OMITARA – Lolla Seibes (28) sits in line waiting to collect the N$350 orphans and vulnerable children’s grant. She gets it for her daughter, whose father died last year.
That grant, Seibes’ grandmother’s N$1 600 state pension, and her aunt’s civil servant salary are the only income the family of 22 lives from.
Her aunt, Lena Seibes, one of fewer than 20 employed people in the settlement, is the family’s breadwinner. With her less than N$5 000 per month salary, the family scrapes by from month to month.
The settlement in the Okorukambe constituency in the Omaheke region is home to around 1 000 people.
An orphan herself, Lolla grew up with her grandmother, who worked around Neudamm, east of Windhoek, but also landed at Omitara when she was nine.
The BIG pilot project meant she could go to Gobabis for grade eight, but the project’s ending meant she had to drop out and return home. While she has never held a formal job, Seibes is a skilled seamstress. Having qualified for the government’s recent youth credit scheme, attempting to participate would have meant paying for transport to Windhoek, paying to register a company, paying professionals like accountants and hoping the government approves her plans.
But her former classmate, Julia Nekwaya, said government attempts to uplift the neglected often fail, because those it intends to help can’t clear the first bureaucratic hurdle: “because there are no genuine efforts to help those who need it most.”
Omitara was busy on Thursday when The Issue visited.
Crowds milled around the Nampost building, where chairs are neatly stacked in rows for the elderly to queue up.
The impoverished multicultural settlement’s people are tough, says one of its famous daughters.
Julia Nekwaya has qualified and worked as a journalist and has recently hit the headlines when, as prominent and outspoken Popular Democratic Movement youth leader, she resigned and joined the ruling party.
Being a child in Omitara in the late 2000s meant politicians, clergy and media flocked here. A lot of media from all over the world were interested in the project that paid an unconditional basic income grant of N$100 to each member of the community, from babies to 59 years of age. The government pension is paid to every citizen over 60.
A young Nekwaya impressed the Basic Income Grant Pilot Project organisers with her sharp mind and fearless tongue, so they asked her to make a speech during a visit of a parliamentary committee.
She remembers Hidipo Hamutenya, but it was the TV crews that sparked her interest.
After high school, university acceptance without a hostel room meant she was homeless in Windhoek, over 100km from home.
She wasn’t going to give up and fall into the cycle of poverty that has dragged many of her age mates back to Omitara with little to no possibility of escaping the poverty trap.
She organised herself a bed at the Klein Windhoek Police Station holding cells and “operated” from there for three months before eventually getting a room elsewhere.
Julia’s mother, Frieda Nembwaya, operates a bakery in Omitara, which her daughter calls “nowadays nothing more than a social project”.
During the BIG pilot project between 2008 and 2011, Nembwaya came to prominence in the community as the buying power meant she could expand and offer loaves of bread instead of just the buns she baked in tuna cans from an oven she made out of a hole in the ground.
BIG evolved Frieda’s makeshift bakery into a modern brick building with an electric oven and other equipment.
When the Economic and Social Justice Trust published a book in 2019, to mark 10 years of the BIG pilot project, Nembwaya’s bakery featured prominently.
Then, she sold around 100 loaves a day regularly and still sold the N$1 buns. She could buy in bulk from Windhoek even though transport was already prohibitively expensive.
Then Covid hit.
Her well-equipped bakery now operates on and off.
Transport costs make operating full-time, considering the potential meager return, impossible.
“If you have to take even the N$1 bread on credit, how can I expect to really make money here? We are all struggling,” whispered Nembwaya. She is still stunned by the government not continuing with the BIG project when it ran out of money.
“Ons kry nou swaar. Dis nou net die pensioen van die ou mense wat die plek dra. Houses with no old people simply do not have an income,” said Nembwaya with concern in her voice in Afrikaans. (Translation: we are struggling. Government pensions are the only thing carrying the settlement.)
A few households qualified for the N$600 conditional income grant. The grant, which originated from the food bank, pays 32 000 households across the country, not individuals. Experts like Dr Dirk Haarman and the Basic Income Grant Coalition point to the need for a less bureaucratic approach that would cover a greater number of people and cost less to administer.
BRING BACK BIG
“If God allows BIG to come back, it will help everyone. We are on the ground. I’m heartbroken. My bricks have built most of the buildings in the settlement because of BIG. Even for these Kilus toilets, I provided the bricks,” said Josef Ganeb. The 70-year-old refers to the bulky outside toilet structures found in every yard in the settlement that were delivered when the late Kilus Nguvauva was regional councillor. The structure has a toilet and a shower.
Ganeb said, “We all started in sail houses,” referring to the makeshift structure fashioned out of any repurposed material that could be used for shelter.
“When the farmers dump you here they don’t build you a house. They dump you as you are,” said Ganeb.
He scolds this reporter for reminding him of the time of the BIG pilot project.
“Talking about BIG makes me instantly hungry. Now our pension just goes straight to the shebeen who gives us groceries on credit when the little cash we get runs out.”
He said white farmers are still dumping workers there, even those who may have spent all their lives on that farm.
“Just a few weeks ago, another few families were dumped here. Alle nasies lê hier,” he said about the various groups intermingling in the settlement. (Translation: all cultural groups are represented here).
Ganeb asked rhetorically if the government is even thinking of bringing BIG back, “if they can’t even keep the N$3 000 pension promise Hage [Geingob] made” but suggests the church should “come back”.
The Issue could not gauge the government’s strategic thinking on social safety nets, as the Office of the Prime Minister has not answered questions regarding its thinking on social safety nets since June.
The finance ministry in June said the government can’t afford the US$2.15 per person per day that the UN prescribes as a sensible cash grant for the most in need.
Experts are adamant that a UBIG would help many Namibians participate in the economy, but that Namibia’s tax system, in its current format, does not allow for a universal basic income grant.
However, on 10 and 11 October, members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Poverty Eradication, Labour and Industrial Relations of the National Assembly attended an orientation on social protection in Swakopmund.
Committee chairperson, Justina Jonas, mentioned the significant strides Namibia has made by instituting various social protection programmes.
Jonas is adamant that Namibia’s social safety nets uphold dignity, noting that over 618 000 Namibians rely on social grants, including old-age pensions, disability grants, and support for orphans.
The government will spend N$7.2 billion for these programmes in the 2025/2026 financial year.
Nekwaya is adamant that a basic income grant would alleviate many social issues, including excessive drinking and poaching, in the multicultural community.
“I’m Wambo, but when my friends go to the north for holidays, I go to Omitara. That’s where I’m from,” said Nekwaya as she explains how the community came to exist.
Eliaser Shoombe and his wife were also dumped at Omitara in 2004, and the farmer shoved some money in his hand as severance pay for the over 10 years of service.
He built the shop but things are tough now, and he’s afraid his daughter, who is at university without government funding, might not complete her studies. They just don’t make enough to earn a dignified living.
“There’s no life here. Everyone takes on credit and only pays on pension payday. The government should really rescue us now. BIG helped us to save for a few months and then buy one big item. We could pay school fees and our daughter managed to go to Academia High in Windhoek.
Nekwaya said a BIG would also help her and other graduates in an economy with a real unemployment rate of over 50%.
“BIG would have assisted with applications for jobs since most government applications are to be sent via courier, and thereafter, applicants are expected to travel extensively around the country for interviews. BIG would lighten the burden of most young people,” she said.
On the question of what she hopes for, Lolla quietly mutters, “I don’t know. I don’t know,” as she straightens her daughter’s neat hand-sewn dress.
