Otjozondjupa formulates over 20 resolutions at land consultative meeting

OTJIWARONGO, 29 JULY – Residents of Otjozondjupa on Friday formulated 24 resolutions during their regional land consultative meeting aimed at preparing for the second national land conference set for October this year.

The two-day meeting started Thursday at Otjiwarongo and was attended by various traditional leaders from the region and residents from as far as the villages of Tsumkwe, Omatako, Okondjatu, Okamatapati, Ovitoto and Okakarara.

Deputy ministers in the Office of the Prime Minister, Chief Samuel Ankama and Marginalised Communities’ Royal /Ui/o/oo, as well as Otjozondjupa Governor, Otto Ipinge also attended.
Towards late Friday afternoon, the 24 resolutions were adopted, including views and experiences of individual people who wrote down theirs and handed it over to a technical committee.
Issues on land restitution came out strongly, with suggestions to Government to rethink it and consider compensating people who lost ancestral land during colonialism.

The meeting also suggested to Government to seriously attend to a group of the Hai//om San-speaking community members in the Otjiwarongo area, “who continue to face hardships in an independent country where they do not have a piece of communal land”.

Residents further want to see the under-utilised communal land in the region improved by channelling of water resources so that landless Namibians can be resettled on such tracts by Government as their communal land.

“Resettlement farms bought in respective regions should be reserved for inhabitants of that region who demonstrate potential to become successful farmers,” the meeting resolved.
People who were dispossessed of land should be given total preference in each resettlement process on farms purchased by Government in areas carrying historical dispossession, said the Otjozondjupa residents.

They also took a resolution that all traditional authorities in the country should be prohibited from selling communal land.
They in addition proposed that Communal Land Boards in the country should be empowered and backed by laws to be able to evict any unlawful occupant from communal land.
According to Governor Ipinge, the 24 resolutions will be taken as resource material to the national second land conference where it will be presented.
NAMPA