KATUTURA TOWNSHIP

To the north of the city is the main township. For several years now, many travel agencies have been offering organized tours to discover this place and get a feel for the lifestyle and daily life of its inhabitants. It is recommended to go through them rather than going alone, even if you don't risk much during the day. Being with a guide will allow you to better understand the local life. If you decide to go there, don't forget to stop at the Single Quarters market for a kapana with a fried bun appropriately called fat cake .

Katutura - "the place where we don't want to live" in the Herero language - is the second face of the capital. Located in the northwest of Windhoek, it is the most densely populated area of the city. It is home to at least 60% of Windhoek's 200,000 inhabitants, probably more, no one really knows. Every day new migrants arrive from the north (an estimated 600 to 1,000 people settle here each month), the vast majority of them Ovambo, to try their luck in the capital where work, when they find it, is better paid.

In the 1950s, South Africa implemented the apartheid regime in Namibia. Segregationist laws aimed to separate whites and blacks. This is when the story of Katutura begins. In 1959, the South Africans encouraged the Blacks to leave their part of town, the Old Location - now known as Hochlands Park - and move to a township outside Windhoek. The blacks called it Katutura out of rejection. This massive displacement did not take place without protest: the inhabitants of Old Location tried by all means to oppose this forced move. On December 10, their uprising was put down in a bloodbath. Thirteen people died. It is following this massacre that SWAPO was born, which will then obtain the independence of Namibia more than thirty years later.

Under apartheid, Windhoek was divided into three distinct cities: Windhoek-Centre for whites, Khomasdal for Basters and Coloureds (mixed race people), and Katutura, the furthest district from the center, for blacks. Then, within Katutura itself, the Blacks were again separated according to their ethnicity. On the front of their homes, a letter displayed their ethnic group. When you walk through the neighborhood today, you can still see these inscriptions: H for Herero, D for Damara, N for Nama and so on. After independence, a district called Wa-na-he-da was created in Katutura. It symbolizes the union of the peoples of Namibia: Wa for Owambo, Na for Nama, He for Herero and Da for Damara. The laws also forbade the inhabitants of Katutura to own houses, they were forced to rent them from the municipality. The houses were very basic, all identical: a family had to make do with a two-room apartment with a toilet in the yard. To get to work, the people of Katutura boarded buses that dropped them off in the center. At night, a curfew ensured that they disappeared from the city center. Until 1975, there were no businesses in Katutura. It was only after independence in 1990 that the infrastructure improved.

Today, the neighborhood is trying to cope with the constant flow of migrants. Unemployment and AIDS are omnipresent and add to the precarious living conditions due to the lack of drinking water. It is estimated that 40% of the inhabitants do not have access to permanent houses and live in makeshift shelters, very precarious sheet metal constructions that cling to the hillsides.

Despite all this, Katutura does not compare to the slums of other African countries. Life there is certainly precarious, but today the government has set up projects to provide the inhabitants with access to water, electricity and sanitation. Violence, often endemic in the slums, is not as common and organized as in South Africa. The biggest challenge for the administration now is to find a way to absorb the migration flows, to fight unemployment and to fight AIDS, which has considerably reduced the life expectancy of the inhabitants.

To visitors and travelers, Katutura presents itself as a young and popular neighborhood, without monuments but of vital interest to those who wish to understand the history and present of the country. However, it is not advisable to go there alone. In Windhoek, several local operators such as Face-to-Face, Asmara, or Katutours... offer tours to visit Katutura in their own way. These tours usually start in Old Location and continue in Katutura where you can discover the market, the shebeens, these small informal bars that fill up at nightfall and from which the music resounds under the tin. The local operators also show us a kindergarten, or projects like Penduka. This is a company that employs women in difficulty or with disabilities, helping them to overcome discrimination and social exclusion, helping them to reintegrate despite all the difficulties they have encountered.
These places, often disparaged by the population, are nevertheless full of history and shelter the actors and actresses of beautiful human projects and of tomorrow.