Frustration reaches fever pitch: Why punches are flying at Mix

On the edge of civilisation, Mix settlement is a community haunted. It has no clinic and the state school only goes to grade two.

Young children furthering their education from grade three onwards must wake up at 04:00 – whether in heavy rain or unforgiving cold – for a trek to Windhoek, some 20 kilometres away.

“They are bundled into cars and dropped at Monte Christo service station in Windhoek, from where they must walk to their respective schools,” a taxi driver known only as Kashamba told Namibian Sun.

“Those who are lucky to have schoolmates in the team walk together, which is better. Those who have no one else schooling with them must walk on their own all the way,” Kashamba, who had just returned from his second trip to Windhoek, said.

The scramble for transport at the settlement is fierce, and it pits schoolchildren against adults who need a ride to the capital to look for work. “The parents of the children have a standing agreement with car owners, who charge N$600 monthly. This makes it hard for adults to secure space sometimes.”

Power, water woes

Mix Primary School has no electricity. And on Wednesday when Namibian Sun visited, children had been sent home earlier because there was no water, making hygiene impossible.

Principal Ronel Lopes said: “Not having electricity means basic things such as making copies require us to drive to Windhoek”.

Construction of extra classrooms, with a view to introduce grades up to seven, started earlier this year, but the contractor has since vacated the site, allegedly due to a lack of building materials.

Additional grades are only expected in 2026 – meaning the kids of Mix have two more years of exhausting journeys to the capital to look forward to.

The only electricity in Mix is for street lights. Houses use mostly firewood to cook. The wood is illegally collected from nearby farms, and local women have often been arrested and fined for trespassing.

“Electricity will make our life a little easier in many ways. Our children do their homework by candlelight, which is risky because if a candle is accidentally knocked down, a fire can break out and burn our shacks to ashes,” a resident who goes by Jeremiah said.

To compound their misery, children in Mix have no playground to help them relax after a long day.

The settlement has a mobile clinic, which operates once a month on an outreach basis. In case of emergencies, an ambulance takes an average three hours to arrive, residents narrated.

“If you get sick at night and ask a car owner to take you to a hospital in Windhoek, you will be charged N$400 for transport alone. And, remember, this is a settlement of mostly unemployed people. The main source of income here is through working as a kapana vendor and that type of work. We have no income to pay astronomical fees for services that government should have brought to us long ago,” Jeremiah added.

Long way to go

Windhoek Rural constituency councillor Piet Adams, whom the residents accuse of hardly visiting the area, said: “The mobile health clinic that was built with Khomas Regional Council funds has been electrified and is waiting only for the official [handover]. On the issue of the electricity poles that are erected but have not been switched on, the rightful entity to answer is City of Windhoek”.

“On the issue of the school, when I came on board, it was non-functional. At least the first group of learners [have] already [been] taught from grade zero up to [grade two]. The aim is for Mix residents not to take their children to other areas. This project still needs to go a long way before it reaches the completion stage,” he said.

While the settlement has communal water taps, some residents said they live too far from them. “We need more taps to cut the distances that we currently walk to fetch water,” a man said.

Water is accessed through rechargeable vouchers, and residents seeking to top up their cards must fork out N$25 to reach Monte Christo filling station and a further N$13 for a taxi to the City of Windhoek offices. They must then pay another N$13 to return to Monte Christo and then N$25 to head back to Mix. That’s N$76 in total, just for water.

Some residents have described government’s food relief programme as a ‘joke’, saying food is delivered sporadically and in shockingly low quantities.

Meanwhile, with no police station at the settlement, crime is a daily occurrence. “Even to certify a copy, you must go to Windhoek,” a woman said.

‘Now, hard work’

Khomas regional health director Thomas Ukola chronicled the challenges his team faces in delivering dignified services to Mix.

“With the issue of ambulances, as you are aware, the population of Windhoek has grown exponentially, totalling half a million people. We have three other facilities in the rural areas of the Windhoek district – Baumgartz Brunn, Dordabis and Groot Aub that also need to be catered for. We are using the ambulances we have at maximum to make sure we respond to healthcare emergencies that arise,” he said.

Frustration came to a head last weekend when one of the residents, Moses Ndjene, slapped Swapo branch coordinator Bonifatius Munango during a party campaign meeting at the settlement.

“I questioned, as a party member, why they keep shouting ‘now, hard work’ while there is no evidence of that hard work on the ground,” he said.

“After I questioned these things, I was told that I must leave the meeting, and I refused. Are we only supposed to be in the meeting if we are nodding heads and clapping hands? Why are we not allowed to challenge our leaders and hold them accountable?” he narrated to Namibian Sun this week.