Africa-Press – Namibia. ENVIRONMENT minister Pohamba Shifeta clashed with a private company, Tungeni Africa, over who has the right to occupy the state-owned 470-hectare Von Bach national park, which accommodates Namibia’s fifth largest dam.
Tungeni believes that it should control 470ha (roughly 470 football fields) of the park for 50 years, as stipulated in their contract.
But Shifeta accused the company of using a fake official document to justify the increased allocation of land – an allegation rejected by Tungeni.
The dispute includes alleged irregularities, reliance on false documents and an aggrieved company that is threatening to sue the government and Shifeta for signing a contract that would allow Namibia Water Ski Club to use the dam.
The battle between the environment ministry and Tungeni Africa is mainly about who should occupy Von Bach Game Park.
Farm Von Bach area is located about 70 kilometres north of Windhoek and five kilometres south-east of Okahandja.
Documents show that surveyor general Karim Owolabi instructed Volkmann Land Surveyors on 29 August 2007 to survey, among other resorts, the Von Bach Resort.
This was after the president Hifikepunye Pohamba-led Cabinet approved that the minister of environment and tourism sign a memorandum of agreement for the state to transfer several government assets to Namibia Wildlife Resorts Ltd.
The instruction letter said the Ministry of Environment and Tourism intended to transfer the eight rest camps and resorts to Namibia Wildlife Resorts (NWR).
These were: Ai-Ais, Hardap Dam, Von Bach Dam, Waterberg, Mile14, Jakkalsputz, Mile 72 and Mile 108.
In 2008, NWR – under former managing director Tobie Aupindi – leased the state assets to a group of well-connected individuals for over 50 years.
These include Tungeni Africa as one of the few companies that won the controversial public-private partnership (PPP) agreements with state-owned NWR.
TUNGENI FIGHTS BACK
Tungeni Africa, co-owned by businessman Iyaloo Nangolo, received concessions such as a highly controversial 50-year lease, with the option for another 50 years, including the Von Bach campsite, as well as 30-year leases over the Jakkalsputz, Mile 72 and Mile 108 campsites.
Even though the private partnership was endorsed several years ago, the land was not registered under the new owners such as Tungeni Africa.
The environment ministry said the land was not yet transferred to Tungeni and NWR because he informed his officials to remap and exclude dams and sensitive biological areas. This process has delayed the registering of the lease of the land under the Tungeni joint venture, but Shifeta believes these delays allowed NWR to increase the land allocated to Tungeni.
Shifeta said he does not dispute the 2008 agreement between Tungeni and NWR, but has a problem with amendments made to the agreement in 2018 to expand the area allocated to the joint venture.
He added that “there is one agreement that was correct (signed in 2008). Eventually, someone who thinks he is clever, went on (in 2018) to extend the measurement of the area controlled by NWR (using an unsigned Government Gazette)”.
According to Shifeta, the Tungeni partnership is only entitled to 130ha and not 470ha.
“Tungeni is probably not wrong but they should ask their lawyers whether they have the right to the national park and a dam,” he added.
The Namibia Water Ski Club sued the environment ministry over the use of the dam.
Shifeta said Tungeni was initially part of the court case but pulled out later.
“This could have been a public humiliation [about the details of the public-private partnership]. This is what is happening at parastatals, where officials are lying to the board,” the minister said.
Shifeta defended the ministry’s decision to give Namibia Water Ski Club a 20-year concession to use the Von Bach Dam this month.
He said the club will pay N$1 million a year to use the dam. Shifeta questioned the partnership between Tungeni and the government.
“They haven’t paid anything to the government (except for water and electricity),” he said.
Tungeni Africa’s managing director Iyaloo Nangolo told The Namibian yesterday that the ski clubs had no contract and squatted on the land allocated to them since 2012.
He said Tungeni has lost N$60 000 to N$100 000 since 2012.
Asked about his comments on allegations that the government never gave Tungeni 470ha, Nangolo said Shifeta must read the contract.
“The contract doesn’t require the land to be transferred. It’s got nothing to do with land transfers but deriving touristic and recreational rights to the concessionaire.
Nangolo said Shifeta is missing the point, saying the NWR law allows the parastatal to enter into PPPs.
“Similar to the contract he has now signed with the ski-clubs whereby the land he allocated to them (ski-clubs) is not transferred, so was the 470 hectares land allocated to the PPP, which was signed in 2008 and yet to date still not transferred to NWR,” the businessman said.
Nangolo denied suggestions that they fabricated documents, saying the addendum signed in 2008 clarified that the land allocated to the PPP was indeed 470ha.
“The 2018 addendum was an additional clarification because he still failed to understand and continued to undermine the PPP and the business case by failing to act against the squatters despite many letters for them (ski-clubs) to vacate and kept protecting them,” he added.
Tungeni insisted that they paid N$3 million as a sign-on fee for the NWR deal, and built a N$35 million lodge, restaurant, and conference facilities from 2009 to 2010.
He said they pay N$35 000 as a lease fee for the resort.
He said they paid “10% of our gross income per month since 2010 up to the end of 2018, but stopped because the state was perpetually in breach of contract”.
“The state also systematically caused the cannibalising and sabotaging of our income through the active support of the squatters,” he said.
Nangolo said the benefits of skiing are often “affluent white Namibians who can afford boats ranging from N$800 000 upwards for weekend jollification”.
Water skiing is a surface water sport in which an individual is pulled behind a boat or a cable ski installation over a body of water, skimming the surface.
Nangolo said the minister does not seem to understand that their partnership with NWR was never meant to provide any income to the state, but to help the financially struggling NWR.
The deputy executive director: natural resources in the environment ministry, Colgar Sikopo, defended Shifeta saying Tungeni is only supposed to lease the resort part of the park and not the dam, not the area that covers the dam and other spots.
He said NWR went into agreement to give the 470ha to Tungeni without permission from the ministry.
He said Tungeni’s worry about the sports activities is their worry, but he maintained that they have a tight contract that has an option to terminate the agreement if rules are broken.
NWR appears to side with Tungeni.
“NWR signed an original PPP agreement with Tungeni on 17 July 2008. Then on 15 March 2017, an addendum to the original agreement was signed to define the size of the land to 470,0504 hectares. This addendum was necessitated by the fact that the size of the land was not specified in the original agreement,” NWR spokesperson Nelson Ashipala told The Namibian yesterday.
He said Von Bach is one of the eight remaining assets (resorts) transferred but not yet registered at the Deeds Office to NWR. This process is still ongoing.
Ashipala declined to provide financial information on how the partnership with Tungeni has benefited NWR, claiming it was confidential information.
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