Thousands Without A Place To Call Home

AT Independence Windhoek had a housing backlog for 7 000 people.

At the same time housing was identified as one of the priority areas of development alongside education, health and agriculture.
A decade and a half later the housing shortage in the whole country had reached 80 000 units while we have seen increased mushrooming of informal settlements all over the country.
By then it was already clear that the country’s system was failing to enable the poor to shift from survival mode into the mainstream economy which included affording a proper roof over their heads.
If the trend continues, estimates are that we might be burdened with a housing shortage of 300 000 units by the year 2030. According to estimates in Vision 2030, we will have a population of about three million by that time. It means the country needs roughly 14 000 new houses each year to keep up with population growth.
There are several reasons for the increased housing backlog. When the country became independent 21 years ago only 27 per cent of the population was urbanised.
With increased job opportunities in urban areas, especially the main centres, the number has grown to 33 per cent 10 years later and by last year the estimates were 50 per cent.
The result is that a whopping 75 per cent of the population will be living in urban areas by 2030, if nothing drastic is done to counter the huge migration.
It is no secret, and we don’t need another million-dollar national conference to point it out, that the major factor contributing to the rural-to-urban migration is the search for better social and economic opportunities.
The upward trajectory of housing prices have also fuelled the crisis.
In most cases such high prices were artificially inflated by housing agents (through things such as high commission) and land providers such as the City of Windhoek, Walvis Bay and Swakopmund who prey on the high demand.
Well-off foreigners who buy with cash have also contributed to the rise in prices of housing, especially in bigger towns.
But the snail-like progress in providing proper housing is becoming a real indictment on all those involved in the provision of housing - from the policy-makers right down to the local authorities who over-price erven unnecessarily.
Affordable and decent housing has become a real uphill battle to close the huge housing backlog.
It is worsened by, for instance, high levels of poverty and unemployment, limited capital investment, spiralling building costs and little financial support for low- and middle-income groups.
That is why a conference like the one which took place this week should not look at the education problem in isolation. Since the education system produces a large pool of unskilled and uneducated adults, it has catastrophic consequences for the future of a country whose developmental goals are already being severely hampered by an acute housing shortage.
As a home is usually an individual’s single most valuable economic asset and ownership is a traditional entry point into the formal economy, the provision of services such as land, water and electricity needs to be stepped up.
There is an explicit need to bring about redress and redistribution, but funding allocations have also been skewed in favour of the poorest while the middle class has lost out as cities and towns tend to concentrate a lot on servicing erven for shacks, build-together programmes and for the upmarket sector.
Such cities tend to cash in by servicing land in elite areas to sell at exorbitant prices as well as for the poor at very low rates but forget to cater for the majority of the working class, most of whom struggle to rent a flat, house or room.
So, a cursory examination shows that while some benefits have accrued through build-together programmes and low-cost housing projects, real problems remain as thousands do not have places they can call home.

No ‘Back To Basics’ For NUNW In Swapo

IN sport, one does not change the rules of the game at the end of the match, or when you are losing.

You keep to them until the end or else don’t compete in the game at all.
The inability of the unions under the National Union of Namibian Workers’ (NUNW’s) umbrella to extricate themselves from being the master’s (Swapo’s) voice is making their theme of this year’s May Day, ‘Going Back to Basics’, a mockery of the workers’ plight.
Apart from some union leaders who continue to live in cloud cuckoo land and can best be described as ‘yes-men’ of some political elites, unions affiliated to the ruling Swapo Party continue to be the breeding ground of corrupt, undemocratic, elitist leaders.
These are ‘thugocrats’ who threaten the future of unions for personal political interests and rule them with strong-arm tactics they inherited from their masters in the ruling party.
I am saying all this because we have had theories that this year’s May Day would be all about workers’ anger and their demands for better living conditions. But really, it was all about political interests and careerism among some leaders who see unions as a stepping stone to a political career.
The Walvis Bay Workers’s Day rally was supposed to centre around NUNW going back to the basics.
As one newspaper reported, the aim was to restore lost pride in the workers’ movement.
But then the president of NUNW, Elias Manga, used the platform to state that “you can never separate a child from his parents - Swapo is our father and mother”. In the same breath he said the Government Institutions Pension Fund (GIPF) N$600 million debacle “is the business of the union”.
What a contrast.
It is the same as throwing the debate about the affiliation of NUNW to Swapo and workers’ unity in the same hat. They contradict each other.
How can you be united when some unions do not pay affiliation fees to the umbrella body and thus contribute to the low-profile celebration of May Day?
Workers of Namibia can never be united while the unions are affiliated to Swapo. That is unless you do not count the working-class members of other political parties as workers.
The NUNW needs to create room for non-Swapo members to join and take leadership.
In any case, there are also Swapo members in other unions like the sea-going personnel at Lüderitz and Walvis Bay who continue to vote faithfully for the ruling party during elections but remain members of unions affiliated to the opposition the Trade Union Congress of Namibia (Tucna), which is independent of any political party.
I believe that even Paulus Hango, the president of Tucna, is a Swapo member. He is just more principled as a union man and does not consider his own political career (if he has) above workers’ interests!
As long as the revision of the NUNW affiliation to Swapo is a sensitive issue, there is no room for going back to basics with the same vigour and zeal that was displayed prior to the country’s Independence.
Currently, NUNW and its affiliated unions are at the service of politicians.
That is why they invite them and they use the platform to humiliate workers instead of coming to such events to answer questions about the concerns of the working class.
Therefore, it was also interesting to note that NUNW secretary general Evilastus Kaaronda, who probably organised the Walvis Bay event, did not address the workers at the celebration.
I personally believe that Kaaronda is a young man of refreshing openness who has a penchant for directly interacting with workers while others behave like Swapo apparatchiks.
He took on the GIPF issue when everyone else took a backseat and joined workers to demand answers. In the process he now faces disciplinary action. Anyone but a blind man could have seen the writing on the wall for that. The good thing is that Kaaronda will go down a brave union man, if his opponents in NUNW were to manage to get rid of him.
And once he is gone, others should stand up for the same principles. There is no place for the faint-hearted in unionism.