At home on Windhoek’s streets

They survive by begging, guarding and washing cars, or selling trinkets and scrap metal. They live in drain pipes, under bridges, in the city’s sport facilities and in deserted buildings around the city. 

The homeless people of Windhoek’s very presence on the streets is a crime and they are considered a nuisance by the city’s residents, who have become increasingly irritated by them. They hail from towns in the south of Namibia and others like Gobabis. There is also a sizable number of former combatants and, in the last few years, an increasing amount of economic migrants from southern Angola as that country struggles to feed its vulnerable following severe drought over several years and a serious economic decline. 

“Please sir, just hear me out, my big boss. I am just hungry and need something to eat. I am not asking you for money and you can even buy me bread or anything to eat, sir.”

Many Windhoek residents have heard these lines more times than they care to remember, especially those who live in the city’s more affluent suburbs. When visiting any shopping centre in and around suburban Windhoek, one is guaranteed to be approached by the homeless. 

The men are approached with titles like Grote, General, Big Boss, My Lanie, Chief, Bossa, Madala, Uncle and Toppie, all aimed to appeal to ego. While women are called auntie, my mother or madam, aimed at appealing to their maternal instinct. Unfortunately, for women, they also face the occasional aggression should they not comply with gifting.

The requests for help vary; some want money for food, some offer to look after the car or wash it, while some, especially women, come with an often well-rehearsed sad tale of how the money you give them will go towards paying for their medical bills or their baby’s welfare.

Windhoek’s destitute are alone, have no support and often have no access to government services or reject them. Many have no national documents which could help them access government services and help. 

Windhoek residents appear to have become numb to their presence and largely ignore their plight and welfare.

They are castigated and called names. 

Malalapipe is the most common way they are referred to, which basically translates to drain pipe dwellers.  

But they do not appear to make up a critical mass to spur the authorities into action or to consider it a crisis. 

Those who are considered to be the original street kids of Windhoek repeatedly refuse to go or stay home; even when transported back to their towns of origin or homes, they always make their way back to the streets of Windhoek within days.

Not even the Office of the Ombudsman, responsible for investigating human rights violations and social justice-related issues, took notice of this ignored population. The Ombudsman’s office has in the past advocated for the rights of prisoners, among others. “While it is true that the Ombudsman’s office has not specifically conducted research into homelessness, we recognise the broader issues faced by those living on the streets, including vulnerable groups like children. Our office recently initiated an own-motion investigation into reports of children selling goods on the streets of Windhoek,” says spokesperson, Aurelia David.  

David adds that the Ombudsman’s office’s preliminary findings revealed that many of these children were Angolan nationals, highlighting complex intersections between homelessness, child protection, and immigration.

“In response to these findings, we began collaborating with the City of Windhoek, which has been working on a project to address homelessness,” she adds. 

Even the major political parties participating in the just ended National Assembly and Presidential Elections have not taken notice, nor have they specifically highlighted this particular demographic as needing some form of attention. 

Five major political parties of Swapo, LPM, PDM, IPC, AR have not prioritised the issue of homelessness in their latest party manifestos. A perusal of the five parties’ election promises touches on addressing the housing backlog and ensuring people living in shacks would be able to get conventional housing. Some also touched on the need to resettle farmers who are left destitute in corridors with their livestock. But none specifically pointed out the plight of urban street dwellers.

On the street since age 12

Micklift Luxman (26), aka KaSmall, is washing his feet in a red bucket near the Windhoek High Court building. He is small in stature and focuses on washing his feet. The flies refuse to leave. They are attracted to his cracked heels and the visible fungal infection between his toes.

“I have been on the streets since I was 12. I was young and little. That’s why they started calling me KaSmall on the street,” Luxman says as he points to his tattoo on the arm, something that looks like the United Nations’ seal with the name KaSmall emblazoned at the bottom.  

Luxman was born in Rehoboth and attended JTL Beukes Primary School before tragedy hit his family. 

“I first lost my mother when I was 10 and two years later my father died,” he says. Life at home became unbearable, and he was not getting along with his relatives. At the time, he adds, he was misled by tales of a better life in the capital, some 90 kilometres north of Rehoboth.   

One day he left everything behind and fled to Windhoek. 

“My friends said life would be good in Windhoek and I believed it,” he says. But the reality soon shocked him and the realisation that the capital city was far from the utopian version he romanticised.   

What followed is a life on the streets of Windhoek’s central business district, characterised by violence, hunger, crime and the occasional visit to police holding cells. He says he is often arrested for drunk and disorderly behaviour, but he has also had serious cases opened against him. He says in one case he was in the wrong place at the time when a friend of his stole a car they were supposed to be guarding. 

At the time of their arrest, Luxman was in possession of the car keys, but he swears that he did not steal the car because he cannot drive. 

The second serious case was when his friend cheated them of N$300 after a day of washing cars at the High Court parking lot. 

“When he refused to give us our cut, we robbed him of the money and he opened a case,” he says, pointing out that violence has become a part of street life. He points to his disfigured face, which has more scars than one can count. He points to one on his neck—a near-fatal stabbing where his attacker, a fellow street dweller, tried to end his life. He pulls his shirt up and points to multiple scars on his torso. Some are surgical scars where he was treated for stab wounds that threatened his life. 

“I once walked out of the hospital with a catheter after the doctors said the knife was 10 centimetres away from killing me,” he says as he proudly proclaims that he is lucky that he put his life in God’s hands, and that’s the reason he has cheated death several times. 

Luxman is a part of a group of people classified as homeless who spent years in the Windhoek CBD or surrounding suburbs. 

He is considered one of the ‘original street kids’ of Windhoek. 

Once in Windhoek, they refuse to go back home; even when transported back to their towns of origin or homes, they always make their way back to the streets of Windhoek within days.

Categories of homelessness

Classifying homelessness is not as straightforward. The Namibia Statistics Agency this month indicated that Namibia has 843 people who are classified as street dwellers. 552 are males and 291 are female. The majority of people classified as homeless in this manner are between the ages of 15 and 50. This figure is contentious because the City of Windhoek officials estimate that the city is home to about 700 people who are not able to get permanent accommodation. 

This figure does not appear to include people who live in shacks or have no access to conventional housing. The census results, however, also show that 28.7% of the Namibian households live in informal dwellings or shacks. But because they are not on the streets, they are not classified as homeless. 

Loide Amukongo from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says Namibia was in 2017 rated the second most unequal country in the world. Second only to South Africa. As a result, 90% of Namibians do not qualify for a housing loan and thus are unable to buy houses, and at the time it was estimated that over 250 000 people in Windhoek alone resided in informal settlements.

The group known to be street dwellers in Windhoek and visible at shopping centres and parking lots is not the only group considered to be homeless in Windhoek. During the Covid-19 quarantine protocols, the City of Windhoek took about 96 families off the streets to be hosted at a tented camp at the Khomasdal Stadium. 

This number has increased as more people are now building makeshift shelters at the camp while refusing to leave, despite the government no longer supplying them with food since the official end of the pandemic. 

The Katutura Youth Complex, near the Katutura Intermediate Hospital, also houses over 100 people, who comprise former SWATF and Koevoet soldiers mainly from Opuwo. 

They have been petitioning the government since 2015, demanding to be recognised as war veterans and to be paid a form of compensation. The youth complex is also home to a group of children of the liberation struggle. They two are demanding that the government recognise them and compensate them, just like their parents, who fought in the liberation struggle.

The complex also houses other Windhoek residents who are either employed but cannot afford accommodation, students at various institutions of higher learning in the city, as well as school-going children.

Law enforcement agencies also classify the men who sit at major street intersections looking for daily casual labour as homeless.

Then there are the controversial Angolan children. Early this year, there was a public uproar over concerns that the city was full of children of Angolan descent who went around town primarily selling wooden spoons. The government was forced to act and ended up repatriating about 100 of these children, who were also accompanied by women. 

This group used to sleep in the open along Ondoto Street in Okuryangava, in Windhoek’s Katutura location, where Apartheid authorities forcibly settled black Namibians in the late 1950s. 

This group spoke languages close to the Ovadhemba, Ovatua and Nkumbi languages of southern Angola and northern Namibia. However, there has also been another group of Angolan children who have been operating in the streets of Windhoek for many years. They go around selling maize cobs, eggs, telephone recharge vouchers, sweets, fruits and sausages. They went under the radar for a while because they speak the local Oshikwanyama dialect, giving them the ability to blend in. Authorities believe they are originally from the Evale area in southern Angola.

The crime of homelessness