(First appeared in Consumer News Namibia Magazine October 2013)
I once
played a Cape Coloured man, Davey Galant, in the Adam Small play Joanie
Galant-hulle. The play deals with the eviction of people of colour from their
houses due to the South African government’s policy of Apartheid. The play
deals with the difficulties in a family after the forced removal and the steady
degeneration of Davey into drinking and other “typical” coloured behavior.
The version
of the play I acted in was called “Eviction” and reworked by Namibian
playwright Frederick B. Philander to find an echo with the forced removal of
the “Ou Lokasie” residents in Windhoek on 10 December 1959.
This
character seems to have become my alter ego, in terms of being “my second self,
or a trusted friend. The recent evictions of poor members of society by the
municipalities or town councils in Namibia have brought out this “trusted
friend” who uses the line “huis, paleis,
pondok… malhuis’ or in English, “house, palace, shack… madhouse”.
The issue
of housing in Namibia cannot be separated with the right of each and every
citizen to their dignity. Without a place of safety in which we can be assured
our earthly belongings will be safe, none of us will be able to continue our
contribution to the society as we would be fearful of leaving our belongings in
a place that is not secure.
The
Government of the Republic of Namibia (GRN) has announced an ambitious N$45
billion mass housing development programme through which it intends to build
185 000 houses by 2030 to mitigate the current nationwide 100 000 units housing
deficit.
The
initiative announced by the Minister of Regional and Local Government, Housing
and Rural Development, (Rtd) Major-General Charles Namholoh on 9 September
2013, will be implemented by the National Housing Enterprise (NHE) which is
mandated to build low-cost houses for low-income earners and even for
middle-income earners. This is the biggest housing plan ever to be launched in
the country.
This comes
about after President Pohamba appointed the Minister of Regional and Local
Government, Housing and Rural Development, the Director General of the National
Planning Commission (NPC), the Minister of Finance and the Minister of
Presidential Affairs as national committee members on the envisaged mass
housing development programme. The group has been tasked to come up with ideas
to accelerate the delivery of houses around the country to comprehensively
address the issue of housing. It is intended that the programme will remedy the
problem of inflated house prices and rental fees, which non-home owners are
increasingly unable to afford.
While as
consumers, we welcome the governments initiative we must ask some critical
questions regarding the housing programme:
·
Does
the NHE have the capacity to build 9 000 houses in the first 18 months of the
programme? After all, NHE has only built 13 295 houses over the past 22 years and
will now be the administrator of the mass housing programme.
·
How
will financing of this programme be done? Conumer News Magazine has been
informed that most of the financial will be done through government grants to
be channelled through his ministry, local authorities and NHE but very few
further details are available. The Minister also indicated that other sources
of finance could be public-private partnerships, debt financing and household
saving groups such as the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia.
·
Who
will be the beneficiaries, and who will make that decision?
The Minister
and the NHE need to address these pressing issues to assure the potential
beneficiaries that there is finally light at the end of the tunneling for our
housing woes.
