Elderly San couple stateless and hungry

Due to a lack of national documents, Mboma Nyumbu (92) and Thitoka Ndumba (82), a San couple from Mutjiku village in the Kavango East Region, do not receive government grants – a situation which has left them struggling to survive off odd jobs and government food parcels.

When Namibian Sun paid the couple a visit on Wednesday, the visually impaired Nyumbu was basking in the sun while his wife had gone for a walk.

Their homestead houses 18 family members, of which the majority are children. No one is employed.

Mutjiku village is situated about 205 kilometres east of Rundu in the Mukwe constituency.

After greeting the family and jokingly asking for lunch as an icebreaker, this journalist received the reply that the family had no food, and that their last meal had been the previous night.

A few weeks

Although the couple do not receive a monthly grant, they do get food parcels from government which comprise of maize meal, tinned fish, cooking oil, beans, salt and corned beef.

This food is expected to last three months, but the family said as they do not have an income to supplement the food they get, it only feeds them for a few weeks.

“The last time we received food was in March, but that food did not see April. We are in July now. We hope it comes soon because we do not have anything to eat,” they said.

The couple only has one child, Mary Madara (39).

She used an uncle’s surname to get an identity card (ID) as her parents are stateless.

“It is so sad to see other elderly people benefitting from the government while my own parents - who were born and bred in this village - are treated like foreigners. How do you explain the fact that their child has an ID while they don’t?” Madara asked.

Allegedly Angolan

On why he doesn’t have national documents, Nyumbu said during the colonial regime, he was registered as an Angolan national by the government, which saw him being regarded as a foreigner in his own country.

As a young man, he was part of a group of people taken to Johannesburg, South Africa. There, he was employed as a truck driver for a coal mine.

“They wrote Angola on my South African ID, but I was not concerned about what is written on my documents; I just wanted to go work and provide for my family,” he said.

Excited by being reminded of his younger years, Nyumbu could not contain his smile as he shared stories about life back then.

He shared that he lost his sight in 2006 after an illness.

Since then, he has had to rely on family members to guide him from one place to another.

Just to survive

When asked how he feels about not being a recipient of the government grant like any other pensioner, Nyumbu said it pains him.

“It pains me to know that people I grew up with benefit from the government, but me and my wife - who were born in this village – don’t get anything. My wife is 82 and she is out there doing odd jobs on people’s mahangu fields just for us to survive,” he narrated.

The couple said they have been trying to get national documents for years, but to no avail.

Travelling to Rundu costs money they don’t have, they said, adding that the home affairs office is always busy.

“We are poor, as you can see. We sleep on old matrasses and I don’t know when last I bought clothes or received any,” Nyumbu said.

Last week, the home affairs and immigration ministry announced that Namibia is currently home to 141 048 undocumented and stateless persons.

According to international law, a stateless person is someone who is not considered a national in accordance with the country's laws. Some stateless people are also refugees.

In response to these figures, Cabinet has proposed several changes to the country’s legislation in order to provide a legal framework to regularise the status of stateless and undocumented individuals.

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