bought some of these farms for more than N$200 million in total.

Farm Tsatsachas, one of the farms leased by Sardarov, has been occupied by landless people who were previously evicted from a government farm.

In a different incident in 2021, former president Hifikepunye Pohamba allegedly evicted a Hai-//Hom family at farm Ondera.
The chairperson of the parliamentary committee, Melania Ndjago, yesterday in the parliament called on the ministry to acquire land around Dordabis to expand the settlement programme as a matter of urgency.

“The ministry should urgently address the plight of the evicted family at farm Anstatt at Dordabis and other vulnerable families in similar situations by making a resettlement farm available for them to occupy through funds from the development budget for group resettlement projects,” she said.

The committee also learned that it is mainly foreigners who buy land in the Dordabis area, while the community which has lived there for years does not have access to land.

Ndjago said the community expressed its dissatisfaction with how the issue of resettlement is being handled by the government and how its plea has fallen on deaf ears.

PETITIONS

Several petitions have been submitted to the ministry since 1993 when the settlement was officially proclaimed, she said.

“They claim that several government departments have visited them to enquire about their plight, but to date nothing has been done,” Ndjago said.

She said community members, of which some have lived in the area since 1964, had great expectations since Namibia’s independence that they would one day be resettled in the area or have the resettlement area extended by several hecatres to accommodate the growing population and their agricultural needs.

“They focus largely on agricultural activities such as small livestock farming and a small community garden. However, this has been a challenge to successfully carry out on the small piece of land on which they live,” Ndjago said.

The committee paid an oversight visit to the Hardap, Khomas, //Kharas, Oshana, Omusati and Ohangwena regions last September.

Ndjago said during these meetings, resettled farmers on farm Neue-Haribese told the committee they were relocated there from Namaseb in the Rehoboth district in 2010.

The farmers also lost a number of livestock during the move and were not provided any relocation assistance.

“One of the main objectives of the resettlement programme was to address landlessness among generational farmworkers and the previously disadvantaged.

“However, generational farmworkers remain negatively affected when the government purchases farms for resettlement,” Ndjago said.

She said in addition, the broad category of ‘previously disadvantaged’ may have some adverse effect on the resettlement programme as it has made it more competitive for the ?most vulnerable to be resettled.

Another challenge the committee uncovered is the duration of the leasehold, which is 99 years.

Ndjago said this limits the previously disadvantaged’s true ownership of land.

“There is a challenge with the extended unoccupancy of resettlement farms from the period when they are acquired by the government to when they are awarded to beneficiaries. This results in the dilapidation and theft of infrastructure,” she said.

Currently, a total of 5 490 beneficiaries of previously disadvantaged Namibians have been resettled, of which 2 146 are men, 1 468 are women and 31 are juristic entities.

The remaining 1 845 previously disadvantaged Namibians could not be recorded, as these are group resettlements and San Development Projects under the Ministry of Gender Equality, Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare.

As per the resettlement programme, the ministry should support resettled farmers for a period of up to five years.

“Currently, this is not happening due to a lack of human resources, and therefore resettlement farmers do not receive adequate support to enable them to farm productively,” Ndjago said.

Furthermore, she said the ministry highlighted the major challenges of the resettlement programme during site visits last year.

Chief among them are the mismatch of the policy and criteria for the allocation of acquired land, poor agricultural productivity on allocated land, weak pre- and post-settlement support due to a lack of funds, a lack of effective monitoring and evaluation of the resettlement process, poor stakeholder involvement and coordination, the subleasing of resettlement farms and disputes over the inheritance of resettlement farms among families.

According to the report, the ministry budgets around N$40 million annually, while for post-settlement support for the development of water and fencing infrastructure, resettled farmers receive up to N$200 000 per farmer from Agribank and the ministry.

Finally, under the development budget for group resettlement projects, the ministry allocates about N$3 million annually to assist farmers.