Groot Aub residents push back on lease agreements

Residents of Groot Aub Extension 2 have called on the City of Windhoek to suspend its planned lease agreement process due to inadequate consultation.

Some residents say they cannot afford the financial obligations attached to the proposed arrangements.

The concerns were raised during a community engagement meeting held at Groot Aub Soccer Field on Saturday, where city officials briefed residents on the planned signing of lease agreements for surveyed residential plots.

Community activist Cecil Titus urged the municipality to delay the process until further consultations had taken place.

“We do not decline development, but we want development to be done in an orderly manner,” Titus said.

He said residents support efforts to formalise land ownership but reject what they describe as a process being imposed on them without sufficient engagement.

Titus questioned the size of the land earmarked for leasing, saying documents available to the community indicate that only about 65 hectares are involved, while Groot Aub covers more than 8 000 hectares.

He also appealed to the city to heed a request from Baster traditional leadership to postpone the process pending further discussions.

“We want to afford what we can afford. Don’t force things on us,” he said.

Titus said many residents are unemployed and fear they could be committing themselves to financial obligations they may not be able to meet.

He said a land moratorium introduced more than two decades ago had left many young people without access to residential plots, while illegal occupation had continued over the years.

“If you cannot consult us properly, this meeting is not going to be fruitful,” he said.

Elias Nekondja, who has been a resident at Groot Aub for over five years, says the city should prioritise basic services before asking residents to enter into lease agreements.

“We have been living without reliable water for years,” he says.

Nekondja says many households continue to struggle with poor service delivery despite repeated appeals to the municipality.

“People are worried about how they will pay for leases when they are still struggling with basic necessities. Water is our biggest concern at the moment,” he says.

City of Windhoek chief executive Moses Matyayi on Saturday said the municipality had introduced lease agreements as an interim measure because an ongoing court case has delayed the registration of title deeds.

He said surveyed and planned residential areas cannot be registered until the legal matter has been resolved.

“Ideally, we should wait until the court case is finished, but the people are still not taken care of,” Matyayi said.

He said the municipality considered it necessary to provide residents with temporary security of tenure instead of waiting indefinitely for the court proceedings to conclude.

“The interim measure is to provide at least what you call a lease agreement so that you can say this property is mine until it is registered in your name,” he said.

Matyayi said the lease agreements are not intended to allow residents to sell their properties but rather to secure occupation until title deeds can be issued.

“It is for you to live and stay on that property and have ownership that you can leave as a legacy for your children,” he said.

He urged residents to protect their land rights while the registration process continues.

The meeting was aimed at briefing Groot Aub Extension 2 residents on the upcoming lease-signing process.

Separate engagements for Groot Aub Extension 1 and Groot Aub Proper are expected to follow at a later stage.

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