Minister in the Presidency Christine //Hoëbes has invited the landless /Khomanin community to State House to discuss land concerns.
//Hoëbes on Monday asked the group to send five delegates to meet with president Nangolo Mbumba next Tuesday.
“This follows your request, dated 14 October 2024, to hand over a petition to the Presidency, which unfortunately came at an inopportune time due to prior scheduled programmes,” she said.
The /Khomanin members were set to submit a final petition to the Presidency, addressing landlessness, systematic ancestral land dispossession, and Namibia’s resettlement programme.
They are calling on the government to declare the /Khomanin as internally displaced people with the same benefits as marginalised communities, such as the San.
The group is urging the government to convene a plenary session with community representatives to facilitate the creation of communal land for the /Khomanin, supported by a comprehensive baseline study to determine their specific land needs.
Group leader Shaun Gariseb says these issues have persisted for 14 years.
“We welcome the invitation and hope it won’t be just another meeting to hear us. The legal provisions are there. Fourteen years of petitions are there. All the circumstances are in place for the government of the Republic of Namibia (GRN) to rectify this land injustice,” he says.
“As we have stated, we are not moving from //Ganaxas (Baumgartsbrunn) because of its anthropological value to our people.
“This is our last petition, and we cannot wait any longer. They have made many promises and remained silent.”
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