Gubagub Community Still Landless – Seven Years On

It has now been seven years since various groups and individuals submitted ancestral land claims.

We understand – speaking under correction – that the land reform office is responsible for handling these claims.

In 2023, the nation, and in particular those who lost ancestral land, were informed that the government was already working on 35 of the 165 resolutions that emanated from the 2018 land conference.

Our hope and belief is that the issues of absentee landlords – especially here in the Khomas region – as well as the plight of generational farmworkers, are covered in those 35 resolutions.

We are landless, specifically with regard to farmland, and remain so in an independent Namibia. Whenever we enquire with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Land Reform, we are told the government is aware of our plight.

Not a single person from the Gubagub community has benefited from the government’s resettlement programme.

Yet our ancestral land remains occupied by the minority and foreigners, including absent landlords.

The City of Windhoek has also begun extending its boundaries into our ancestral land – something we only discovered when we enquired about the possibility of holding a tombstone unveiling for an elder we buried on one of the privately owned farms.

Even as we write this letter, a generational farmworker, Benny Skrywer, his wife, and their six children are living in a corridor at Aris, where they have been since July 2018 after being evicted from the farm he worked on.

Dear minister, we have said and will continue to say that some people in Namibia never lost ancestral land, yet these same people – because of politics and the current system – continue to benefit from Namibia’s resettlement programme at the expense of those who lost land.

Until when will this injustice be committed against certain groups of people?

The government was quick to dispatch a commission of inquiry into ancestral land claims across Namibia. Yet seven years later, it has not visited the affected communities and individuals to provide much-needed feedback on their claim submissions.

We, the Gubagub Landless Community, have lost ancestral land in the south-east of Windhoek, in the Aris district.

– Gubagub Landless Community

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