A RESIDENT of Okahandja submitted a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Commission today calling for an investigation into alleged corrupt land deals implicating councillors and officials at the town.

Johannes Gaseb says he filed his complaint as an individual concerned about alleged corruption with regards to land sales and allocation at the town.

He wants the ACC to investigate land deals that took place between 2014 and 2020.

The Swakopmund Municipality is targeting to accommodate 17 000 people under the various erven and housing provision projects.

There is an estimated 25 000 to 30 000 people living in the Democratic Resettlement Community (DRC), an informal settlement of Swakopmund.

Nearly 30 years after starting land reform, Namibia’s distribution of land ownership is still skewed. This is a colonial legacy. It is high time to return land to dispossessed communities. As a former colonial power guilty of terrible bloodshed, Germany should contribute to making that happen.

We should recognise that people in informal settlements have the same right to share the city with the same dignity and equality as other residents. Without the active participation of informal settlement residents in upgrading projects, any upgrading plans proposed are destined to flop. Post the pandemic, we (Namibian planning practitioners, donors and private sector) should look towards the inclusion of people in informal settlements communities in planning and upgrading of the informal settlements. 

RESIDENTS of Okahandja will get land relief after the town council yesterday announced they would be rolling out a land-delivery programme.

Some residents this month resorted to cleaning up earmarked erven as they are tired of renting and want their own property.

Lukas Alfons, a resident of Okahandja for the past 32 years, says rich people are buying land at the town, while they do not own anything.

THE Municipality of Otjiwarongo has started profiling its informal settlements to better plan and upgrade the areas for their residents.

According to Adelheid Shilongo, the Otjiwarongo local authority's public relations officer, the profiling is important because it will provide the municipality with crucial and accurate data on the informal settlements' demographics, which in turn would enable better planning and the upgrading of the areas.

Land reform minister Calle Schlettwein has urged regional governors to use land as a form of correcting past injustices while creating economic opportunities for disadvantaged Namibians to address inequality.

Minister of Lands Kezzie Msukwa says there is a need to clean up the ministry and dismantle corruption syndicates involved in dubious sale of land.

Msukwa said this during a meeting with Vice President Saulos Chilima on the required reforms in the Ministry.

According to Chilima, Msukwa admitted that there are ministry officials who are involved in illegal sale of land.

Malawi Sun Hotel owners Mohammed Irshad Ahmed and Suhaik Irshad Ahmed are facing possible arrest following investigations into allegation of land grab in Blantyre City implicated together with former president Peter Mutharika’s personal bodyguard Norman Chisale.

Ahmed is accused of acquiring land through dubious means in Blantyre allocated to the developer by Ministry of Lands which was never for sale but through Chisale bulldozed to buy the land. Anti Corurption Bureau (ACB) has been investigating the matter and could possibly lead to Ahmed arrest for corruption offences.

Zimbabwe gave Malawi's late former president Bingu wa Mutharika a $124,111 (about R2,1m) “gift” in 2007 through the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ).

This is according to an exposé by Alex Magaisa, a law professor at the University of Kent  on Zimbabwe’s controversial farm mechanisation programme. The programme's $200m debt is being borne by taxpayers.