Hai//om demand land at Otjikoto

More than 170 Hai//om San find themselves between a rock and a hard place since they are being threatened with eviction from Farm Tsumore No. 761 outside Tsumeb despite repeated attempts to negotiate with the Ministry of Land Reform to be resettled there. Although she is yet to be issued with an allotment letter, the new resettlement beneficiary, Nelao Tshiguwo, has reportedly warned the families that they would have to start packing since she does not want them on the farm.Tshiguwo stakes her claim to the farm as an inheritance of the lease right from her father, who was the first resettlement beneficiary in 2008 after the government had bought the farm from the List family in 2007.However, the Hai//om families still living on the farm, though precariously, say they too have a legitimate claim to make on the farm since they have been living in the Lake Otjikoto area since time immemorial and worked on the farm when it was still under the ownership of the late Carl and Werner List decades ago. Farm Tsumore is a stone's throw from the lake. Documents show that the Hai//om had been living around Lake Otjikoto before any other group arrived there. “We will not be moved; our lives are here,” said Bernard Komogab (66) who has been living and working on the farm since before the government bought it.As a former farmworker at Tsumore, Komogab was one of 21 Hai//om applicants in the Oshikoto Region who applied for resettlement on Farm Tsumore in 2007. Komogab said officials at the ministry at the time informed them that their applications for resettlement were not considered because – due to their illiteracy – they incorrectly filled in the application forms. Ironically, the initial resettlement beneficiary Gervasius Tshiguwo's name does not appear on this master list of applications.An official in the lands ministry's office at Tsumeb preferring anonymity said this was not the only master list of applications, arguing that there would have been 13 regional lists submitted. Be that as it may, Komogab said when the deceased Tshiguwo first arrived at the farm in 2008, he agreed to allow the Hai//om former farmworkers to remain on the farm and use portions thereof for their own use. When Tshiguwo died in 2013 his wife took over the farm. After the wife died in 2014, the daughter, Nelao, according to the ministerial official, applied to inherit the leasehold. Such inheritance usually has to be applied for and registered within three months after the beneficiary has died. More than two years later, Nelao's application for inheritance of the leasehold is yet to be finalised, reportedly because some paperwork needs to be sorted out.Yet another ministerial official, also preferring anonymity, said Nelao had requested an extension on her application for the inheritance.The Hai//om have in the meantime also again approached the lands ministry with a request to be resettled on the farm but their renewed attempts have yet again fallen on deaf ears. An uncertain futureStafanus Gamseb, one of the initial Hai//om applicants for resettlement, asked why the lands ministry had not considered the Hai//om former farmworkers as resettlement beneficiaries right from the start as is stipulated in the resettlement policy.“Why did the resettlement committee not report that there already were people staying there?” The Hai//om are particularly aggravated by their impending eviction because the adjacent farming unit of Farm Tsumore, Unit B, has been lying vacant for years after it was first bought by the government. Other resettlement beneficiaries have since moved onto that land. Komogab said: “We are viewed as dogs. However, we know where we come from and we know where we are going. We did not invade this farm. The people who have moved in here found us here. They have come to work the land and get rich from it before they set off again. We do not want Nelao to get the farm. She should go back to Ovamboland. We should get the project back; we also want to get rich.”John Khamuseb, special advisor to chief Dawid Khamuxab of the Hai//om traditional authority, said the authority was gravely concerned about the families on Farm Tsumore. He said they advised that the farm be either turned into a cooperative or close corporation where the Hai//om families can remain and farm on a more sustainable and commercial basis. “Instead, the farm is to be given to an individual while the families are to be left on the side of the street,” Khamuseb said.“The Oshikoto regional council must go back to the drawing board; a principle mistake was made here. I believe in the concept of 'one Namibia, one nation' and that no one should be left out. The Hai//om should get their fair share of the cake.”CATHERINE SASMAN

Hai//om demand land at Otjikoto

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Namibian Sun 2026-08-14

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Hai//om demand land at Otjikoto

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Namibian Sun 2026-08-14

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