The red line can go
The economic planning minister Tom Alweendo has it right. The red line, which effectively cripples the farmers in those northern areas, limits access to real and tangible markets and creates an area, at least a third of the country, where only communal and small-scale livestock farming can be done. This in turn creates dependency and vulnerabilities for those communities whose food security status will remain fickle, to say the least.
That foot-and-mouth disease is problematic also, but the challenges we experience with this disease come from across our borders, not within.
While we understand that the northern border of this country was artificially created, effectively separating families, communities and tribes, the time has come that we begin to control cross-border movement.
Communities must be educated in this regard and in fact, it should have been done years, if not decades, ago.
Border controls, those which are recognised internationally by the relevant authorities, need to be implemented and proper and effective systems and protocols need to be in place.
In this way, the entire red line or, northern communal area, can be turned into an area where proper commercial farming can take place, whether it be livestock or agronomy, and with that, access to markets, lucrative markets.
We have reported repeatedly on this workshop and that meeting. We have typed up speeches offering lip service left, right and centre. We have hailed those with wise words and criticised those with narrow vision.
And yet, nothing has changed for the communities north of the red line.
It is time that we put deed and action to our words. Effective planning, along with assistance from international authorities, can turn around the lives of the people in the north of our country.
We cannot simply accept the status quo and say that there is foot-and-mouth disease in that area and let that be that.
It is absurd, especially in the light of the lofty goals of the Geingob administration to eradicate poverty once and for all.
This is an essential step in that direction and will impact thousands of people in a positive way.
And as an added bonus, it is after all, the electorate not?
That foot-and-mouth disease is problematic also, but the challenges we experience with this disease come from across our borders, not within.
While we understand that the northern border of this country was artificially created, effectively separating families, communities and tribes, the time has come that we begin to control cross-border movement.
Communities must be educated in this regard and in fact, it should have been done years, if not decades, ago.
Border controls, those which are recognised internationally by the relevant authorities, need to be implemented and proper and effective systems and protocols need to be in place.
In this way, the entire red line or, northern communal area, can be turned into an area where proper commercial farming can take place, whether it be livestock or agronomy, and with that, access to markets, lucrative markets.
We have reported repeatedly on this workshop and that meeting. We have typed up speeches offering lip service left, right and centre. We have hailed those with wise words and criticised those with narrow vision.
And yet, nothing has changed for the communities north of the red line.
It is time that we put deed and action to our words. Effective planning, along with assistance from international authorities, can turn around the lives of the people in the north of our country.
We cannot simply accept the status quo and say that there is foot-and-mouth disease in that area and let that be that.
It is absurd, especially in the light of the lofty goals of the Geingob administration to eradicate poverty once and for all.
This is an essential step in that direction and will impact thousands of people in a positive way.
And as an added bonus, it is after all, the electorate not?
Comments
Namibian Sun
No comments have been left on this article