The
leader of a group of land occupiers in Swakopmund, Namibia, said on Monday they
would continue their efforts, despite having been arrested over the weekend.
“As we
started on Saturday erecting our shacks on the unserviced land we occupied last
December, eight policemen arrived in two vehicles and arrested me and my
co-leader Engelhardt Uirab,” Gotthard Kandume told a Sapa correspondent.
“They
held us for several hours. We were interrogated and told we were occupying land
illegally and after around six hours they let us go. This will not deter us, we
will continue occupying land,” he said.
The group
removed the three shacks it had erected over the weekend. Police
commissioner Ottilie Kashuupulwa said they were instructed to halt the group’s
land occupation activities.
“It was
not a violent confrontation,” she said.
According
to Kandume, the number of his supporters was growing.
“We have
now formed the Mondesa Residents Association to take matters further, like a
mass action next week together with two other groups – Tamariskia Residents
Association and the DRC Settlement Concerned Group.”
The DRC
settlement is on the outskirts of Swakopmund. Groups of people mainly from
rural areas started to illegally erect shacks and settle there several years
ago.
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