Denver Isaacs
17 November 2008
WORKERS at a farm outside Windhoek claim they've been ordered to move although their late employer promised them lifelong residency.
This past weekend, representatives of the Namibia Farmworkers' Union (Nafwu) told about 50 inhabitants of farm Baumgartsbrunn in the Khomas Hochland area to ignore an apparent eviction order while the union tries to negotiate with the new owners.
But the man who handed the papers to the workers earlier this year, Matthias Bleks, maintains the workers have it wrong and that there are no plans to evict them.
Bleks's father, the late Helmut Bleks, bought the 5 000-hectare farm in the 1960s, establishing through the years a private school for workers' children and those living in the surrounding area, and a family foundation.
Between 2006 and earlier this year, both Bleks senior and his wife died, leaving the farm to their two sons.
According to the workers, the Bleks children decided not to continue with the farm and have put in on the market.
The extended families of the five men working on the farm have expanded the farm's human population to more than 200 people.
Workers claim they were told to move from the farm with their livestock, despite a promise they say Bleks senior made that they could always live on the land.
A planned demonstration against this eviction was reduced to a community meeting on Saturday morning, where the workers vowed to stay put regardless of whether they have a legal right to do so.
"Nobody leaves here! Anyone trying to move you from here must have a place for you to go stay.
We can't say we're living on our motherland but you're being kicked around all over like this.
We thought this nonsense had come to an end," an agitated Angula said.
When contacted yesterday, however, Matthias Bleks said all talk about so-called evictions as false.
"There is a big misunderstanding.
When my mother died in April, my parents' entire affairs ended up at an executor (Keller and Neuhaus Trust Co).
The farm is for sale, and legally for a new owner to take over, all contracts and obligations need to be cleared," he said.
What this meant, he said, was that livestock being kept on the farm needed to be removed until an agreement could be reached between their owners and the new farm owners.
It was these letters ordering the workers to remove their livestock before September 30 that he had handed over to them, he said.
"My hands are tied.
They need to negotiate with the executors about that," Bleks said.
The workers currently live on a piece of land belonging to the Bleks family foundation, which remains the property of the family, he said.
"My father made a promise to one ex-employee and two current workers that they and their immediate families would have lifelong dwelling rights, plus be allowed to keep a certain number of livestock," he said, adding that the family was aware of this verbal promise and intended on keeping it.
"There was never any talk of evictions," he said.
Bleks said although the deadline for workers to remove their animals had passed, the family did not plan on exerting any force to make them to so.
He said it was upsetting that the workers had apparently invited more people to settle on the farm instead of obeying the order or negotiating with the executor.
The workers live on a 25-hectare piece of land around the Baumgartsbrunn primary school, which has been handed over to Government to run as a State school.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The Namibian. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
