Police finally destroy Walvis shacks

HUNDREDS of land grabbers yesterday watched as a large contingent of police officers flattened scores of shacks erected at the weekend on the outskirts of Tutaleni at Walvis Bay.

A small group of women, children and elderly men sat around a fire having breakfast at their destroyed shacks a kilometre away.

Yesterday’s police action came after the Affirmative Repositioning movement issued a statement saying because of the government’s slow response, they now have nothing to tell the people over land.

“We have repeatedly told politicians that the programme of making land for housing available is moving slowly,” Job Amupanda, one of the founders of the movement wrote yesterday.

He also said they have so far met Prime Minister Saara Kuugongwelwa-Amadhila and President Hage Geingob on the agreement reached last year in July under which the government agreed to service land for 200 000 plots.

“Five months later,” Amupanda wrote, “nothing has materialised. It is clear that politicians are playing games.”

The violence which erupted over the weekend where land invaders used sticks, stones and bottles against the police who fought back using rubber bullets, left people injured, others arrested, while property and vehicles were destroyed.

It all started when a group of about 52 individuals settled on a small open plot behind the Walvis Bay rural constituency office in Tutaleni about two years ago. The plot was meant for building a police station.

Last week, the Ministry of Works and Transport got an eviction order from the Walvis Bay Magistrate’s Court for the families to leave by 24 March.

Last Thursday, pressure mounted on them to get off the land, which they hesitantly obliged to, hoping that the town authorities will come up with a temporary solution. Nothing was forthcoming, and the police started threatening residents with arrests.

“They want us to go, but where to? There are pregnant women and children and the elderly here. Where must we go? All we are asking for is a small piece of land where we can build our shacks. We will take it from there and work to pay for services, but now we cannot do anything because we cannot be anywhere,” Hendriena Hangula, who had her one-year-old Saharia strapped on her back, said.

Among the dismantled shacks were property including beds, neatly made up – some under a canopy; others not. That’s where the people are sleeping now.

They did not join the group which took part in the violence at the weekend, most of them backyard tenants frustrated about high rent and service accounts.

“We do not have a home. They have their shacks at the back of other people’s yards, but now they want land. We don’t even have a backyard shack, neither do we want to do things illegally. Look what happened at the weekend. We will rather wait here until we get a positive answer from our committee,” the elderly man said.

According to Olga Birisamus, the chairperson of the committee for the homeless, the emergency meeting between the local and regional councillors, the Erongo governor, the leaders of the concerned group and property owners divided the matter into two — firstly an interim solution for the small evicted group, and secondly to find measures to address the larger problem of the mass land invasion.

The meeting was still on by yesterday afternoon.

One of the ironies is that not far away, many small, vacant mass housing units are being destroyed by vandals, and several invaders have hinted that they will occupy these houses.

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