Namibian farmers forced off land and into informal settlements by drought share one tap with 120 other families
Namibian President Hage Geingob has declared the desert country’s informal settlements a ‘human disaster’ as entire villages empty in search of waterWindhoek — When Pedro Dhila left his homestead in northern Namibia one year ago to seek greener pastures in the country’s capital, he meant it literally and figuratively.
“I can think of 30 other families who left Omusati because of drought,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. In January, the southern African desert nation moved closer to famine after dam levels fell below 20%, a drop officials blame on climate change and prolonged drought. According to Namibia’s statistics agency, in 2016 — the most recent data available — more than a quarter of urban and rural households were classified as “improvised housing units” or shacks, up from 16% five years earlier.
Dhila, a retrenched accountant and subsistence farmer, shook his head as he remembered his 45ha of maize, tomatoes and spinach drying up and the slow death of his cattle. In January 2019, Geingob declared the country’s informal settlements a “human disaster” for their living conditions. City spokesperson Lydia Amutenya said that in March Windhoek will begin rolling out the Flexible Land Tenure System. The programme will assign all informal settlements temporary security of tenure to protect residents from eviction, she said.
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