[ad_1]
The hearing on a potentially revolutionary case of eight members of the Hai // om San community who wish their ancestral rights to the Etosha National Park and the Mangetti territory to be legally recognized began in court of three judges of the High Court of Windhoek.
After two adjournments – the first in November of last year, and again in May of this year – the deputy judge of the High Court, the president, Hosea Angula, and the judges Nate Ndauendapo and Thomas Masuku began yesterday to hear the pleadings of eight members of Hai // om. communities seeking to be allowed to sue as representatives of their community against the Namibian government and other parties with interests in the Etosha National Park and the Mangetti West area north of Tsumeb.
Jan Tsumib, who is the first applicant in the case, and seven other applicants ask the court to allow them to represent the Hai // om and individuals in the Hai // om community in future proceedings. plan to have their ancestral rights recognized in Etosha National Park and the Mangetti West area.
If they manage to overcome this first obstacle, they intend to ask the High Court to declare that the hari have the right to detain Etosha, which extends over 23,150 square kilometers over an area of 107,000 hectares. in Mangetti West, or compensation for the loss of their ancestral lands through the allocation of other lands or financial compensation of N $ 3.9 billion.
They also plan to ask the court to declare that the Hai // om community has rights over Etosha's natural resources, should be financially compensated for the loss of its access to Etosha, should collect royalties for the use future of the national resource. park, and has the right to have access to Etosha.
They also want to ask the court to declare that the Namibian Government and Namibia Wildlife Resorts, which operates tourist facilities in Etosha, have breached their legal obligations to repair the alleged discriminatory racial dispossession of the Hai people's ancestral lands. / om, the expulsion of the Haitian community from their ancestral lands and in particular from the Etosha National Park, as well as the marginalization of the haïl and the persistence of so-called discrimination towards them
They also plan to ask the court, in subsequent proceedings, to order the government to allocate an area of 23,000 square kilometers, or an area determined by the court, instead of their ancestral land in Hai. / om.
The government and the traditional authority Hai counter to the pending petition on which the three judges began to hear the arguments yesterday.
Lead Counsel Andrew Corbett, who is part of the team representing Tsumib and the other applicants, began his address to court emphasizing that judges were invited to consider new issues concerning ancestral land rights under Namibian law.
The applicants' contention was mainly based on the fact that they belonged to a marginalized and impoverished community that did not have easy access to justice and that the doors of justice would be closed to them if the court could not find a way to do so. . could assert the rights of their community, said Corbett.
While Tsumib and his co-claimants sought to assert the rights of their community on their ancestral lands in Etosha and the Mangetti area, they assured the court, in affidavits, that they also supported conservation activities. and tourism conducted in Etosha National Park, but Corbett pointed out that.
He reminded the court that most of the last inhabitants of Hai // om who lived in Etosha had been expelled from the park in 1954, resulting in the total loss of access to the area where their inhabitants had traditionally resided.
Corbett also noted that Etosha is a huge national asset that has benefited the Namibian government and pre-independence colonial governments – and that the only people who have not benefited from it are those who were dispossessed during their expulsion from the park.
As class actions are not at this stage a possible option under Namibian law, the law of the land was to be developed to allow Tsumib and the other claimants to pursue legal action that was not available. they planned to assume the role of representative on behalf of their community. Corbett said.
The Hai // om community has about 6,200 people, according to an anthropologist who has studied the community.
Nearly half of the community – 2,476 people – showed support for the lawsuit filed by Tsumib and his co-plaintiffs, the court said. The hearing is expected to continue today and could last until the end of this week.
[ad_2]
Source link
