Housing Barriers: Class Apartheid in Namibia
Recent articles in the press have drawn attention to the high costs of urban housing. Some of them are logical and hard to avoid, while others are because of excessive profiteering and party patronage. But there is another bizarre, little known reason why formal houses are beyond the reach of most aspirant first-time homeowners: they seldom have much capital to invest in a first home. This is often a consequence of poverty, but in Namibia it is much more a result of deliberat
Recent discussions have highlighted the high cost of urban housing in Namibia, attributing it to logical factors, profiteering, and patronage. However, a less-discussed barrier for first-time homeowners is the inability to generate capital from property, largely due to deliberate policies and legislation. These laws prevent a significant portion of the population, living in informal settlements and communal areas, from selling their land and developing its capital value. This effectively creates a form of "class apartheid," where property ownership and wealth generation are inaccessible to over half of Namibia's citizens. The author argues that this situation, 36 years post-independence, is discriminatory and prevents the development of household wealth enjoyed by others. The piece calls for the abolition of discriminatory legislation and the provision of affordable, surveyed urban land to enable citizens to build their own homes and generate wealth.
The article exposes how current legislation creates significant economic inequality by restricting property ownership and capital generation for a majority of Namibians, perpetuating a form of class-based discrimination.
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