Recent articles in the press have drawn attention to the high costs of urban housing.
Some of them are logical and hard to avoid, while others are because of excessive profiteering and party patronage.
But there is another bizarre, little known reason why formal houses are beyond the reach of most aspirant first-time homeowners: they seldom have much capital to invest in a first home.
This is often a consequence of poverty, but in Namibia it is much more a result of deliberate policies and legislation that prevent poorer people from generating capital from property.
To understand why, imagine this Breaking News: “The president decrees that all private land and housing may never be sold to anyone or for any purpose in Namibia.”
What? Is she crazy?
Imagine the howls of protest and screams of shock from residents in Khomasdal, Windhoek West, Ludwigsdorf, Kleine Kuppe, and the formal suburbs and industrial zones of Rundu, Ondangwa and Lüderitz, as well all the freehold farms, for example. The many millions and billions invested in these properties and businesses would become worthless as potential capital, never to be used to expand, bequeath or use as security to borrow money for a child’s education or any other useful purpose.
Much of Namibia would be in complete shock. Newspaper headlines would scream ‘devastation’ and ‘madness’.
Queues of bankers and investors leaving Namibia would stretch for miles at our border posts.
‘CLASS APARTHEID’
But exactly that reality, and those barriers apply to the majority of Namibians who may live on a piece of land but not develop its value as capital because the land may never be sold.
These are the people who live in informal urban shacks and in customary land parcels in communal areas. Together, they live in at least 55% of all households in Namibia, as per the results of the 2023 census.
Note this simple reality: 36 years after independence and the apparent abolition of discrimination, Namibia maintains legislation that directly prevents more than half its citizens from developing household wealth of the kind that many other Namibians enjoy, protect and take for granted.
This is apartheid, not by colour but by class. Property with economic value is not for poor Namibians.
Madam President and honourable prime minister, it is time to put the Namibian house in order and respect its value for everyone.
Doing so will be simple, quick and cheap: abolish discriminatory legislation and make affordable surveyed, serviced urban land available for residents to build their own houses – brick-by-brick, room by room – to generate capital value and long-term wealth.
The only thing harder than taking these steps is to have the moral courage to do what is right!
– John Mendelsohn is passionate about education, rural economies, and land rights.
