Who is Eating the Asparagus?

I RECENTLY WATCHED an episode of ‘In the Community’ on our national broadcaster, with Elago Shitaatala.

This particular episode featured the fine showcasing of the Otjimbele Agricultural Project in our very own Omusati region.

While watching, I could not help but ask myself: Who is eating all that asparagus? Certainly not us. Who is the target market? A simple Google search will tell you – Europe. Some 70% goes to Europe.

Of course, this is a for-profit business. Did we forget? That is the market, and the farm is located in the middle of a communal area, in the sandy, drought-stricken plains of northern Namibia, where people do not even particularly eat asparagus. I wonder why.

Multinational companies use local land to produce food for offshore markets under the guise of providing ‘employment’ and ‘economic diversification’ – all while the surrounding community has been protesting its presence.

Does it make sense for there to be a large private farm in the middle of a communal area where people are struggling to produce food for themselves?

Who is the headman that sold them out? The one who thought this was a good idea? The one who keeps ignoring his own people?

To me, this is the very same story repeating itself, starting in the 19th century and continuing into the 21st under a democratic government that is not itself a puppet of our previous colonisers (of course not!). We live well now. We have freedom. But the land that was once ours is no longer ours.

Now we depend on free gifts and donations of foods we do not eat, all in the name of providing jobs to eradicate poverty.

But tell me this: What greater poverty is there than not having the means to produce your own food? What is the use of a job as a farmworker on land that was once yours to grow? The north slowly becomes the south, as the man-hungry, land-eating machine moves its way up.

I say, protect the communities. But what does it matter what I say anyway when their voices were already ignored the moment the land deal was struck?

– Phillipine Kaluhoni

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