When Pedro Dhila left his homestead in northern Namibia one year ago to seek greener pastures in the country's capital, he meant it both literally and figuratively.

A boy rides his bike in a Namibian community. Photo: VCG

Dhila hoped Windhoek would hold better opportunities after worsening drought in the Omusati region decimated his crops and nearly 30 of his cows.

But once he arrived in the Okuryangava slum, he faced a new set of problems: overcrowding, crime and poor sanitation.

"It is very painful to live here where decent land and housing is hard to find. We can't farm," said 37-year-old Dhila, sitting outside his friend's corrugated iron shack.

"I can think of 30 other families who left Omusati because of drought," he told Reuters.

As rural Namibians move to cities to escape the worst drought in nearly a century, many find themselves navigating a no-man's-land between oversaturated slums and the parched farmland they hope to one day return to, say activists and aid officials.

In 2015, nearly half of all Namibians lived in urban areas and that number is expected to reach 60 percent in 2030, according to Sweden's Lund University - while the UN estimates nearly 70 percent of the world's population will live in cities by 2050.

In 2019, Namibian President Hage Geingob declared a state of emergency due to drought conditions, with five out of the previous six years experiencing low rainfall, according to the United Nations. And in January, the southern African desert nation moved closer to famine after dam levels fell below 20 percent, a drop official blames on climate change and prolonged drought.

As a result, families are "following the water," said Bernadette Bock, secretary general of the Namibia Red Cross Society.

Many end up in makeshift houses in informal settlements in Windhoek, Bock added from her office in Katutura, a neighborhood made up of several settlements in the capital.

An informal settlement is described by the United Nations as unplanned, unauthorized residential housing units to which the occupants have no legal claim.

According to Namibia's statistics agency, in 2016 - the most recent data available - more than a quarter of urban and rural households were classified as "improvised housing units" or shacks, up from 16 percent five years earlier.

Residents of the Okuryangava slum, on the fringes of Katutura, said new shacks were being built on a weekly - sometimes daily - basis, although official data is scarce.

Health and safety risks

Katutura and its surrounding settlements are often the first points of entry for Namibians who can't afford to live in the capital's suburbs or inner city, Dhila explained. But once the families arrive, they face health and safety risks like disease outbreaks and robberies, as well as fear of eviction if their homes have been built illegally, he added.

Katutura was originally a relocation site for evicted Namibians under South African colonization in the 1960s - its name means "the place where people do not want to live" in the local Herero language.

Dhila, a retrenched accountant and subsistence farmer, shook his head as he remembered his 45 hectares of maize, tomatoes and spinach drying up and the slow death of his cattle.

Namibia's cabinet has pledged about $29 million to alleviate drought in the past year, although Dhila said he has yet to receive any assistance.

"I hope for support for communal farmers such as seeds, boreholes and livestock feeding. [Then we could] return to our farms," said the father of four.

Until then, he and his family remain in the slum, where he said they share one tap and one toilet with 120 other families - a figure confirmed by the Red Cross.

In January 2019, President Geingob declared the country's informal settlements a "human disaster" for their living conditions.

Bock described how the Red Cross arrived in the Kunene region, about 580 kilometers northwest of Windhoek, only to find entire villages empty after residents had abandoned their homes to head to the city in search of working water pumps.

The team had to drive 30 kilometers to find the village, closer to a hand pump with better water supply.

"We are seeing climate change every day. It is real," said Edmund Khoaseb, communications coordinator with the Red Cross.

"And the countries feeling it are not the ones responsible for the carbon emissions."

'We are uprooted'

Katutura, made up of five different suburbs, is home to more than 5 percent of Namibia's population, according to the most recent government statistics.

As the slums in and around the area continue to expand, competition for land grows, intensifying demands on the city for housing, safety and sanitation.

Windhoek's mayor Fransina Kahungu moved her office from the city center to the Babylon slum in January to "balance the way we provide services to all residents," she told Reuters over WhatsApp.

The city's spokeswoman, Lydia Amutenya, said that in March Windhoek will begin rolling out the Flexible Land Tenure System.

The program will assign all informal settlements in the country temporary security of tenure to protect residents from eviction, she said in emailed comments.

"Our interventions are aimed at turning the tables in favor of our residents and their much-needed basic amenities," said Kahungu. But residents are skeptical that much will change, especially with housing challenges compounded by dwindling water reserves.

Rosa Namises, a veteran land and gender activist, was the first woman elected chief of the local Khomani San indigenous group in 2018, representing an estimated 4,000 people.

The Khomanin were moved from their ancestral land within the Khomas region during South African colonization, she explained, with some resettled to surrounding farms in 1991 by the government after Namibia's independence.

"But farming is challenging with limited access to water," said Namises, 62, sitting in a Katutura community center that she established in 1999 to assist vulnerable community members - including many Khomanin - living in the area.

The city also comes with its own challenges, residents said. 

"Katutura is not a place where we will find a life. We are uprooted. We will never be fully settled here," said Namises.


Newspaper headline: Thirst for home