SPYL slams handling of Ongombo squatters

THE Swapo Party Youth League (SPYL) is not impressed with Government’s handling of a group of squatters removed from the State-owned Ongombo West farm this past weekend.

The SPYL secretary for information and mobilisation, Clinton Swartbooi, yesterday said the youth league found Lands and Resettlement Minister Alpheus !Naruseb’s stance in the matter ‘arrogant’.Swartbooi criticised Government for having the //Noasan /Aes group arrested for illegally occupying State land, while having condoned similar actions by other groups, including the ‘Struggle Children’ currently camping in front of the Swapo headquarters in Windhoek.The ministries of Lands and Resettlement, Safety and Security and Works and Transport on Friday were granted an eviction order to have the squatters removed off the land, after failing for about a month to get them to move voluntarily. The group originally intended to move their tents and property onto the privately owned Ongombo East farm, claiming ancestral roots on the farm, and calling on Government to alienate the farm from Italian owner Nadia Savoldelli. ‘The Constitution speaks of ministerial accountability, but nothing of ministerial arrogance. The minister has been appointed to resettle people on land, not in jail. Article 10 (of the Namibian Constitution) also talks of equal treatment under the law. But this is not what we’re seeing in this case,’ Swartbooi said.He said Government had shown more leniency to invading farmers in the Kavango and in the Nyae-Nyae Conservancy in the recent past, adding that he believed the Ministry saw the weekend’s actions as an attack on ‘an easy target’.’We appreciate the Minister’s hands-on approach. Whenever there is a problem, he goes out himself and speaks to everyone involved and he looks at the situation on the ground himself. But there seems to be no willingness to address the evidently growing symptoms of a failing land reform process,’ he said.While !Naruseb, in his affidavit filed in the High Court last week, said the //Naosan /Aes group were threatening the rule of law with their actions last month, Swartbooi quipped that ‘the quest for justice supersedes the rule of law’.’People have been hearing about their right to property for the past 19 years since Independence. Yet they have not benefited from this,’ he said.He said the youth league remained of the opinion that the current land resettlement process was ineffective due to an apparent failure by central Government to come up with a comprehensive long-term strategy.He suggested that Government would be perfectly justified in expropriating land ‘in the public interest’, saying the matter of ancestral land was something to take serious note of.’You also don’t resettle someone from Tsumeb on a farm in the south or the other way around. We know the geography of those who lost land. If this is not addressed, the long-term effects will only be social unrest,’ he said.He further argued that Government needs to focus more on young people getting land, criticising the Agribank for placing more emphasis on security than on the potential farmer’s ability and enthusiasm to farm successfully.