Lazarus Kwedhi
We did not pay municipal bills to pay City staff salaries and benefits, nor did we vote for councillors to promote the colonial and apartheid municipal system of governance.
We pay municipal bills and vote for councillors because we want an enabling city to meet the needs and aspirations of its residents.
At this juncture, we must bury our pride in shame. We can no longer ignore the writing on the wall.
The City of Windhoek, which brands itself a “Caring City,” is practising double standard and punitive governance against its own residents.
We once rightly blamed the apartheid regime for restricting free movement of black Namibians from Owambo and areas north of and outside the Red Line to urban areas like Windhoek.
It was a racial design to consolidate white settler power through contract labour, exploiting cheap native labour while forbidding the workforce from acquiring land or property in urban areas.
Workers lived in backyard flats or compounds, “okomboni,” without wives and children.
There was no unemployment because the labour market demanded workers. The economy was stable. There was little hunger and poverty.
Black revolutionaries correctly called it divide-and-rule, racial discrimination, and an exploitative contract labour system. We celebrated independence.
Then free movement came without an enabling mechanism to accommodate the socio-economic needs and aspirations of rural-urban migration.
Namibians could now flock to Windhoek with no guarantee of employment, affordable housing, or serviced land, and with no timeframe to return if they failed to find work. Independence euphoria disappeared.
What we called compounds, “okomboni,” became informal settlements. Backyard flats became rental accommodation for the working class.
The contract system continued through labour-hire companies and casual workers. Discrimination mutated from racial to class-based, against the poor.
The free movement we now call rural-urban migration, unemployment, illegal occupation, and illegal electricity.
While we scapegoat apartheid for the urban livelihood crisis, the truth is uncomfortable: the urban and municipal colonial system remains the same.
It is yet to be decolonised. It is designed to consolidate power and benefits for the political ruling elite, currently elected largely by informal settlement residents who make up the majority of Windhoek, at the expense of that same majority. The only difference is who is in charge.
This article does not promote anarchy or disrespect for the rule of law. It challenges the fundamental policy contradiction and double standard decisions of the City of Windhoek.
It is procedurally correct to enforce Regulation 3882 of 2007 and Street Regulations against street vendors, the Squatters Proclamation AG 21 of 1985 against illegal occupants, and the Electricity Act, 2007 and City Bylaws against illegal connections.
It is substantively wrong to enforce them when the socio-economic conditions under which these laws were made have fundamentally changed and the City has failed its own core mandate under the Local Authorities Act, 1992 and the National Informal Economy Policy to make Windhoek an enabling city.
The legal mandate vs reality
In terms of the Local Authorities Act, 1992 as amended, a municipal council exists to provide services and uplift residents’ living standards. It is a service institution, not a profit centre or police force.
In policy analysis, legitimacy has two tests: procedural legitimacy, which asks whether the decision was taken correctly, and substantive legitimacy, which asks whether it serves the public interest.
The City passes the first by citing bylaws. It fails the second.
On 29 June 2026, the City announced city-wide disconnections in Otjomuise, Okuryangava, Hakahana, Havana, and Goreangab.
On paper, law and order. On the ground, economic sabotage for families whose livelihoods depend on electricity.
Over the years, the City of Windhoek has continued harassing informal traders and street vendors for selling in non-selling zones, while fully knowing that formal markets are inefficient, insufficient, and the City fails to meet vendors at the point of their needs and refuses to issue selling permits.
For 30 years, residents have been called illegal occupants without electricity or title deeds. Yet the same City gave them registration numbers, communal taps, toilets, and dustbins.
That is tacit recognition that they are here to stay. How does the City get it right to disconnect, but get it wrong for 30 years to legally connect?
Yet during elections, they are equal residents who elect that leadership, but without adequate municipal services.
The apartheid roots
We cannot escape that these bylaws emanate from apartheid, adopted into post-independence governance but still serving their original purpose: to prevent the majority from acquiring urban land.
Pre-independence restriction was also infrastructure planning.
It tied movement to employment and employer-provided accommodation to avoid housing crises and mushrooming informal settlements now seen across Namibia.
The notion that there was absolutely no free movement is a myth. The law required conditions, including employment and accommodation.
Post-independence, we removed conditions without providing alternatives or strategic intervention to attract graduates and entrepreneurs back to regions and rural areas to contain rural-urban migration.
Street vending, informal settlements, and illegal connections were unheard of before 1990 because movement was tied to employment and infrastructure planning matched population.
Now we have free movement with an empty stomach, landless and with a lack of adequate municipal infrastructure, which the Constitution never intended.
Three punitive policies and decisions
1. Electricity: Enforcement without alternative. Under the Electricity Act, the City uses coercion: remove, punish, criminalise. No prepaid option, no temporary plan, only darkness.
A caring city would adopt temporary electrification, prepaid communal meters, and safe cabling, as in Cape Town, Nairobi, and Brazil, while awaiting formalisation. Shack fires cost more than safe temporary supply.
2. Informal economy: Destroying income that pays municipal bills. Under Regulation 3882, trading without a permit is illegal, yet the City admits only 16 markets exist, all full. City Police confiscate goods.
The Kapana chain, from Single Quarters, Stop n’ Shop, Wanaheda to Okuryangava, generates daily cash that pays municipal bills and salaries of councillors.
With Foot-and-Mouth Disease cutting supply, vendors are pushed below poverty. The N$3 billion export chain is protected; the Kapana chain that feeds Windhoek is punished.
3. Land and housing: 30 years of excuses. Under AG 21 of 1985, residents are “illegal” when requesting electricity but “registered” when counted for taps. This is administrative buck-passing.
The Supreme Court in Shaanika ruled eviction requires a court order and alternative accommodation.
Who bears the burden
Policy incidence analysis asks who bears the burden and who benefits. Children cannot study. Women face insecurity in dark riverbeds and streets. Salons, welders, and Kapana traders lose stock and income.
Benefit goes to the City’s balance sheet, through reduced losses, and to politicians who harvest votes to retain council seats.
This violates equity, Batho Pele, and pro-poor principles. Electricity is tied to dignity under Article 8, education, and safety. Vendors create jobs and pay bills.
Residents are not asking for free municipal services. They choose to live in informal settlements, to become street vendors, and to connect illegal electricity out of no choice.
They do not ask for free services. They demand fair treatment.
So we ask again: Who is the City serving? If serving itself, it will measure success by disconnections, fines, and vendors chased.
If serving residents, it will measure success by households safely electrified, street vendors supported, and communities formalised with title deeds.
Windhoek needs an enabling city, not a double standard and punitive city.
