Open Letter to the President

Dear President, firstly we want to wish you good health and everything that is beautiful for the remainder of the year.

To start with, we want to thank the late president Hage Geingob for initiating Namibia’s second national land conference, which took place during the first week of October 2018.

With the realisation of that conference, which former president Hifikepunye Pohamba perhaps did not see the need for, Geingob showed his interest in the plight of Namibia’s landless communities.

It has now been almost six years since the conference took place, and as a community which has also submitted our ancestral land claim, we are disheartened and sad to learn that, despite the more than 160 resolutions given by claimants, the government has never reverted to the different communities and individuals to update the nation on the progress and status of the submitted claims.

With this we mean the government has not reached out to indigenous communities to give them a proper and comprehensive update on ancestral land right claims and restitution.

The commission on ancestral land claims and restitution, which was appointed by the late president, who travelled all over Namibia to engage communities, but almost six years down the line we don’t even know what specific purpose the commission served, or is still serving.

As for the Gubagub Landless Community, it seems we will continue being landless Namibians in our own country, despite having been robbed of hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland by the former colonial and apartheid regimes.

It has become evident that in a post-independent Namibia our ancestral land is reserved for the same previously advantaged white minorities, the rich foreigners, and other Namibians, but not for us, the rightful inhabitants of land in the Khomas region, and in particular in the Aris district.

As we speak, land transactions are happening right under our noses, a situation we can describe as ‘business as usual’.

We are appealing to you, comrade president, to hear our cry and investigate unjustifiable and non-transparent land deals in the Khomas region.

When farms in other regions are offered, they are advertised in the local print media, but the same does not apply to the Khomas region.

Mr President, you are our last hope, please don’t let ancestral land claims be in vain.

Constitutionally and as per the United Nations international human rights protocols, we have the right to our ancestral land, which bears the graves and tombstones of our ancestors.

Even the poor deserves to be given land, and then be assisted by their own government to make something out of such land.

Gubagub Landless Community