TOWNSHIP CONDITIONS
A survey of living conditions in Khomasdal, a suburb of Windhoek occupied mainly by Coloured people, has revealed widespread deprivation and poverty among the inhabitants.
The report, published by the Department of Planning of the Municipality of Windhoek, which conducted the survey in 1982, points to a desperate housing shortage, high unemployment and deteriorating health and hygiene in the community.
According to the survey, approximately 30,000 Coloured people, (South Africa's term for people of 'mixed race') live in Khomasdal. The research team found severe overcrowding in the rented housing sector; on average, 13 people occupied a rented house. Up to 35 people were found to be living in a number of houses. Those who could not find room inside the houses slept in cars or outside in the yard. Living conditions in the private sector were slightly better: an average of 7 people occupied each privately owned unit.
It was found that 16 per cent of the economically active population were unemployed. The remainder was mainly employed in the building industry and in government institutions. 13 per cent worked in the private sector outside the building industry.
The report noted that employment in the building industry was subject to a high degree of fluctuation, leading to periods of great instability for those employed in it. The average income per household was estimated at between R300 and R400 per month with 29.5 per cent earning less than R300.
The household subsistence level (the minimum income required for daily life) for a Coloured family in Windhoek, of which Khomasdal is a part, was given in September 1982 as R325 per month.
Windhoek is now the second most expensive city in South Africa and Namibia, with Cape Town in the first place.
In July 1983, following the approval of the capital's 1983-84 budget for the Windhoek City Council, water rates for residents of the black townships of Katutura and Khomasdal were increased from 38 to 53 cents per kilolitre. Basic monthly water tariffs tripled in addition.
Basic sewage charges, bus fares, bread prices, hostel and rubbish removal tariffs have all been increased in 1982-83.
The municipal survey found that many people were forced to supplement their income, and some gained their entire income, by engaging in all kinds of 'informal' activities, such as different types of home industries, welding, motor mechanics and woodwork.
Health conditions in Khomasdal were strongly influenced by other socio-economic factors, according to the survey. Hygiene conditions deteriorated noticeably where houses were overcrowded. This in turn caused general weakening of health, making people prone to diseases such as tuberculosis. Many children were found to be suffering from influenza and chronic chest diseases.
The shortage of facilities for entertainment, recreation or relaxation, combined with the factors of poverty, unemployment and overcrowding, had led to a serious problem of alcoholism among the community, which affected both men and women as well as children. It was found that about 45 per cent of the community could be regarded as total or 'weekend' alcoholics.
The survey identified the housing shortage as one of the main causes of the poor conditions in Khomasdal, and recommended a strategy which would eradicate this within the shortest possible time.
While the survey dealt with one particular black residential area in Namibia, its findings would seem to apply to the majority of the black population, both in urban and rural areas.
PIGSTY DWELLINGS FOR BLACK WORKERS
Black workers and their families in Okahandja are paying R20 a month rental for hovels in converted pigsties, in some of the most squalid and poverty-stricken squatter camps in Namibia.
Investigations conducted by the local press have revealed that the great majority of residents in at least two camps are full-time employees of the public sector, several of them of many years standing, for whom permanent and legal accommodation is simply not available. It has also been made clear that the squatter camps themselves are the direct consequence of official legislation and administrative policies.
Squatter camps, always a feature of Namibia's black townships, have expanded rapidly in recent years due to the war and rising unemployment. Many people from the north of Namibia have fled to the towns to escape the dangers of landmines, curfews and of being caught in crossfire. As political and economic uncertainties have prompted white farmers to leave the land, hundreds of black agricultural workers have found themselves laid off and without alternative employment. Closures and retrenchment in the mining industry and other sectors have accelerated the drift to the squatter camps in the urban areas.
Okahandja, on the main road leading north from Windhoek to the Ovambo region, contains some of the most notorious squatter settlements in the country. Two camps in particular, on the north and south of the town respectively, each housed about 1,000 squatters in March 1983, with new hovels being added every day.
Conditions in both camps were described at this time as 'appalling'. Between seven and 12 people were living in each hovel. Many of the squatters, men, women and children, were living in pigsties crudely covered with corrugated iron sheeting as roofs, while pigs continued to be housed in other sties further along the same sections. Health regulations were nonexistent, with no toilet facilities or arrangements for rubbish removal. Rubbish lay strewn among the hovels, some of which adjoined goat kraals and chicken runs.
At one camp there were only four water taps for 150 dwelling units containing 1,000 squatters; at the other camp there was no fresh water at all. Drinking water here was pumped from a reservoir covered with a thick layer of slime. Both camps were characterised by drunkenness and prostitution.
A medical expert who visited one of the two camps commented that it was 'unbelievable that a place like this exists in SWA. It makes my hair stand on end when I think how rapidly an epidemic could be started'.
Further inquiries revealed that the camp on the south of the town, built on land owned by a well-known public figure and former President of the SWA Agricultural Union, Andries Pretorius, was the direct consequence of actions taken by the Department of Water Affairs in Okahandja. The residents had been obliged to become squatters because neither the Department nor the municipal authorities provided any alternative, legal housing.
The Department of Water Affairs had 675 Ovambo workers on its payroll, but only 72 of them had been provided with housing. White and Coloured employees, by comparison, appeared to be well cared for.
Despite the fact that many of the Ovambo workers had been employed by Water Affairs for many years, most were expected to find their own accommodation. The Department gave tacit recognition to the inevitability of their squatter status by having its own recognised squatter camp until December 1981.
In December 1981, the owner of the land at that time occupied by the Water Affairs squatters told the Department that he wanted the site vacated for vegetable growing. Forty squatter families were given notices to quit by the Department and their homes were bulldozed. No alternative housing was provided by the Department or anyone else, and the squatters went to live on the land owned by Pretorius, where he charged them R10 a month's rental. In March 1983, 281 of the 1,000 or so squatters at this camp - almost all the breadwinners - were found to be Water Affairs employees.
At the end of March 1983, steps were taken by the Department of National Health to evict the squatters from Pretorius's property. The landowner himself, who appeared relatively sympathetic towards the families' plight, approached both the Department of Water Affairs and the Okahandja municipality for advice and assistance. Press reports suggested that he received none whatsoever, and was indeed ordered by the town clerk to leave the latter's office.
Pretorius remarked that a bulldozer would be no solution. 'Any inhuman moves will get the backs up of these people and there will be substantial antagonism against the authorities', he said.
Such antagonism later appeared to have been aggravated by a report that residents of the camp had been refused registration as workers and workseekers by the Labour Recruitment Board precisely because they were squatters. In clear acknowledgement of the vicious circle of legislative and administrative bureaucracy that entraps black people in this predicament, the manager of Nau-Ais township confirmed that it was highly unlikely that the squatters would be registered as workers. 'You must have housing to get a job', he maintained. He added that the labour office gave preference to applicants for work permits who were already registered tenants in the township, and that 'we are not going to allow squatters to work here'.
