'Just a patch of land'

Come hell or high water, Maria Sululu Isaacks will be buried at the resettlement farm Versailles, this Saturday, despite a government memo prohibiting families on resettlement farms from burying their loved ones there.
According to an internal memo circulated in the lands ministry in 2014, there is no basis for government’s decision to bar beneficiaries from burying their loved ones on resettlement farms.
The memo was signed by the then permanent secretary of the lands ministry.
According to a legal expert, the root of this problem is the fact that the government is dragging its feet in granting resettlement beneficiaries leaseholds, because in the absence of such documents resettlement farms remain state land.
However, lands ministry spokesperson Chrispin Matongela said the land does not belong to the community and they cannot lay claim to it.
“They never took out a cent to pay for that land; it is still under the government,” Matongela insisted.
The memo also states that allowing burials on farms might open up ancestral land claims, which were banned at the 1991 Land Conference.
The Isaacks family, who are members of the /Khomanin clan, accuse the government of violating their human rights.
The elderly family members are worried that they too will be denied a final resting place on the farm.
“We have no land, we the /Khomanin people, even here (Khomas Region), which is our ancestral land, we can’t be laid to rest,” said the deceased’s uncle, Anton #Auseb.
The land was bought by the government for N$9.1 million in 2011 and handed over to the community by the then deputy lands minister, Theo Diergaardt.
Before resettlement on Versailles, most of the beneficiaries had been living in road corridors after having been evicted from commercial farms. Others had been squatting illegally on resettlement farms, and others were living in informal settlements or in backyards in Windhoek.
JEMIMA BEUKES