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LANDLESS People’s Movement chief whip Henny Seibeb said marginalised communities on the brink of eviction from farm Arcadia, situated 60km outside Grootfontein, should not move out.
This comes as 60 families with over 200 animals are being evicted from the farm after an eviction order was issued in the High Court in 2010.
In 2010, a group of people was chased from the farm and some ended up in prison.
Seibeb said the eviction of the marginalised community shows that there is no security of tenure on communal and resettlement farms.
“We recommend firmly that since Hai//om San people are still hounded around like animals in their own country, farm Acadia be allocated to these groups of evicted people, or that alternative land be allocated to them.
“The government should shift its mindset from pro-elite to pro-poor also in the context of a ‘solidarity economy model’. The current trajectory is unequal, unstable and unsustainable,” he said.
Seibeb said the main beneficiaries of the land redistribution process should be land-hungry households, unemployed, farm workers and dwellers, smallholder farmers and those people living on the outskirts of cities and towns.
“Our understanding is that land redistribution is intended to assist the urban and rural poor, farmworkers, labour tenants, as well as emergent farmers.
To what extent has land redistribution ‘assisted’ farmworkers and dwellers? What are the land tenure rights of farmworkers on land redistributed through the resettlement policy?” he asked.
According to a letter from the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement dated 13 September 2011, the ministry encouraged the farmers to keep applying for resettlement in newspapers.
“We would like to encourage your community to keep on applying for resettlement on prescribed forms. Please watch for farm adverts in local newspapers,” reads the letter.
Otjiwarongo municipality councillor Sebeteus Guiteb said the farmers have been pleading for assistance from the government since 2005, but nothing has been done.
Guiteb is an LPM councillor in the Otjiwarongo municipality.
“These are pensioners and the unemployed, where will they go? Some have been living here since 1998. We questioned the deputy sheriff, on whose instructions she is carrying out the orders,” he said.
Speaking to The Namibian yesterday, Johannes Classen (72) said he has been living on the farm for 45 years. He said he lives on the farm with 29 people who are members of his family.
“We don’t know where to go and where we are going to graze our animals,” he said. He added that they wrote a letter to the constituency councillor, but the letter has not been responded to. He said the farm is a resettlement farm.
Otjozondjupa governor James Uerikua and Otjiwarongo constituency councillor Marlayn Mbakera told The Namibian yesterday they were not aware of the eviction of the 60 families from the farm.
– Additional reporting Eliaser Ndeyanale
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