Vaalgras watershed community meeting:

The most feared community meeting is scheduled to take place on Sunday 4 August at Vaalgras.
The other side is afraid that the scheduled critical events are really unfolding. The meeting is an integral part of the long exercise to remove the chief within the legal provisions as embraced by the High Court on May 10 in Windhoek.

It is quit ironical that the former Vaalgras leadership does not want to accept or respect the decision of the High Court that the people have the legitimacy to advocate the removal of a chief or to assemble peacefully under Article 21, Sub-article (1)(d) and (e).

I think it is crystal clear and should be upheld and respected by all. Both the former Vaalgras leadership and the Interim Committee could convene community meetings on the same date at different places, viz. Vredefontein and Klein Vaalgras, which are about 3km from each other.

Everybody knows exactly where he belongs and it’s everybody’s democratic right where to go in terms of Article 17 of Namibia Constitution. Now why should leaders try to block meetings organised by others if even the High Court cannot stop a community meeting that is organised peacefully.

We are serious, if we say that we are about to conclude the mandate of the June 4 community meeting. We intend to change things drastically at Vaalgras and bring about economic development.

The former leadership wrote a letter on July 20 in which they are only concerned about their own future and role and not about that of the community. They should take courage to approach the leadership of the Interim Committee directly if they feel they have something to discuss or negotiate with us. Our doors remain open for that, but we cannot invite them to an ordinary routine community meeting as the bitter exercise of April 30, 2011, at Vredefontein are still fresh in our minds. The meeting was closed unilaterally without any respect for our traveling expenses etc; we were humiliated and told to set a date for our own community meeting, which was denied at the end and also boycotted by the leadership.

We would like to make it categorically clear that we are at a very advanced stage: the events that took place in-between had overtaken their agendas and dreams.

We are moving forward and cannot go back to where we were already and cannot even be delayed any longer. All our previous meetings were monitored by police and are a law-abiding and peace-loving with specific emphasis on economic development for the generations to come.

We cannot to Implement a turn-around strategy in all respects, including innovate interventions at all levels.